The Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in person in Spokane, Washington, for its 288th Session, with live-streaming and remote options for participation available, including opportunities for public comment.
Members of the public may provide testimony, either in person or online.
It’s critical that the Council hear directly from the people its members are appointed to represent—not just agencies and industry interests.
We’ve made it easy for you to provide testimony with step-by-step instructions for providing written or oral testimony, including sample comments you can use as written or personalize to reflect your own perspective.
IMPORTANT: Written comments must be submitted through the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s E-Portal. Please review the instructions below before accessing the portal. The deadline to submit written comments is June 9 at 5:00 PM.
Step 1: Access the E-Portal and select agenda item B1 (Comments on Non-Agenda Items) to open the comment submission form for that agenda item.
Step 2: Review the Sample Comment below and submit it as written or personalize it to reflect your own perspective. Please Note: Comments exceeding 4,000 characters must be uploaded through the online portal submission form as an attachment.
Step 3: Complete the remaining required fields and click “Submit.”
Step 1: Access the E-Portal and select agenda item B1 (Comments on Non-Agenda Items) to open the oral testimony sign-up form for that agenda item.
Step 2: Review the Sample Comment below and share it as written or customize it to reflect your unique perspective. Note: Comments under 4,000 characters can be copied and pasted directly into the submission form’s comment field. Comments exceeding 4,000 characters must be uploaded as an attachment.
Step 3: Fill out the required fields, including how you plan to present your oral testimony (in person or remotely), and click “Submit.”
Step 4: If you are providing testimony remotely, review the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s short instructional video for guidance. Participants attending the session in person will be called to the public testimony table when it is their turn to speak.
Council Members,
Too many of our salmon are intercepted and killed far from home in distant ocean fisheries—and too few fish return to spawn and give rise to a new generation for recovery. Observing the shortcomings of conventional salmon management, I urge the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) to adopt bold positions that Let Our Salmon Come Home to the ecosystems, watersheds, and communities that depend on them.
Firstly, I encourage the Council to take a more active role in the upcoming renegotiation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty to reduce the interception of our salmon in distant fisheries offshore of British Columbia and Alaska. To promote conservation and equitable fisheries—and to help protect the interests of the communities, Tribes, and states represented within the management region of the PFMC—I urge you to draft a letter to the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC) advocating for reduced interceptions in fisheries north of the US-Canada border, and the return of our salmon to local fisheries and protected and restored spawning grounds.
Similarly, I encourage the PFMC to draft a letter to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) demanding that the NPFMC fulfills its obligations under National Standard 4 (NS4) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). Currently, Alaskan fisheries within the purview of the NPFMC have acquired an excessive share of the harvest allocation for Chinook salmon originating from the Washington and Oregon coast—affecting fisheries, communities, and economies represented within the management region of the PFMC.
As you know, National Standard 4 of the MSA was designed to ensure that when fish harvests are allocated among competing uses and users, those allocations are fair and equitable to all fishers, reasonably calculated to promote conservation, and structured to prevent any single entity from acquiring an excessive share of fishing privileges. Critically, NS4 also establishes that management measures cannot discriminate against residents of different states—meaning that communities in Washington, Oregon, and California cannot be systematically disadvantaged by harvest decisions that disproportionately benefit a different state’s commercial interests. These are not aspirational goals; they are binding statutory requirements.
Presently, the NPFMC’s delegation of salmon management plan authority to the State of Alaska does not appear to adequately satisfy the Council’s nondelegable NS4 obligations. For example, fisheries operating out of Southeast Alaska harvest Chinook salmon of which more than 98% originate from rivers in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. These Southeast Alaskan fisheries routinely harvest excessive shares of Washington Coast and Oregon Coast Chinook, discriminating against Tribes, fishers, and residents from the states of Washington and Oregon. For example, Pacific Salmon Commission (2026) data show that over the most recent 20-year period, 47% of the total harvest of Grays Harbor Chinook occurred in Southeast Alaska, leaving only 22% for communities of Washington. Along with this inequity in harvest allocation that has grown worse over time, conservation goals are not being met. Across the same 20-year period, the data show a declining trend in escapement and numerous years of missed escapement targets. Ultimately, the information suggests that Alaska’s salmon management plans—and the NPFMC—may be violating section NS4 of the MSA in failing to promote conservation and ensure fair and equitable allocations.
In closing, I once again urge the PFMC to engage with the PSC and the NPFMC to reduce the interceptions in distant ocean fisheries, promote conservation and equitable fisheries, and Let Our Salmon Come Home to the ecosystems, watersheds, and communities that depend on them.
Please Note: The sample comment below exceeds 4,000 characters and must be uploaded through the E-Portal’s comment submission form as an attachment.
Council Members,
Today, I am urging the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) to adopt formal positions and fisheries management alternatives that Let Our Salmon Come Home to the ecosystems, watersheds, and communities that depend on them.
For decades, the scientific community has understood that ocean-based salmon fisheries occurring far from the watersheds where salmon originate and return most often cannot be managed sustainably to allow for selective harvesting of individual abundant populations while protecting comingling salmon populations that are threatened with extinction. Ultimately, mixed-stock ocean-based fishing has the effect of overharvesting threatened populations that are less productive, often leaving too few fish returning home to spawn for population recovery.
We have observed the failure of conventional ocean-based fisheries management unfold over the last decade—from the functional extirpation of lower Columbia Basin Chinook populations in Mill Creek, Abernathy Creek, and Germany Creek in Washington, to extirpations in the Clatskanie River and Scappoose Creek in Oregon. We have observed the crash of Umpqua Basin coho, the starvation of the Southern Resident killer whales, and countless fisheries constraints and closures in river-based fisheries from California to Washington.
It is clear that the conventional system of ocean fisheries management is not working for the recovery of our salmon and orca whales, nor the communities and economies that depend on the return of salmon to our local watersheds. It is further undermining the public’s massive investment in recovery efforts ranging from the removal of dams in the Klamath and Elwha, to numerous habitat protection and restoration projects.
To address the issue and provide a sustainable path forward, I urge the Council to take bold actions that Let Our Salmon Come Home to local watersheds and communities across our coast.
Firstly, I encourage the Council and its members who overlap with the Pacific Salmon Commission to take a more active role in the upcoming renegotiation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty to reduce the interception of our salmon in distant fisheries offshore of British Columbia and Alaska. I urge you to adopt a formal position in the negotiation process that better protects the interests of the fisheries, communities, Tribes, and states represented within the management region of the PFMC by allowing more of our salmon to return home to protected and restored spawning grounds and local fisheries. Every person and community in Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho will benefit from ocean-based fisheries reforms within the Pacific Salmon Commission that reduce the interception and mortality of our region’s salmon in industrial-scale fisheries of British Columbia and Alaska. With more of our salmon returning to waters of the lower 48, we can have greater stewardship and control over the destiny and recovery of our local salmon populations, Southern Resident killer whales, and regional fisheries.
Within the management region of the PFMC, I further urge you to adopt fisheries management alternatives that reduce pressure on threatened Chinook and coho salmon in mixed-stock fisheries off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and California. While caring for and compensating those that are affected by any change in policy, we must accept that fisheries in each of our states are also part of the problem (not just those in British Columbia and Alaska). Each of our fisheries in the ocean has the effect of overharvesting threatened salmon populations that are mixed within offshore fisheries, such as lower Columbia Basin tule Chinook, Umpqua Basin coho, and Klamath Basin Chinook. This contributes to population extirpations and stalled salmon recovery efforts, affecting the broader ecosystem and inflicting increasing constraints on our local river-based fisheries and economies.
Finally, I urge the Council to formally advise U.S. Pacific Salmon Commission Commissioners that all harvest plans be structured to fully comply with the Endangered Species Act and uphold tribal treaty rights and other binding legal obligations from the outset. These agreements must reflect clear scientific standards and legal accountability at the front end, ensuring that conservation, treaty responsibilities, and long-term recovery are not compromised.
In closing, I once again urge the PFMC to adopt positions and fisheries management alternatives that Let Our Salmon Come Home. The recovery of our local salmon, orca whales, fisheries, and economies depends on this science-based management transition toward selective and sustainable fisheries that occur in closer proximity to the rivers where salmon originate and return.
