Tag Archives: Kenai setnetters

With court date on ballot measure looming, Kenai setnetters ponder their future

This summer, just as they have done for generations, setnetters are working the shores of the western Kenai Peninsula, stringing out nets and hauling in hundreds of thousands of fish from the abundant sockeye salmon runs of Southcentral Alaska.  Last month, the Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance submitted 43,000 signatures to the Alaska Division of Elections to certify an initiative that would ban setnets in Alaska’s urban areas. If approved by voters, the initiative would outlaw setnets in the five designated urban areas of Alaska, including Valdez, Ketchikan, Fairbanks — and the Kenai Peninsula. Read the rest here 18:15

In a grand experiment, Kenai setnetters try using shallower nets to protect king salmon

alaska dispatchAbout 1,000 people actively fish commercial salmon permits in Cook Inlet. They are fiercely protective of their fishing, politically powerful, and for decades influenced the agenda for the Fish Board. But growing sport and personal-use fisheries, coupled with a crash in king salmon numbers, have altered the politics of management in recent years and the commercial fishermen now find themselves in what they consider . Read more here 10:40