Biden administration rejects top Inslee choice for Alaska fish commission, reappoints trawl ally

The Biden administration has rejected a nominee for a key Alaska fisheries management post who could have tipped decisions toward the interests of tribes and conservation groups and away from the priorities of the large-boat, Seattle-based trawl industry.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo skipped over the top choice of Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, conservation advocate Becca Robbins Gisclair, and instead reappointed the last-ranked nominee on a slate of four candidates that Inslee offered: Anne Vanderhoeven, a trawl industry employee who has served on the panel for several years.

Raimondo’s choice for the open North Pacific Fishery Management Council seat, initially confirmed Tuesday by Inslee’s office before being formally announced Wednesday, comes after what advocates describe as weeks of intense lobbying by supporters of both Gisclair and Vanderhoeven.

The council regulates lucrative commercial fisheries for pollock, cod and other species off Alaska’s coast. It’s been the site of polarized, emotional debate in recent years over the trawl industry’s unintended harvest — known as bycatch — of chum and king salmon that spawn in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers in Western Alaska.

Populations of Yukon and Kuskokwim salmon have crashed in recent years, and while scientists largely attribute the declines to warming ocean temperatures, tribal advocates have also pushed the council to tighten bycatch limits on trawlers.

Of the council’s 11 voting positions, seven are nominated from ranked slates of candidates advanced by governors — five from Alaska and two from Washington — and four are top fisheries regulators from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and the federal government.

Four current members work in or have financial ties to the trawl industry, including Vanderhoeven, who is director of government affairs at Seattle-based Arctic Storm Management Group.

Typically, the commerce secretary defers to governors and appoints the top choice from the slate.

But advocates from Alaska tribes and conservation groups said that Vanderhoeven’s allies were pushing Raimondo — herself a former governor — to skip over Gisclair and Inslee’s two other higher-ranked nominees.

Gisclair has worked directly with Yukon residents, tribes and conservation advocates and now works as senior director for Arctic programs at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. One trawl official had said that if she was appointed, she would make his industry “squirm for a while.”

Vanderhoeven’s reappointment is “so upsetting,” said Eva Burk, who holds an Alaska Native tribal seat on an advisory panel to the North Pacific Council.

“You can’t just have a trawl sector-dominated council,” Burk said. “It’s just not going to start to get balance back into our different fisheries if we don’t put some diversity in the decisionmaking.”

Two other appointees to the council, John Moller and Brian Ritchie, were also announced Wednesday — both the top-ranked candidates from separate slates of nominees advanced by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the branch of Raimondo’s department that works with the council, did not respond to questions about why the secretary passed over Gisclair, Inslee’s top-ranked nominee.

A spokesman for Inslee, Mike Faulk, declined to comment, as did representatives from the two leading trawl industry trade groups, the At-Sea Processors Association and United Catcher Boats.

Advocates who have been calling on the North Pacific Council to reduce bycatch said they were deeply disappointed with Raimondo’s decision to reappoint Vanderhoeven.

SalmonState, a Juneau-based conservation group, called it a “gut punch” to Alaskans and Indigenous people.

“We were hoping a strong, independent, conservation-minded voice would be added to the council,” the group’s executive director, Tim Bristol, said in a prepared statement. “Instead, we get pro-trawl business as usual.”

Not all Alaskans, however, had taken sides in the fight over the open Washington council seat.

The City of Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, remained neutral, and Frank Kelty, a former mayor who now works as a fisheries consultant to the municipality, noted that revenue from trawl-caught fish like pollock supports community services in multiple coastal Alaska communities.

“It’s our bread and butter right now,” he said.

Kelty also said that Gisclair could still end up filling a Washington seat on the North Pacific Council because of the death earlier this year of Kenny Down, the state’s gubernatorial nominee.

Down was a longtime advocate for tribal and other non-trawl interests — his obituary described the council as being “stacked with trawler-biased members” — and his wife, Shannon, said Tuesday that her husband made it very clear, including directly to Inslee, that he wanted to be replaced by someone with a similar point of view.

“He was making calls when he was in bed, trying to fight for his life,” Shannon Down said, adding that her husband shared his desire directly with Inslee. “This was his dying wish.”

Nathaniel Herz is an Anchorage-based reporter. Subscribe to his newsletter, Northern Journal, at northernjournal.com. Reach him at natherz@gmail.com.