A judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the United Cook Inlet Drift Association and the Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over what the organizations claimed was violations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).
The two organizations, which represent fishers in the Cook Inlet in the U.S. state of Alaska, have spent over a decade launching lawsuits against NMFS, with the latest complaint saying the action was intended to “get Federal Defendants to stop shirking their duty” on the Cook Inlet salmon fishery. Plaintiffs claimed the NMFS ignored statutory duties intended for the federal government and, instead, deferred to the state of Alaska.
“At some point, enough is enough. This litigation has passed that point,” the initial complaint, filed in May 2024, states.
The complaint claimed the fishery management plan initiated by the NMFS operated contrary to the MSA and alleged the NMFS continued to defer to historical fisheries management practices established by Alaska “even as commercial harvest continue to dwindle.” The lawsuit claimed a NMFS decision that shifted the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone (EEZ) into an area managed separately from the wider fishery was in violation of the MSA, with plaintiffs claiming management measures should have been applied across the entire salmon stock, rather than just the portion of the stock harvested inside the EEZ.
The fishers’ claims and the lawsuit are the latest attempt in a decades-long effort by salmon fishers in the Cook Inlet to change the management practices for salmon in the region. The latest lawsuit, filed in 2024, claims Alaska’s management of fisheries within its waters have not been consistent with the MSA and that the state’s decision to gradually restrict salmon harvests year after year has led to over-escapement of salmon in the region and wasted what could have been additional catch for the fishery.
“For example, in just 2023, the total sockeye harvest (1.6 million sockeye) was approximately equal to or less than the over-escapement in just two rivers – the Kenai and Kasilof rivers – which were overescaped by 1.65 million sockeye,” the lawsuit states.
The complaint by fishers alleges that if the fleet were allowed to catch the escaped sockeye, the catch would have reached 3 million fish, an improvement over past catches and a potential benefit to the long-term density of the fishery.
“Instead, these fish were wasted due to the state’s failure to manage in accordance with the upper bound of its escapement goals, which resulted in lost yield in 2023 and jeopardized yield in future years,” the lawsuit claimed.
The latest lawsuit sought to create combined rules between the Cook Inlet EEZ and the state waters, but U.S. District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason, in a 32-page decision, dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice after determining the NMFS’s management decisions in Amendment 16 did not violate the MSA.
Gleason’s decision found that the MSA doesn’t require NMFS to include waters outside the EEZ in its management plan, meaning its current practices are valid.
“The salmon within the Cook Inlet EEZ are, at the very least, a ‘category of fish capable of management as a unit,’” Gleason wrote. “As such, Amendment 16 is consistent with the MSA’s definition of fishery (i.e., 'one or more stocks of fish which can be treated as a unit for purposes of conservation and management').”
Gleason said nothing in the text of the MSA requires the NMFS to include management measures for waters within Alaska’s jurisdiction and that it explicitly preserves state jurisdiction over fisheries in the waters from the Alaska coastline to 3 nautical miles seaward.
“While the MSA contemplates cooperation between state and federal fisheries managers and permits the delegation of management pursuant to an FMP to state authorities, nothing in the MSA requires such an arrangement,” Gleason wrote.
The plaintiff’s claims that Amendment 16’s method to determine optimum yield (OY) for the fishery also fell short, Gleason wrote. In her decision, she found the NMFS’s justification for its definition of OY inside the EEZ had a “rational basis” and that it established and implemented appropriate mechanisms for managing the stock within its management area.
Because the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, in order to continue, the plaintiffs would need to file an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals.
