Every three years, the Alaska Board of Fisheries calls for regional management proposals, inviting the public to directly participate in fisheries governance. Stakeholder participation is lauded as a key component of successful fisheries management, but few studies have characterized and assessed this participation to examine issues of equity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
The Alaska Board of Fisheries’ public process has been referred to as “among the most open regulatory processes in Alaska if not the nation” (ADF&G website). Under this system, anyone can submit a proposal or provide written or oral testimony to request regulatory changes.
The SASAP Board of Fisheries Governance Working Group digitized more than 50 years of proposals, and analyzed the data to learn more about the history of proposal submissions and outcomes, with the goal to perhaps improve the process.
The group used integrated data digitization and coding methods to analyze archived management proposals from 1959-2015. They assessed 19 different aspects including proposal group, topic, fishing sector, species, statute title, and Board votes.
The Board of Fisheries Governance Group emerged from the SASAP Data Task Force’s Data Rescue Project and was undertaken in support of the Governance Working Group.
Learn about the Governance and Subsistence Working Group
The Board of Fisheries proposal data set is now available free to the public on the KNB Data Portal, hosted by the NCEAS and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Generate your own graphs and charts with the Interactive BOF Shiny App! Easily display Board of Fisheries proposals and actions, sorted by proponent group, species, region or fishing sector. Just choose the dates and download the resulting graph.