Boats docked at the Haines small boat harbor. (Emily Files)
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is now requiring state residents to obtain a permit for subsistence and personal use shrimping in Southeast. It’s free, and will help biologists get a better understanding of stocks.
“In the past, we’ve never had any harvest reports for subsistence and personal use shrimping,” says Haines-area management biologist Wyatt Rhea-Fournier. “Those two shrimping efforts, subsistence and personal use, are for state residents only. So it’s kind of a local thing. And there is no limit on the harvest. And it’s open year round.
Only one area of Southeast has bag and possession limits, Sitka’s District 13. Because of the nature of the fishery, Rhea-Fournier says the department wanted to get a handle on how many shrimp are being harvested.
“That way we can add it to our commercial harvest and it helps us do better in assessing the total population,” says Rhea-Fournier. He says shrimp stocks can be difficult to assess.
“Especially up here, because we don’t have as large of a fishery in the Haines and Skagway area,” says Rhea-Fournier. “We don’t have a huge commercial fishery area. So we don’t have any research surveys that would also help us with those abundance estimates. So by having our other resource users, our subsistence and personal use resource users document how many shrimp they’re harvesting, it’s really going to give the managers another tool to help kind of estimate populations.”
That means closing or expanding areas as stocks are assessed.
The permit is region wide, and be obtained online.
“You can select your location to make sure you’re adhering to the specific open areas,” says Rhea-Fournier. “As those are all reported, they’ll go into our central database, and we will have a really good idea of how many shrimp are being caught out there.”
Earlier this year, ADF&G moved subsistence and personal use salmon permits online.
“Where now, you can get your permit at home and you can report your harvest at home,” says Rhea-Fournier. “So we’re trying to make it even more available to our folks in the state, especially as internet’s been more and more available.”
Subsistence and personal use shrimp permits are for Alaska residents only.
Out-of-state residents need a sport permit.
“Sport shrimp permits do have harvest limits,” says Rhea-Fournier. “And do have other restrictions because they’re for non-residents. And that also is available online.”
Subsistence and personal use shrimping permits and sport permits are required starting June 25.
They’re available at www.adfg.alaska.gov/store.
