Testing Set Beach Seines in Upper Cook Inlet

 

 

In recent years, the Upper Cook Inlet Eastside Setnet fishery has been closed by regulation with what the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has stated as "low king salmon abundance".  The closures have resulted in the Eastside Setnet fishery being in federal fisheries disaster status for the last 6 of 7 years. Below is our family's story.

 

At the 2024 Upper Cook Inlet Board of Fisheries regulatory meeting, the Kenai River Chinook Salmon was listed as a Stock of Management Concern.  With that listing the Upper Cook Inlet Kenai King Salmon Stock of Concern Plan (SOC) was adopted by the Alaska Board of Fisheries.  That plan basically eliminated the opportunity of harvesting sockeye for the Eastside Setnet families with their traditional gillnets, possibly for the next 10 years. It was devastating for the families who call themselves Eastside Setnetters. 

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With the new SOC plan in place, the board concluded their review of the policies for the Eastside Setnet fishery by telling the fishermen to find a way to harvest sockeye and not kill kings if they want to fish again while king salmon stocks were in recovery status. At that same meeting, in an effort to provide some opportunity for our families, they adopted very inefficient small dipnets as an alternative gear type and sent us away with a loud and clear message, we were not going to fish with our set gillnets for many years.  That was not acceptable for us, so, my husband Brian and I got to work.

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In the spring of 2024, we were issued a commissioner's permit to test a new method to harvest sockeye in the Eastside Setnet fishery that does not kill king salmon.  We had a concept that we had considered for many years and felt that with the outlook for our fishery with the adoption of the new SOC plan, we needed to move forward with that plan. 

 

We began our work on the new gear type just after the board meeting in February 2024.  That new gear type is the Set Beach Seine and that's where this chapter of our story begins.

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Where do we begin?

We submitted a proposal with our plan for the test fishery and worked with our local fisheries manager on the details. There was no funding available from the state to move forward so we offered to self-fund it to get the project off the ground.  That was the only way the project would move forward, so we took the risk. 

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With the funding hurdle behind us, we were issued a Commissioner's permit UCI 2024-01 to test beach seines in Upper Cook Inlet with our existing setnet infrastructure.  Infrastructure being our lines, pulley system, leadlines, corklines, corks and equipment.

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With the permit in hand, we were ready to implement our plan.  And that plan had to be solid, after all, we were planning to pull a 600 ft long, 60 ft deep seine with 6 lb leadlines into some of the strongest tides and currents in the world.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, the answer is "A lot!"

 

Let's build a trailer

We needed a trailer to help move the seine around the beach, retrieve and set the seine and move the seine to other beach locations.  We had no idea how much time or money we would actually put into our project trailer to make it successful and complete it in time for the season.  We had to figure it out and figure it out fast.

 

We met with a local welder and discussed a design with him and thought we had it figured out. The trailer was left with him for three weeks while we traveled to bring a vehicle up from Arizona.  On our return, we were disappointed to find that there had been no progress on the trailer.  Nothing had been done.

 

Panicked, we had to scramble due to lack of time.  We started looking for a new welder to take on the job.  There was no one who was local in the Kenai area that could meet our very short timeline and budget, so we started calling around to our industry contacts for recommendations.  ​

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A gentleman from Homer, Ryan who sold us the mast and the boom for our trailer recommended a welder in Homer.  His name was Chuck, and he owned Homer Steel Fabricators. He came highly recommended, so we called him.  I explained our situation to Chuck, and he agreed to take a look at the project and see what he could do.  Chuck was very interested and in fact, was able to take our project right away. 

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We hauled our trailer to Homer the morning after we first spoke with him.  Following would be many trips to meet with Chuck, the hydraulics shop, Kachemak Gear shed and individuals with the equipment needed to complete the trailer.  Our processor contributed a seine block and deck winch and seed cash to get the trailer project off the ground.  

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The intended use of the trailer was to keep the seine mobile throughout the day so it could be set and retrieved several times during the tide cycle. That would include setting and retrieving the seine, moving it on and off the beach and up and down the highway to move to other beach sites.  

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Well, Chuck did an amazing job with the trailer, and it was on time and on budget!  He not only welded the land jitney, but with his knowledge of seining and skilled welding abilities was able to engineer it so it worked perfectly and safely.  We were amazed!   

 

After the welding was completed, we needed to get the hydraulics and rigging built on the trailer.  We spent several days at Kachemak Gear shed's yard in Homer waiting for the hydraulics system installation and adding the rigging for the mast and booms. At the end of the month, we finally had our trailer, and it was a thing of beauty!  There were so many people who stopped by to ask questions and take pictures.  I'm pretty sure they thought we were nuts. At that point, I am pretty sure that we were.

Finally, we had the means to set our set beach seine.  We very affectionately named our new trailer Scoopy.  Scoopy had the characteristics of Thunderdome with a twist of Viking ship and to the average set net fisherman, was quite impressive and quite intimidating.

 

Will this thing hold a set beach seine net?

With Scoopy completed we needed to do the rest of the preparations to get the beach site and our locations ready to fish the new gear.  Our existing beach nets are fished on a closed loop round robin system.  With the new heavy-duty net that we would be deploying, we needed to be sure that our stakes, pulleys and lines would be strong enough to hold it while it was fishing. Remember the strongest tides and currents in the world?  It was terrifying.

 

After a few days of low tides and help from friends, we had completed our upgrades.  Now with the commissioner's permit in hand, the upgrades to our infrastructure and Scoopy we were golden.  Or were we?  

 

Flashback to 2015

Back in 2015, when the idea of a set beach seine was first on our radar, we were issued a commissioner's permit to test set beach seines in our fishery.  It was a different time and different circumstances.  Our fishery was under attack by a long-time anti Eastside Setnet individual, Bob Penney, who had a ton of money and endless resources to try to eliminate us and our small family fishing businesses. 

 

It was nothing new to be a target of this individual, but at this point he had ramped up his game.  He found several goof balls to sponsor an initiative to put on the ballot which would eliminate set netting in Upper Cook Inlet without compensation to the fishing families. That initiative went up and down the court system and thankfully we were able to defeat it and put it to bed.  The judge found it to be illegal, and we were safe from his ridiculous attacks for a time.

 

During the court battle, which lasted a year or so, there was one judge who indicated that the future of the Eastside Setnet fishery was not with gillnets.  That we needed to find a way to harvest sockeye without killing the King Salmon in the process.  In a mixed stock fishery, removing one species from the catch is problematic with gillnets, because they are somewhat indiscriminate in their harvest.  So, our idea was to use a method that was discriminate and could be used to harvest sockeye and not kill any species we did not choose to harvest.  

 

So, in 2015 we received a permit to do essentially the same thing as we proposed with the permit in 2024.  Except, we were hedging against an initiative to totally eliminate us by ballot box.  We called it Ballot Box Biology.  Extremely Un-American and unfair!

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Well, with the 2015 permit in hand, we began our first attempt at our set beach seine project.  We found a heavy-duty equipment trailer, located an old purse seine from Brian's brother Tony and traveled to Seward to pick it up.  And that thing was a beast!  She came in at over 1200 feet long, was 60 plus feet deep and needed a ton of work. But, we won't get too bogged down with the details of that project, because we did not fish it in the summer of 2015.  As it turned out, the initiative was defeated in the courts, our fishing neighbors were unhappy with the idea of a 600 ft seine fishing in front of them and our setnet fishing was open for the season.  So, we scrapped our plan to keep the peace with our neighbors and fished our gillnets.  It just wasn't the right time for set beach seines to come to life.

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Back to 2024​

So, when we started our quest in the summer of 2024, we knew we had some of the gear and equipment that we would need to move forward with our project plan.  After we built Scoopy, and upgraded our infrastructure, we had to dig out the old seine.  Now, picture this. The seine, which we had shortened in 2015, was stored for 10 years without a tarp, cover or anything to keep it from the elements.   It was a mess! 

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The final vital piece to our plan was sitting on a couple of pallets at our beach site.  It was full of weeds, moss, squirrel treasures and who knows what else! We had to get it into shape to fish in only a couple of days.  UGH!  We had no idea what condition she would be in.  She was a bit of a mystery at that point.  But mostly, we were not entirely confident that we would have a workable net. So, we dug in.

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The most difficult part was actually finding the end of the net so we could get it off the pallets.  Now mind you, this net had 6-pound leadlines, was 60 feet deep, 600 feet long and had hundreds of large white corks that were piled high. Oh, and don't forget the moss and squirrel stuff.  Finally, the ends of the net were located and we began our assessment.

 

We hooked the tractor to the net and pulled it section by section across the yard for inspection. It was dusty and grody work. But, after our initial assessment, we determined that we had a workable net.  And before the end of the day, she had a name.  We called her Bertha, and she was hefty. 

 

So, we rolled up our sleeves, moved Scoopy into position to load Bertha.  Scoopy was handy for loading a huge bulky seine with three people and hydraulics.  It took some time, but we finally got Bertha loaded onto the trailer so we could move her across the street to Tidewater, our beach site.  There really was no problem, except the fact that Scoopy, was tall and may not be able to pass under the power lines that cross over the driveway to our beach.  Once again, we assessed the situation, determined that we could probably make it under the power line with Scoopy and headed to the beach.  The situation was actually pretty touch and go for a bit, but after a couple of safety checks we were fine and made it through.

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We now had all of the elements needed for our plan to begin testing.  We were a few days beyond our permitted testing start date but with the circumstances and timeline we were given, we were well within the timeline that we thought we would achieve.  After all of our prep work, we felt we were finally ready to set Bertha!

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Our first set was on June 30, 2024.  The evening was beautiful and the water was calm, our crew was small and our fisheries manager, Colton was there to observe us. (a requirement of our permit) We were so excited and pretty nervous to see what would happen.

 

Well, we didn't start slow; we set the full 600 ft of Bertha. She was out there in all her glory!  We caught two sockeyes and a couple of flounders on our first and only set of the day, and they were all released in great condition.  At the end of the day, we were all safe, and Bertha was set and retrieved successfully.  We were on top of the world.  It could be done!  But we needed to improve our methods.

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We quickly realized that we would need a larger crew for the project to be successful.  We reached out to our setnet neighbors to the North, Travis and Amber Every and asked for their help.  We combined our resources and crew and started our summer adventure as set beach seiners.

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To be continued . . . . . .

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