Fisheries committee  Yes, just briefly. I agree with most of what Peter Westley said, but also, I think, one of the problems with bycatch is that they take out the food the salmon eat also, along with everything else in the ocean, and then they degrade the whole ocean, the bottom of the ocean. They take so much out, and they're very non-specific.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I think the nations themselves could do a lot more work in collaborating on this issue, especially with those other nations that I believe Mr. Westley and Mr. Curtis mentioned. We need more information on the Russian hatcheries and the Asian hatcheries, and I think collaborating on their fisheries would benefit not only us but them.

Fisheries committee  Yes. I think one thing that Canada can do is make sure that those particular uses are protected on both sides of the border and that the language is stronger, because right now it says it's at the discretion of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the State of Alaska. Obviously....

Fisheries committee  The responsibility of conservation has been put on the back of the upper Yukon River for so long, and we just feel blamed consistently by the Canadian side and the State of Alaska managers for the decline in the fisheries when it wasn't necessarily our fault. We are not taking billions of pounds of biomass out of the ocean.

Fisheries committee  As of right now, I asked for an application to fill out for a culture camp we're having this summer to teach children and students in our area survival skills and camp skills. I haven't had a response yet, but they told me it sparked a huge discussion—I'm not necessarily sure what that means.

Fisheries committee  No, it's seven years if we don't make escapement of 71,000 on the Yukon River.

Fisheries committee  Yes, that is correct. I forgot to mention my source to her at our last committee meeting. That was actually from the State of Alaska website on subsistence. Of the total take 1% is subsistence-related.

Fisheries committee  The consultations could have started earlier in the process. I think the agreement was also thrown at the Yukon River Panel, so it wasn't just the indigenous tribes in Alaska. We felt like we were very much left out of that particular decision-making, and you are correct that we also feel like it's too little too late.

Fisheries committee  I would have said that I want stronger protections on the cultural fishing of salmon for potlatch and ceremonial purposes. I also would have said that we've had five years of no fishing with very little success in bringing that run back. Through my work on the Yukon River Panel, we've learned through the years that the years when we've had those really large runs return to the spawning grounds were also years that we've had a full subsistence fishery.

Fisheries committee  Yes. The panel process is a bilateral process with the United States and Canada. The United States has their own particular agenda and how they wish to run that. I'm sorry, by the "United States", I really mean the State of Alaska.

Fisheries committee  Okay.

Fisheries committee  I think that there are a lot of good things in that particular report, but some of the things feel like too little, too late. I don't think that stopping the subsistence fishery, if there's a harvestable surplus, is going to bring back that run to what it used to be without any further limits on the bycatch of salmon in the ocean or stopping the trawlers.

Fisheries committee  One of our largest regional non-profits in our area, Tanana Chiefs Conference, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars of sockeye salmon to our area from Bristol Bay. Oftentimes they would come in, and we would have these whole frozen salmon. That's one thing that they've done.

Fisheries committee  Good morning. I'm Rhonda Pitka. I'm the chief of the village of Beaver. I've been the chief of the village since about 2011. Beaver is a small, remote, fly-in community. I'm also the chairwoman of the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments, which is a consortium of nine tribal governments in the Yukon Flats area of Alaska, I sit on the Yukon River Panel and I am a federal subsistence board member.

Fisheries committee  Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were asking Peter Westley to start first.