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         The State of Alaska subsidizes numbers of hatcheries in Southeast Alaska providing economic benefits to many fishers in that region. That’s the good side of it. One bad side is the costs to the taxpayers to date of well over 100 million dollars. Another is what it did to persons up and down the Yukon River who engaged in a subsistence / commercial fishery dependent on amounts of money made during the  commercial chum season that existed there. Initially it collapsed the Yukon chum flesh market as the fishers could not compete with a fishery that did not have to deal with the normal costs of setting themselves up and paying for their buildings, etc. Then years later when the chum flesh market in general went under and the hatcheries could not make it on flesh sales they asked for and received yearly wavers from the State of Alaska to the existing wanton waste laws. They then threw away millions of chum salmon a year, kept the eggs for sale and stripped away another significant portion of the middle and upper Yukon fishers commercial fishery by flooding the same markets Yukon chum eggs went  to for many years with their subsidized product.
         Nobody is complaining about fair competition in a free market but this is not that in any way shape or form. Currently the State has a proposal before the State Board of Fish to allow the hatcheries to throw away the fish and keep only the eggs without needing the yearly wavers. Meanwhile Yukon fishers can and have been prosecuted for wasting even small amounts of fish over the years which is as it should be.
         Many of the problems we are experiencing today in our fisheries are said to have ocean based causes with competition for food being one distinct possibility. The billions of small fish released from these hatcheries are not a natural part of the ocean ecosystem and could be part of the problem of decreasing Chinook size. This is an issue, driven over the years by money and politics, that Yukon fishers seems to be unable to get any help on.

One of the many Hatchery Resolutions by Alaskan Organizations over the years

Resolution:  2006-02, Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association
Subject: Hatcheries and Roe Stripping
WHEREAS YRDFA represents subsistence, commercial and sport fishers from over 40 communities within the U.S. portion of the Yukon River drainage who depend on wild salmon for subsistence and income; and
WHEREAS Alaska’s hatcheries release over 1.6 billion salmon every year; and
WHEREAS hatchery fish compete with Yukon River salmon for nutrition in the open ocean; and
WHEREAS Alaska law forbids the “wanton waste” of salmon at AS § 16.05.831 and roe stripping violates this law; and
WHEREAS roe stripping sets an undesirable precedent here in Alaska and depresses the price of roe for Yukon River fishers; and
WHEREAS hatchery and ocean-ranched fish are labeled as “wild salmon” in the global marketplace;

BE IT RESOLVED that YRDFA opposes the allowing of roe stripping in hatcheries and supports setting specific limits on hatchery production and decreasing funding and loans to private non-profit hatcheries. YRDFA opposes the use of the “wild salmon” label for hatchery and ocean-ranched fish.
COPIES of this resolution will be sent to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Board of Fisheries, and State of Alaska Legislators, Alaska Governor’s Office, Senator Ted Stevens.

APPROVED unanimously this 16th day of February 2006 by the Board members and Delegates of YRDFA assembled at their Sixteenth Annual Meeting held in Ruby, Alaska.