Afognak Lake sits in the middle of the forested expanse of Afognak Island, north of Kodiak. Normally it would be eerily quiet, but not one sunny day in late August. The Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association was conducting its annual egg take for the strain of sockeye that returns here.
The dozen or so technicians and volunteers gathered at the lake have been waiting for this day for weeks.
“It's shaping up to be pretty sweet, except for the bugs,” said Peter Weinzierl, a technician with the aquaculture association. “Didn't expect this many bugs.”
The team blasted pop music as technicians pulled skeins of eggs out of sockeye salmon and emptied them into plastic bowls. Taking eggs from wild fish is a way that aquaculture associations maintain genetic diversity in their broodstock and prevent domestication.
Alaska released more than a million-and-a-half hatchery fish last year, according to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, the most of anywhere in the world. But a growing body of research has indicated that hatchery fish could harm wild salmon populations by interbreeding with wild fish and competing with them for food.
Some stakeholders, many from sport and charter fishing backgrounds, have called for hatchery restrictions from the Board of Fisheries, which oversees state-managed waters. That includes at the board’s meeting in March.
Nothing passed. But now, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang has proposed a formal 10-year moratorium on increasing egg takes for pink and chum salmon at hatcheries across the state.
That wouldn’t shut down hatcheries. But it would keep them from starting new pink and chum hatcheries, or increasing how many eggs they take from those species for existing hatcheries.
The deadline to finalize the moratorium is Oct. 28, but hatchery operators seem split on whether to sign on.
Greg Ruggerone, a retired research scientist who spent much of his career studying salmon in Alaska, is one of many researchers who say they’re concerned that years of hatchery growth have taken a toll on wild stocks. He said Alaska hatchery production exploded in the 1970s and has grown steadily since then.
“I think of Alaska as being pristine, but yet, it’s dominated by hatchery salmon in the Gulf of Alaska region,” he said.
Vincent-Lang said he doesn’t believe there’s enough scientific evidence to definitively say that hatchery fish are negatively affecting wild fish, at least out in the ocean. But he said he’s feeling pressure from the Board of Fisheries.
“I suspect if we don't have a moratorium in place by me, you're going to see significant cuts to those programs,” he said. “And when you cut, that forces regional decisions that have been long embedded as to where those fish should be released and how the harvest rate should go. So we would open up a whole can of worms.”
Märit Carlson-Van Dort, the chair of the Board of Fisheries, said the board may in fact take stronger action without a moratorium in place covering all of the state’s aquaculture associations.
“It is incumbent upon the public and the board to make sure that the commissioner and the departments and the hatcheries’ feet are held to the fire,” she said. “That this doesn't continue to get kicked down the road with another administration or a different board.”
All Alaska hatcheries already agreed to an informal moratorium back in 2019. But some are worried about this new one.
Tina Fairbanks, the executive director of the Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association, said all of the aquaculture associations have stuck by the 2019 agreement. But she said a formal, 10-year moratorium is a different thing.
“When you start down a road, it just opens the door to more restrictions and less ability to make decisions that are going to support rehabilitative projects,” she said.
Managers of the state’s other Alaska aquaculture associations either declined or did not respond to requests for comment before this story was published. The general manager for the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association told Petersburg public radio station KFSK last month that it would sign the moratorium.
But Vincent-Lang said other hatcheries, like Prince William Sound’s, weren’t totally on board.
“I guess they have some concerns,” he said. “They'd like to have some ability to potentially grow in certain areas.”
Fairbanks said Kodiak’s hatchery board still had not decided whether to sign on. She said pink and chum programs, which are funded almost entirely by payments from commercial fishermen, subsidize the rest of Kodiak’s hatchery operations, like the sockeye program at Afognak Lake and stocking fish in Kodiak’s villages.
Fairbanks said she’s worried that, without the flexibility to adjust their pink and chum operations, it could become harder to keep those other projects running.
“We are trying to rehabilitate the king salmon at Karluk,” she said. “We don't know what needs to be on the table in order to allow us to do that, but right now, I can tell you that it's pink and chum salmon that pay the bills.”
