Who has the trump card in fisheries policy?

There's a saying that "if the footmen weary you, what are you going to do when the horsemen come"? If you're a fisherman, the horsemen are here already. The ecology may be the National Marine Fisheries Service's responsibility, but from these examples, you might find them packed in with the other horsemen.

We wonder if the "media" is such a 'shallow Hal' as to agree with the NMFS that electronic observation of bottom trawled areas trumps the visual means of using diving spheres like last summer in the Bering Sea. You just never read about NMFS hyjinks specifically and separately from their 'Councils'.

"Judge Oliver Wanger of the U.S. District Court in Fresno sided with a coalition of environmental groups, commercial fishermen and Indian tribes, which contended the department's plan left too little water for the chinook salmon run. Wanger remanded the NMFS opinion, questioning the logic of its conclusion -- that killing half the salmon population wouldn't hurt the species."

That's the logic that has killed off hundreds of other salmon runs. When the first half is gone, someone else decides that killing half the remainder won't hurt, and so on. The stakeholders aren't taking it seriously and the media hasn't made the connection between the New Bedford Petition and this latest Judicial rebuke of the NMFS.

NOAA has hired a global warming coordinator, but it is seen as too little, too late. And the guy surely won't change the culture of the whole of NOAA Fisheries. Only Congress can do that, and that is what the Petition is all about. One incensed fisher-wife went out and quickly got 300 signatures for the Petition. I know a whole bunch of Alaskans that are fix'n to make that an exercise in futility by keeping their heads down.

The subject of Congressional oversight keeps coming up. Another article from the East Coast said this. “The Massachusetts groundfishing fleet, and the communities that depend on the fleet for their economic vitality, have suffered unduly from federal fishing restrictions that have also failed to achieve the goal of reviving fish stocks. ...... the federal regulatory system needs to be fixed for the long term. ”

Do you agree with the National Marine Fisheries Service on Puget Sound king salmon protections? "Essentially, the Fisheries Service argues that allowing too many fish to return would be a waste, because the current habitat is so degraded that it can't support more spawning fish." You can just imagine them saying that too when the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay wipes out a salmon run or two, or three.

Or get this Administration rejection of getting serious about overfishing and global warming effects on the fishing industry and coastal communities. "Democrats, led by panel Chairwoman Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), said the legislation is needed to address overfishing, climate change, pollution and other threats to ocean health and the nation’s marine economy."

Or do you believe the new Acting Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Jim Balsiger, when he says that surveying the bottom of the Bering Sea for damage by trawling is best done from the surface? This was in response to citizens who privately financed looking at the bottom with video equipment and eyeballs. Would he be trying to hide his poor job of protecting the ecosystem? Under his watch, so few king salmon escaped the trawlers to go up the Yukon River that the Canadian Native fishers didn't get any at all last year.

I maintain that a fifth grader could see that politics motivates the NMFS more than science does. The debates in Kodiak between the contenders for the lone Congressional seat from Alaska decidedly leaned toward local prosperity as opposed to Seattle and Japanese prosperity. The lone apologist for the raping of the North Pacific in that debate was current Congressman Don Young. Did anyone mean to give the fisheries 'trump card' in Alaska to a couple of politicians who are under federal investigation for corruption? And why should the public have to petition Congress to save it's food supply and jobs anyway?

The disgusting part of the pillage is that Alaska's congressional delegation is trying to hang onto their jobs at the cost of many thousands of jobs for Alaskans, and hide the fact with pork. And none of the state agencies want to piss off the pope, Ted Stevens that is. So the public is unaware that billions are lost from the Alaska economy through abusive transfer pricing, lack of new product development and value adding in-state, flight of resource ownership out of state, trading free market capitalism for oligarchies, and using untold millions of dollars of taxpayer money to pay fishermen to give up so the remaining few can survive the low prices paid for the fish and crab.

Here's one concrete thing a reader can do; send a comment to NMFS telling them to stop the bottom trawlers in the Bering Sea from destroying the bottom any more than they already have. Written comments, identified by 0648-AW06, must be received by 21 April 2008 and may be sent via the Federal eRulemaking Portal website at www.regulations.gov.

The capstone for many or our frustrations, and many economic graves, was NMFS hiring a wheat-belt economist to bring to Alaska his bought and paid for 'two-pie system' of sharing the crab. Here's the story on why these kind of economic theories are dead wrong and how you end up with thousands of unemployed fishermen and lower prices at the stroke of a pen, even with the fish stocks the same.

"But as this discussion will demonstrate, there is a large problem here that should be cause for great concern: Neoclassical economic theory is predicated on unscientific assumptions that massively frustrate or effectively undermine efforts to implement scientifically viable economic policies and solutions." When you have a theory that says there is no limit on natural resources, or environmental vulnerability, it's easy to just say, "lets divvy up two pies instead of one." Something's bound to give. On this one I think I'm as smart as a fifth grader.

Is Corporate Responsibility in Fisheries a Oxymoron?

What's wrong with this statement? "Most recently, Kodiak trawlers tested the waters for a co-op in the rockfish fishery. The slower pace extended the fishery from three weeks to seven months, keeping more seafood workers on the job longer. By fishing cooperatively, the trawlers cut halibut bycatch rates by more than 70 percent."

Could this little former coho stream in Sunset Bay, Oregon possibly, finally, get help from a newly created "Threatened" status in the area? Why there won't be any king fishing on the West Coast this year off OR and CA is only a mystery to newly minted reporters. Hint, all the little run failures add up.

The only thing that might be right about this statement is that Kodiak trawlers initiated "something," albeit, not where the public saw it happen to THEIR fish. (Notice I didn't say, "where the public COULD see," because someone like the FBI might have found out.) I'll also give them that it did stretch out the season, in large part because the processors were busy with salmon.

Basically, a few trawlers agreed to be locked into selling to certain buyers, for whatever was offered for the fish, just for the opportunity to finagle salable rights to the resource later. It is not a co-operative, because it is not a system to compete in a free market by vertically integrating their harvesting businesses. Co-ops, or associations, or combines, or whatever you want to call them, are to bypass other businesses that are unfairly taking advantage of their position in the supply chain. This does not describe the Rockfish Pilot Program whatsoever.

Helping fishermen band together for survival purposes in Regional Seafood Development Associations was what the Legislature wisely saw as a necessary assist in working cooperatively. The Legislature defined what a co-op is with that Bill. But the trawlers in Kodiak went straight to Sen. Ted Stevens to subvert this movement and mint a counterfeit. Thanks for working contrary to the will of Alaskans AGAIN, Ted. And where were you Don?

Look at what some in Britain think about trawling the life out of things.("Trawling and scallop dredging are to be banned in Fal Bay and the Helford River in Cornwall after conservationists successfully threatened to take the Government to the European Court for failure to protect marine wildlife.") They must have taken to heart the Oregon finding that when you have that kind of trawling, you literally extinguish 30% of the species complex.

And then the feds say not to look at the bottom with your eyes because looking from the surface with electronics is the 'preferred way.'(Jim Balsiger, Acting Director of NMFS) Yeah, the preferred way to hide the truth of the destruction of the marine ecosystem.

Getting back to the Rockfish Pilot Program of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council being called a co-op. I think it is wholesale irresponsibility of folks to repeat stuff like this for public consumption. One good thing about repeating this drivel is it will keep the power lunches coming. I won't even mention the fallacy of creating more jobs and cutting halibut by-catch. Just ask Global Seafoods of Kodiak.

Since I keep seeing this fiction in the mainstream Alaska media, I have to assume it's a PR campaign. And of course it is, since it is only a 'pilot program' that the newly created closed class of businesses wish to perpetuate and no official endorsement of it's efficacy has been made.

This article was supposed to be about corporate social responsibility. They say that at the heart of every issue is a heart issue. Not that anyone's heart is about to change very soon. It is a consideration, though, when you think about spending time and money barking up this tree or that. But keeping in mind that a corporation doesn't have a heart, there is definitely no percentage in trying to change THAT.

The validity of the arguments of politicians(federal fish managers are in this category), corporations, and us plain folk, can be weighed in the statement, "— there are elements of reverence, care and respect, even anticipation, that are essential..." The article this statement came from is a must-read for folk in the seafood business. Not so much for our approach to the culinary side, but now more than ever, to the respect-for-the-environment and community side. Everyone has some environmentalist in them, just like everyone has a little vigilante in them.

From New Bedford to Kodiak, fishermen are starting to take a wholistic approach to their businesses, especially when some folks show no reverence, care and respect for them and their crops. Or where their crops live, as well as where they and their families live.

Fishing for Answers

A University of British Columbia Professor won a $150,000 three-year fellowship to document financial factors contributing to unsustainable commercial fishing around the world.

Each dam on the Rogue River is estimated to cost 20% of the run in lost fingerlings. If this derelict was taken out, research indicates a potential, potential increase of 60,000 king salmon for an economic impact of $12,000,000 a year.

"With the award, Sumaila will create databases that detail the cost and ecological impact of commercial fishing that will form the basis for models to document the massive fiscal and environmental waste being caused by poor management of global ocean resources."

This kind of research goes in one ear of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council and right out the other. Take the dumping overboard of 140,000 plus(reported) king salmon in the Bering Sea alone. Untold numbers of chum salmon and also Gulf of Alaska king salmon not-withstanding. I'm sure the Canadians on the Yukon would throttle a Bering Sea trawler if he could get his hands on one after not getting any kings last year. And after thousands of years of getting all they wanted. Looks to me like the trawl fisheries from Neah Bay, WA to Bristol Bay, AK are purloining the brood stock of king salmon. Or is it global warming, or maybe UFOs. You can't be sure, so no sense getting excited.

Is what we have going on here is the War of the Worlds of Fish Users; the couple of corporate behemoths that are tightening their grip on total control of the fisheries, and advocates that have little or no economic stake. Assisting the consolidation are a few Congressmen and the apathy of fishermen and the public. This blurb from the East might give some impetus to stopping wasteful fishing practices. (I'm not talking about sustainable commercial trolling at all here.)

"Decades ago, one argument that ended commercial Atlantic-salmon fishing in some Canadian provinces involved an economic angle. In one province, for every $1 a commercially caught Atlantic salmon generated into the economy, sports fishing for this lordly species produced $19. It was a no-brainer to eliminate commercial fishing. As with Atlantics, sports fishing for stripers provides more revenues per fish than does commercial fishing." Hence, Pres. Bush's decree this winter.

Here's another blurb from California: "The long-term goals include involving fishermen in fisheries research and management, ensuring the sustainability of lobster populations, and maintaining working harbors. In addition, CALobster , is building an education program to train graduate students in community-based fisheries management. The community includes fishermen, scientists, managers, environmental groups, and general public."

Now that sounds like a plan. Especially the part about involving the public. After all, they need this clean, nutritious source of protein and not the translucent, maybe even glows in the dark, stagnant-pond-raised shrimp they are trying to feed us now. China is getting more of our clean, wild seafood and we, their toxic farm raised stuff, all in the name of tax avoidance by the marketers/processors.

Speaking of the public, here's an article that is one view of the public's feelings about the fishery resources. The overall vast majority of people in this country really think fish is smelly and and don't have any clue about populations of fish species. Not that a load of advertising can't change that, but at the moment fish managers and corporate interests are taking advantage of the apathy. In this "fishing game" will the real fish manager please stand up?

Down in this Southern Oregon part of the world, the local fish creek, a main tributary of the Rogue River, is siphoned off to water vast pastures just for horses. How you gonna fight that when there is a life-sized plastic horse on the top of a main-street store, and the hardware store sells cowboy gear and silver belt buckles. It could be a great king salmon spawning stream. In the fall I always report seeing king salmon ramming their heads into the Irrigation District dam, then they pull it for the winter.

Why am I the one to report this when there are over 100,000 people in the area? Ask yourself again, does the family fisherman stand a snow-ball's chances without some help?

Homework assignments: Check out the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. And why did John McCain not vote on the 17 environmental bills in Congress in 2007, or the one to revoke the tax credits to oil companies? That one didn't pass by one vote. Why too, did Dr. Balsinger, the new golden boy of the National Marine Fisheries Service, write that surface sensing of sea-floor habitat trumps actual video footage of the sea-floor? You can stop wringing hands over declining fish stocks and start looking at some necks to wring. Just kidding of course, go back to hand wringing.

Planned Obsolescense for Fishermen?

It's been a wonderment to me why so many fish stocks keep going downhill in this country. Even salmon, as much as that is refuted by the marketers who want the premium 'sustainable' label.

We should have started flying these P. cod to London instead of Korea. They are as good as gold over there now.

It's easy to see though, if you are unbiased, and are student enough. A big problem with fish management, at least in Alaska where I hail from, is that the citizen councils are all of one stripe or another. These fishermen and company representatives fight like mad for the biggest share of the pie out in the industry, then continue the fight in the council chambers. And when they do agree they'll go so far as to invent a 'two-pie system' just for themselves.

The only stocks in Alaska I know of that aren't going down all the time, or are already fished out, are arrowtooth flounder, which is inedible after you bring it to shore, and dogfish shark, which is a protected specie. Which now may be resulting in an ecosystem way out of whack. So what's the use trying to train our youth to enter this industry. What are they going to inherit?

Fish and Game has often used lack of funds as an excuse for not doing a better job or opening new fisheries. Sometimes State appointments to these fisheries management councils vote contrary to the wishes of the Governor who appointed them. Now the Feds are using the same 'lack of funds' excuse to disallow a little decentralization of authority.

Let's not let pesky fishermen try to get up on their high-horse; get organized, take some control back locally. After all there are national policy imperitives, like continuing to rebuild the Japanese economy.

I don't know what's wrong with the notion that our industries should at least be 51% U.S. owned. And that goes for the fish swimming in the sea too. How many other scenarios will be played out like the Chase Bank deal, where they were bought into by a Malaysian bank to the tune of $12 billion, after Chase lost $18 billion.

To keep this from becoming another 40 fathom letter, here's some comments from the leader of a Port of New Bedford Business Alliance program to help fishermen nationally get up on their feet. Boats are flocking to New Bedford, MA as it is one of the few full service ports left on the East Coast. And Gene, I did see the petition mentioned in National Fisherman magazine.

"Hello John,

Thanks for the update. I agree with you that the feds foster a disorganized commercial fishing industry. Just last week, they shot down the prospect for organized fishing sectors in New England (seventeen were proposed under Magnuson reauthorization) because the feds said they did not have the manpower to accommodate them in the near term. They know the fishermen essentially won't have time to financially survive the delay. Congress can pass all kinds of legislation, but as always, the devil is in the details of implementation. In this case, it seems simply to be planned obsolescence through attrition. The average age of fishing vessels captains here has risen to fifty-five.

The local newspaper in Gloucester, MA did a negative piece on the petition as Gloucester seems to have become very tied to NMFS, where the regional office is coincidentally in Gloucester. When you and Susan wrote your pieces promoting the petition, no other papers picked it up. The Gloucester article, in contrast, appeared in over fifty papers worldwide, which shows the specific power of the strict conservationists and they know it too. So do the feds. They have a lock on communications, and besides, the fishermen are not only too tired to counter, but too afraid - a sad sight indeed and support in the form of money and manpower is in short supply.

What's necessary, at least to my mind as you know, is to rally around the petition, which is slowly being reformatted for distribution on paper - the net surprisingly has proven not nearly enough. The petition needs champions.

All the best, Gene"

Mid-December Fisheries Memo

News of the New Bedford Petition has been appearing in a number of news outlets.

Island Free Press
Commercial Fishing News
National Fisherman
Kodiak Daily Mirror

Port Alexander, Alaska. Notice the haze from the surf out at Cape Ommaney, the bottom tip of Baranof Island. The sport fishing here is a closely guarded secret. Oops.

Maybe the thousands of fishermen on the East coast and growing numbers on the Pacific coast, that have signed the petition, in hard copy and on-line, have struck a nerve. The Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Bill Hogarth just quit. U.S. fishermen are proposing to take NMFS to Congress, unlike the Canadian halibut fishermen who are taking their Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans to a court of law.

"John, Am anxious to see if King runs rebound, Chigniks' run was acceptable but not great. Many places had none at all. Seems obvious that the harder they fish for less pollack the more kings they will intercept." I hear this a lot these days. People worrying that as the trawlers scratch harder for pollock, they are filtering much more of the ocean and hence catching more and more king and chum salmon and squid. These species all live together, and that seems something that the National Marine Fisheries Service tends to ignore; catching the whole food chain in one sweep and keeping just some of it. My take is that the U.S. public doesn't care anymore if the trawl sector and the government wrings it's hands and keeps saying, "We just can't seem to stop."

I also think waterfront businesses, in addition to fishermen, are going to weigh in on the shenanigans this time. And if CNN coming to Alaska to report on the corruption is any indication, the local papers will come out of hiding too.

Heck, the whole makeup of what fish are down there has changed due to global warming. And certain fishermen are still allowed to destroy the bottom habitat, making it impossible to rebuild the stocks of many species as required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Ignoring these elephants in the room is what is griping everyone. But as fishermen gain their voice through this petition, there is some real odd rustling in the bushes.

It boils down to dirty fishermen and dirty fisheries managers versus the clean fishermen and clean fisheries managers/scientists. And it's going to take Congress to sort it out, and if they won't the courts will have to, because time is running out on the fish stocks, ask any fleet of boats chronically tied up to the dock.

On all fisheries management plans, the NMFS should be required, like publicly held companies do in a prospectus, to state, "Consequently, actual results may vary materially from those described in (our) Forward-looking statements." In both cases "forward looking statements" simply mean jerking your chain.

By-catch reduced to 50 lbs per boat per day
"The by-catch allowance for commercial vessels harvesting summer flounder in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Maryland's coastal bays and landing those flounder in Maryland is reduced to 50 pounds per vessel per day." No wonder the fish companies that make up the North Pacific Council don't want observers on trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska. There is only 13% observer coverage. These trawlers have taken up to 64,000 lbs of salmon by-catch per boat, and destroyed them, in a day.

The by-catch of halibut is even worse, if anyone cares. Both coasts' observer programs are similar. When observers are on board, the skippers make "observer tows," that is, they fish in low by-catch areas. Then at night, or without observers, fish in the high by-catch areas and nobody knows what they catch. Maybe the integrity of our food supply warrants Homeland Security types, instead of interns, as observers. Jim Huckabee was talking about enough food just today in Iowa.

Reduce Fish Catch Now For Bigger Net Profits Later
A new and compelling argument for reducing fish harvests - the profit motive - could persuade world fishers to endure the short-term pain of lower catches for the long-term gain of higher returns for their labor, according to authors of a ground-breaking study on fisheries over-exploitation. I hyper-linked an article earlier that said that maximum sustained yield was too much to take from anadromous fish populations, because not enough biological material was left for the ecosystem's needs to support the runs. A vicious cycle of decline that has characterized U.S. fisheries.

The Letter Department:

"Maybe wearing fishermen down until they're too tired to mobilize was part of government's plan all along. The bureaucracies have been very skilled at snaring fishermen in complex discussions leading to decisions on very specific management actions that are largely not comprehensible to the general public and that leave most fishermen unable to think outside of that box. The Stratton Report issued way back in 1969 identified practioners more interested in a way of life than in economic efficiency as a roadblock in government's vision for fisheries. If managers recognize withdrawals on the wealth of communities at all, it's only to say those withdrawals are a necessary consequence of resource conservation.

Susan"

(That letter echos all who say that when the Bush Administration talks lower costs to the consumer, you need to read that "lost jobs." It cost the Alaska king crab industry 1500 jobs. Nobody in Alaska with their head in clear air views the feds "economic efficiency" as anything more than a resource grab by big multi-national corporations and big boat/fleet operators.)

"FYI - in just the past twenty-four hours, from Alaska there were about ten signers of the petition online - nice going John. Oddly, however, and within the same timeframe, most press articles on the petition have been suddenly subverted, ergo much harder to find unless very explicit words are typed into search engines. It would take knowledge and a concerted effort, but the net can be compromised that way, and the suddenness indicates that it very well may have been intentional. If so, it tells me that the petition is that strong, cannot be countered, hence only technically blocked. Welcome to the new age."

December Fisheries Memo

Aquaculture strategizing by European Union
They feel that they hatch the technology and other countries benefit from it mostly. (They forget that it was Dr. Donaldson of the University of Washington who jump-started salmonid farming to begin with back in the 1960's.)

This plant in Petersburg, AK(center) was my "base of operations" from 1966 through 1978. It was also where I hung up a lot of my game, repaired my skiffs, and learned to fish for "dollies" and hunt crows.

DNA "Fin-printing" project for salmon launched
This project could show what commercial salmon fishermen or Indians are getting short-changed by the trawlers salmon by-catch.
The result (of Federal fisheries management) is "the piracy of the 21st century. Grab what you can and take off." Remember, Federal Fishery Management Council members can just ignore the scientists and vote depending on which side of the bed they woke up on. Other wild cards: they use non-fishermen to find and count fish, (the Dept. of Agriculture doesn't use fishermen to count trees.) they don't take into account that fish migrate, and they don't take into account long cycle water temperature changes.

The New Bedford Business Alliance announces a call to the industry to have Congress hold hearings on the National Marine Fisheries Service.
(This site contains an on-line petition as of Dec. 1)
A petition had been gaining serious traction Back East, then the head of NMFS resigned. Rats jumping off the ship? Just think how much bigger the longline, gillnet and troll fleets in the Pacific would be if trawl by-catch were eliminated and the estimated 6,000,000 pounds of king salmon and the extra 100,000,000 pounds of halibut showed up at the docks every year.

These are the numbers that Sen. Ted Stevens and his symbiotic NMFS have been holding back from the City Managers and Mayors in Alaska. And in the face of pollock and Pacific cod stocks declining in Alaska, this may be a lot of communities' and fishermen's last chance to call for transparency, and SANITY. Maybe the root problem is that NMFS burns up their budget on mundane and arcane details and doesn't have the funds (or will) to tackle the big problems.

If the "owners of government" want to speak up in a petition, it's going to be hard for Congress to tell them to get lost like Sen. Ted Stevens does when the average fishing delegation flys back to D.C. to see him.

Industry Market Research Report (Australia) is what we need for Congress to understand the fishing business. And make them read it, not like Hillary does.
I don't think Alaska's ports really bought into the "God bless us and nobody else" platform of "rationalization." Government leaders just got hoodwinked into it by some folks pretending to represent the industry. We now know that it shrinks the industry and causes divisions in the communities. As an example, some fishermen leaders in Alaska are promoting a smaller salmon seine fleet because they only get 35 cents a pound for chum salmon there, then sneak off and seine for them in Puget Sound, WA for 85 cents a pound with no explanation!
Here's a telling letter on how special interests and your average fish manager gangs up on the boat harbor. (Government folks buy into "privatization" of the fish because it simply makes their jobs easier.)

"Good morning John,

I agree that Brother Grimm was an odd choice. (A consultant from Colorado, that was brought(bought) to speak on limited access privileges.) That presentation was arranged by Environmental Defense - they are big LAPP proponents - you might want to check out their website.

I think you're right about the environmental gains not holding water. A friend who has a brother in Florida on the Gulf of Mexico told me because her brother didn't qualify for a red snapper share, he now has to throw overboard the snapper he catches while fishing for grouper. Our fisheries here are mostly multi-species too, so the same thing is likely to happen here.

During the presentation by Brother Grimm, (a fisherman) said, "My family owns 10 boats and I don't agree with LAPPs." A survey by our state fisheries agency found no difference between support of LAPPs between "big fishermen" and "little fishermen" - that was interesting to me.

I've wondered about Environmental Defense applauding the safety benefits too. For one thing, our fish are migratory so fishermen have to fish when the fish are here. For another, even without processor quotas, some fisheries run on volume and the fish houses call the shots as far as wanting fish or not. And, as you mentioned, prices are better at different times. (Referring to being forced to fish in stormy weather.)

One state employee whispered to me while the presentation was going on, "The problem is that NC (North Carolina) commercial fisheries have never been about economic efficiency but have always been about community wealth." This weekend provided an example of what we stand to lose here - at 3 am Saturday a fisherman called 911 and ended up in the hospital with serious heart problems. By 7 am this morning all the fishermen on the island committed to giving him 2 percent of their pay until he gets back on his feet.

As always, your insight is greatly appreciated,

Susan"

Mid-November Fisheries Memo

Inuit put the kibosh on uranium mines in headwaters of five salmon rivers:
“No one in the world today can prove to us that there is a safe way to dispose of uranium tailings,” said Anderson. “The two uranium deposits are in a watershed area that flows into five major salmon rivers in Nunatsiavut.

Alaska's Rep. Don Young wants to give 400,000 acres of logging rights in the Tongass near here to some Indian loggers. Uh, this wouldn't have anything to do with his low approval rating would it?

It would be really irresponsible to go ahead with that development not fully understanding what could happen should there be an accident.” In Alaska they have a solution: they get the government agencies to explain how smart they are, nevermind that they haven't been able to protect anything yet.

The long-awaited Bromley-Macinko report on fisheries "rationalization."
I have a solution for the conundrum of trying to change the public's perception of "privatization" of public fish resources. Just whitewash it. It's not the central issue anyway.

What part of this sentence doesn't make sense?
"The agreement was created to protect and enhance salmon and steelhead habitat in the river, as well as ensure water continues to be supplied to farmers, power generators and environmentalists."

This rates right up there with the statement "fishing regulations are hurting fishermen." First of all, fishermen hurt themselves by catching all the fish and ruining the fish habitat. Likewise, there isn't a huge water pipeline, going who knows where, labeled "environmentalists." This kind of thing just hurts the discussion.

My father was a fish buyer and plant superintendent in Alaska all his life, yet balked when his company wanted him to try start a commercial harvest of bull kelp in Alaska. He has a fisheries degree and knew you don't just cut down the habitat for small near-shore fish of all kinds and then want to maximize production of adults fish. He knew that if you killed the roots you'd kill the tree. The tree in this case being the fishing industry and hence a lot of livelihoods. That's being an informed and conscientious citizen, and a long-term thinking businessman.

Remember, environmental sustainability has to come first because without it you cannot have fishery sustainability or economic stability. Everyone buys into this, it's just that fisheries managers also buy into the rose tinted glasses, short term profits view. And that view skewed further by the target species represented by the loudest mouths in the room. There is then a huge dynamic of what constitutes the "loudest mouths:" companies that can offer jobs to any fisheries manager and fishing magazine editor, and do, industry sector lobbyists (lobbyists may be laying low in Juneau, but they are still thicker 'n sand fleas in a day old halibut on the NPFMC.

Who doesn't want a sound environment? Except those people who never picked up their rooms as kids and later went on to careers in trashing everyone else's backyard. Using the term "environmentalist" just "outs" the user is all, and of course works to separate people, where the opposite should be the goal.

The insidious part of all this is that regular folk feel like they will become stigmatized if they stick up for the wonderful complexity of intact habitat. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that bottom trawling is like clear-cutting the forest to get the deer. And all the baby halibut that trawlers kill would amount to twice the commercial catch if left to grow up. Even governors and congressmen won't come to the aid of society for fear of some stigma. (Remember, officially this isn't happening because the IPHC ruled that nobody has to report the destruction of halibut under legal harvest size.)

While I'm on the subject, another dynamic at work here is that the longliners who are allowed to catch the halibut, and are missing out on a bumper crop, don't want to hold the trawlers to account. The reason is that longline by-catch is horrendous too. The last time I longlined, on the Middle Grounds in Fredrick Sound, we caught one third halibut, one third red snapper, which all died, and one third black cod, which may or may not have died. The shaker halibut may or may not have survived either. How scientific, under the new Magnuson Stevens Fisheries Management and Conservation Act, is all this you might ask? It's not, so when you hear how well managed the groundfish fisheries are in Alaska, read that as "politics as usual."

Some good YouTube.com trawl videos:
In Spanish
Classic "stop trawling" video
Trying to stop a trawler
Tribal trawler in Washington

I'm not clear on how the warming of the North Pacific affects species, nor do I think anyone else does, but the king crab around Kodiak disappeared and the halibut stocks took off about the time the water started warming up. I heard about the warming in 1990 while doing research on fisheries infrastructure for the State of Alaska. (I was also told by the Army Corps of Engineers, "don't bring that up" when I mentioned sea level change in regards to $85 million in new breakwaters. As the Arctic ice pack melts more people notice that it might not be so far-fetched.)

The point is that it sure looks like the total biomass of halibut is being covered up due to non-documenting of catch, making the directed harvest look normal. Where in fact, the halibut stocks have really taken off and the public isn't getting the truth. Remember when a 21 day trip in the Gulf was the norm? I saw in my Grandfather's log book where he made a "hole trip" once for halibut back in the 20's or 30's, albeit, in the winter. Then by the "derby days" of the late '70s-early '80s, before all this (U.S.) bottom trawling, you could fill a boat in a couple of days.

So this is what I recommend: since the longliners are satisfied with their 50 to 60 million lbs a year, when the trawlers get kicked off the halibut and the other 100 million lbs show up, just give it to disaffected fisher-folk like the crab crewmen. Or halibut crewmen who fished all their lives, and spent all their earnings raising families, just to see the "rights" go to many young bucks who were fortunate enough to own a boat during the qualifying years.

If this kind of destruction seems incredible, take a peek at what happened to Florida(which mirrors the destruction of king salmon by U.S. trawlers in the Pacific) when they allowed trawlers in. It's time for the Chief of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Alaska, the Chairman of the International Pacific Halibut Commission, and the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to take the "red face" test. (As soon as Google syndicated my by-catch article of Nov. 1, four major media outlets picked up on it. They only reported on the 116,000 king salmon dumped in Bristol Bay and nothing about the Gulf of Alaska or Washington trawl fisheries, though.)

The charter fleet out of the Kenai Peninsula should be somewhat worried about the baby halibut getting hammered on the Banks just below them, where the lunkers they now get come from. Why are these Banks such good P. cod and small halibut grounds? Because of the peculiar current mixing/feed there.

As an example of how thick the "chicken" halibut get on nursery grounds, I've had a whole school of the little guys follow a bait up to my boat. That time I just gaffed in the biggest one: Dick Kuwata had told me earlier that one had jumped into his boat in the same location.(I gotta say I didn't really believe him until it about happened to me.) These grounds had acres of herring showing at times in the summer. Good king salmon fishing there too.

Us summer cold-storage workers, in the late Sixties, would run our skiffs out to troll and set skates of gear on the weekends. (There wasn't a serious effort by townfolk to do this until there was talk of "privatization." Then everyone and his uncle geared up and fished just enough to qualify for salable rights to fish, both trolling for salmon and halibut longlining.)

Fortunately, some savvy Southeast Alaska fish mongers got early experience in the devastation of trawl gear and got trawling banned from the Eastern Gulf, and of course all State waters. I remember my father saying one time that he gave a speech in Anchorage on the commercializing of the EEZ and warned how precarious the fish stocks were with trawling. Some politician thanked him afterward for being so frank. That's why he was never invited to be on the North Pacific Council I suppose.

He had put the first white-fish plant together in Petersburg, the same year NEFCO put one in in Kodiak, with state grants, to see how it would work. The Petersburg guys found that you could fish out the local stocks in nothing flat. I wonder what would have happened to the king salmon, the herring, and the chicken halibut if they had trawled for a few cod on the grounds we used to skiff fish. (Actually Fred Haltiner tried to purse seine for pollock there. They dive too fast.)

This same scenario is presently occurring many places in the Exclusive Economic Zone off the shores of Alaska as we speak! Now lobbyists galore are being hired by bottom trawlers to have flatfish and Pacific cod off Alaska labled as "sustainable." With cod catches dropping every year for the last five years? For you folks who got government jobs with a mission to save our fish and our communities, this message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck.

Candidates for Fishing Industry Innovation awards:

Riverfront and Waterfront Revitalization Bond initiative.

Small Fisheries Investment.

Point-on Blog about environmental issues from P-I writers

Tribes lawsuit will restore 2,300 miles of salmon spawning
(Maybe since the trawlers in Alaska are so cavalier in intercepting the king salmon and the Alaska Dept. of Transportation is so cavalier about their culverts, the Alaska Natives should get a "Alaska Native Interests Fishing Claims Act.") (That ought to get a rise out of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, otherwise someone might have to sue them about the king salmon and halibut.)

Explosives used to restore wetlands
(Not in regards to the "Dynamite Hole" on Cottonwood Creek of the Umpqua River in OR. More on FishWatch later.)

Got a good idea how to help anadromous salmon and steelhead? Get a grant
(Sorry little halibuts, no grants to help you out.) (Of course the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing in federal government. While NOAA gives out grants here, NOAA-NMFS is allowing the adult salmon to be trawled up and thrown back dead, and the EPA is allowing the small salmon in the streams to be poisoned.)

Vision 2020: The Future of U.S. Marine Fisheries
Put in your two bits by contacting the contractor at: Contractor1@fish2020.org It all sound high-falut'n to me, ergo: "..............that MAFAC will consider in finalizing its report to NOAA Fisheries on the future of US fisheries."

Regional Research and Information Plan
Public participation is needed through the questionaire on West Coast marine issues.

International Children's Painting Contest for Ecology

Quote of the day: "Once when diving off the west coast I saw the remains left of the sea bed after a trawler had passed over. It was disastrous. It looked as if an earth mover had ploughed its way across, leaving dead fish, smashed shells, churned up plant growth......"