Anglers targeting pelagic rockfish in Southeast Alaska saltwater will be able to keep fewer fish than in years past as the result of a regulation change passed by the state Board of Fisheries this winter.
The daily bag limit — the number of fish an angler can keep each day — for pelagic rockfish was reduced from five fish to three, and the possession limit, the number of fish an angler can have in their possession from multiple days of fishing, was reduced from 10 to six. Those limits apply to black, blue, dark, dusky, widow, and yellowtail rockfish, grouped as pelagic rockfish because they tend to group up more than other rockfish species, and live higher up in the water column than their bottom-dwelling counterparts.
The new limits went into effect March 1. Fishing for pelagic rockfish is generally open year-round.
The fisheries board unanimously supported the reduced limits during its last meeting in Ketchikan.The Alaska Department of Fish and Game proposed the cuts due to increased Southeast Alaska rockfish harvests and the lack of information about those stocks.
According to Fish and Game, the pelagic rockfish harvest in the Southeast Alaska sport fishery increased from 59,000 fish in 2009 to 261,000 fish in 2023.
Fish and Game sportfish biologist Jake Wieliczkiewicz told the board the Alaska resident harvest has held fairly steady, but nonresident harvest has climbed as they have fewer opportunities to target halibut, salmon and lingcod.
Wieliczkiewicz said the new regulation change was estimated to reduce rockfish harvest by 20 percent.
“This will help stabilize the growing harvest of pelagic rockfish in Southeast Alaska,” he said.
Rockfish are a long-lived and late-maturing species. Wieliczkiewicz said that makes them particularly susceptible to overharvest and localized depletion.
Fish and Game currently has limited stock assessment information about pelagic rockfish in Southeast, although a black rockfish stock assessment is in the works, Wieliczkiewicz said.
When the board discussed the regulation change, members Tom Carpenter and Curtis Chamberlain both said they were interested in reducing harvest even further.
“It’s hard to swallow that much growth in the fishery and take it in stride,” Chamberlain said.
The board also gave Fish and Game the authority to issue different bag limits for residents and nonresidents through emergency order if further reductions are needed to protect the stock, or to take other measures to reduce the harvest. The board also discussed reducing nonresident limits first.
Wieliczkiewicz said that nonresidents take the majority of the pelagic rockfish harvest each year, with residents harvesting about 18 percent of the pelagic harvest on average over the past 10 years.
The Upper Lynn Canal Advisory Committee did not take a position on that change this winter, but the fisheries board noted that all Southeast Alaska advisory committees that weighed in on the change supported it, including those in Petersburg, Wrangell and elsewhere.
Yelloweye fisheries opened
The board also increased the opportunities for anglers to harvest other rockfish this year in state waters, allowing both residents and nonresidents to retain yelloweye rockfish.
Yelloweye is a demersal shelf rockfish that resides on the bottom of the ocean — specifically in the Gulf of Alaska — and can live to be 100 years or older.
The board agreed to reopen a resident sport fishery specifically for yelloweye in Southeast, which Fish and Game opened March 1. The resident bag limit was set at one fish, with a possession limit of two and no annual limit.
The board also approved a nonresident season from May through September for demersal shelf rockfish, including yelloweye. This year, the nonresident fishery will be closed in May and June to protect spawning fish and open for eight weeks beginning in July, said Fish and Game’s Ketchikan-area sportfish management biologist Kelly Reppert.
The nonresident bag and annual limit were set at one fish.
The resident and nonresident fisheries were opened through separate proposals at the board meeting.
The yelloweye sport and commercial fishery had been closed since 2020 because of estimates that the stock status was not strong enough to support a harvest. While the sport fishery has been closed, yelloweye are harvested in subsistence fisheries and taken as bycatch in commercial fisheries.
Reppert said the department thought the yelloweye stock could handle a limited harvest, and that the limits considered by the board provided a buffer for uncertainty and were likely to keep the harvest within a sustainable range.
The Upper Lynn Canal Advisory Committee did not take a position on the resident yelloweye fishery, but several other Southeast advisory committees supported it.
Board of Fish member Stan Zurray said that about 80 public comments were submitted in support of opening the fishery, with just a handful opposing it, and called the support “pretty incredible.”
Board member Mike Wood said that while it was clear throughout the meeting that there’s a need for rockfish conservation, he thought the proposal offered a conservative approach to offering some fishing opportunity.
The board approved the resident fishery in a unanimous vote. The nonresident sport fishery had less support, although it ultimately passed after just one board member, Carpenter, voted against it.
“I just can’t get past the fact that three years ago we were in dire straits,” he said, adding that he’d like to see a little more data before opening it up to nonresidents as well as residents.
The Upper Lynn Canal committee had opposed opening the nonresident demersal shelf rockfish fishery when it discussed the proposed changes this winter, in part due to limited information available to them about the status of those fish.