Fishery Access
In June 2024, the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust released a new report, “From Tide to Table: Fisheries Access in Southeast Alaska,” looking at changes to local participation in fisheries and sentiments around fishery access in Southeast Alaska.
The report summarizes findings from a regional survey that ASFT distributed to community members this spring in collaboration with the Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP) and offers recommendations for addressing some of the barriers and issues identified. The Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) hopes the report, which was funded by Southeast Conference through the USDA's Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy (SASS) initiative, will assist local communities by providing data and information for future dialogues and community development planning, increasing awareness around fishery access, and encouraging future funding for related projects.
Recognizing that there are many Southeast Alaska residents who were not able to participate in the survey before the report was published, ASFT is keeping its fishery aqccess survey open through Summer 2024 and invites local community residents to share their experiences and perspectives about local fishery access.
Southeast Village Fisheries Collective
In 2025, Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust, SeaAlaska, Spruce Root and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida tribes launched the Southeast Village Fisheries Collective - a Regional Community Quota Entity, which can purchase and hold Individual Fishing Quota for use by community residents. Established in response to the rapid loss of locally-owned commercial fishing permits in some of Southeast Alaska’s rural indigenous communities, the Collective has been working closely with local community members and fishermen (specifically in Yakutat and Kasaan) to develop and implement the Collective.
The main strategy to advance our mission is to move Pacific halibut Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) into rural and Native communities through the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Community Quota Entity (CQE) program. While the CQE program was designed to create greater access for communities, over the past two decades, the high cost of halibut IFQ and administrative burden of setting up and running a nonprofit has limited its success. In order to overcome these barriers, SVFC adapted the model to a Regional CQE, in which the four Regional Partners collaborate with participating communities to share the administrative burden and advance collective goals. In December 2025, NMFS approved SVFC as the first Regional CQE signalling their confidence in the model.
Learn more about the Southeast Village Fisheries Collective here.
