ALASKA CAFE

Who has the trump card in fisheries policy?

2008-04-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-03-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-01-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

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......"

November Fisheries Memo

2007-10-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

The mother of all end runs in Eastern Canada would have the processors and big boat owners give the boot to all the small fishing operations. In the U.S. they call it "rationalization," which of course is only rational to the big processors and big boat owners.

Even the old "halibut schooner" design is capable of selectively taking all the cod, halibut and POP in the Gulf of Alaska with longlines and pots.

"The trust agreement issue is just one skirmish in a more far-reaching conflict between two visions for the future of the fishery in Canada. One vision – the one currently set out in DFO policy – foresees an industry based on somewhat smaller but more economically self-sufficient fleets, owned and operated by highly skilled professional fish harvesters, and producing high-quality, high-value seafood products for world markets."

Modeling to find critical habitat on the ocean bottom.

"Using oceanographic data, they created models to identify areas where the conditions were right for deep-water kelp forests. As reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their model accurately identified known forests and predicted the existence of more than 9,000 square miles of additional ones." What are we waiting for in pinpointing the sea-whip and coral forests off Alaska's coasts where juvenile fish of all kinds find refuge to grow up?

2008 Request for Proposals: North Pacific Research Board

Just don't propose to sort out the massive by-catch of king salmon problem. Or the rock-fish, or the chum salmon, or the herring, or the squid, or the halibut, etc. The fishers aren't talking, not even if you sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Sometimes I think the odd grants they give out are smokescreens to the huge problems, like the massive baby halibut killing by the cod trawlers. Sustainable cod fishing? You must be joking.

It's estimated that if these baby halibut grew up, there would be another 80 to 120 million pounds of halibut for the catching. That's an economic hit to the U.S. of approximately $6.5 billion a year, every year, given a retail price of $12.95 a lb. At present the charter fleet gets about 9 million lbs and the commercial fleet maybe 55 million lbs., depending on the year. 13 million lbs a year are REPORTED being "dumped" by IPHC. Makes the destruction of 5 million lbs. of king salmon each year by the trawlers seem like chicken feed. You know that when there is dead silence on this subject, something big is going on. Who is on the International Pacific Halibut Commission anyway?

A first step would be for these guys to rule that trawlers "declare" all immature halibut caught and killed. Then of course they wouldn't declare anything, like the trawler in Maine who didn't declare any of his main catch, much less the bycatch. Then you put closed circuit TV cameras on board, like the 4.3 million CCTV cameras in Britain. Many of these are monitored and speakers boom out warnings on offenses like, "Pick up that trash you dropped."

I can see the same system in action on board a vessel, with the observers in an office in Anchorage, "No mooning of federal observers allowed, pull up your pants immediately." The point isn't the wording of that, but to just lighten up about the whole issue of video monitoring of the work deck of trawlers. Of course, as the power politics approach to fisheries management slowly gives way to scientific management, large volume live-capture pots will be used to selectively harvest target species and trawls will be relegated to the Holocaust Museum of Ecology, along with gold mining, dynamite and DDT.

Check out the fisticuffs on the Highliner Blog:
There was a post by an attorney to silence one of the pariahs of fishermen's organizations that former Administrations listened to. The problem is that dollar-connected folk have made their way to Juneau and it way went to their heads. Especially as they can get quoted in the big newspapers. In papers that will put editorial notes like this after writer contributions: "the writer faces trial next week on federal corruption charges related to his legislative work on oil taxes." How politically correct we are!

Oh, that Ed Murrow was still around to orchestrate the news. Questioning the messenger without intelligent discussion of the message is just plain juvenile, not to mention being really snarky. Pariahs of Alaska fisheries politics are falling silent one at a time as Corrupt Bastards Club members head for stints in the slammer, it's the pirhanas that are the tough ones to get rid of.

To Privatize or not to Privatize, that is the question:
Stockton, California tried to privatize it's water utility, but had to go back to being municipally run. The water company killed the fish, charged more for the water, and the water was less pure.

The point is to relate this to how we are doing in privatizing the harvesting of the U.S. marine fish resources. The Act of Congress that set marine privatization in motion was designed to do just that, without the public noticing how they were losing their ownership rights. In practice, the harvest of marine resources operates like the Stockton water company. The science of by-catch is swept under the rug, the damage to the environment is regarded as a non-issue, and on and on.

The main issue for the ecology of the Exclusive Economic Zone, from 3 to 200 miles offshore, is the WAY it is managed. The greed of the few "who can" will always prevail over the interests of the many if given a chance, and under the Magnuson-Stevens Act they certainly have had a chance. Honest people will need to not only undo the privatization that has occured, but to re-invent the whole process so it can't happen again.

Reconciliation, in order to implement true and good fisheries management for the North Pacific, doesn't happen automatically, like a bank reconciliation does. It's like the civil rights movement in the South; the representatives of the true and the good will have to just keep on keeping on until enough folks with conscience show up. I have a suspicion that this will all be on LINK TV before too long.

A letter in the Juneau Empire recently was saying the same thing about the Alaska Board of Fish, ie., under their jurisdiction, most of the remaining herring stocks in S.E. Alaska have failed. Sometimes there would be up to three roe herring seiners on the Board at once.

My father saw the problems with herring seining for the lucrative roe coming a mile away. After all, the Enge family seiner was built before WWI to seine herring for the reduction plant in Killisnoo. That's why I think he put the bug in my brother's ear to pioneer the roe herring gillnetting business; that gillnetting them would let the smaller year classes slip through the net and protect the stocks. And like they say, the rest is history.

I still chuckle at the folks, who don't know better, say these kind of statements are inflamatory and subversive and other names I won't mention. They weren't around to see this kind of thinking create the selective fisheries, including crab and finfishing with pots and gillnetting for herring we now have. Now, attorneys, the FBI, and new faces on the NPFMC, are leveling the playing field, so the tide really is turning a little I think. With that vote against the Seattle contingent on the North Pacific Council in October, I dare say that I glimpse the furvor of "taking Alaska back for Alaskans" that occurred prior to 1959.

I had tunnel vision when I was a troller too, and didn't make the connection to the king stocks falling as the trawl fleet mushroomed after the "200 mile limit law." Just like the Oregon troller, who is now helping plant shade trees on Oregon rivers after the loggers cut right down to the water's edge. This guy fished in the summer off-shore for kings and coho, then in the winter has been working for the logging companies. He said that as a Cat operator, "the best way to get around in the woods with a bulldozer was to drive up the creeks." If the incredulity of this escapes you, stay tuned.

North Pacific Council reporting devolves into a game of "gotcha":
I'm trying to keep generic about my industry commentaries, but it's especially hard when the discussion gets so off track. This article didn't address any stand for any principle in particular, so what was the point? (see John Finley's rebuttal) Let's let the "gotcha" folks, like Wesley Clark vs Rush Lindbaugh, on the "unpatriotic soldiers" comment, do their playing around for listeners attention. The survival of the North Pacific ecosystems and the communities is too important to bicker over semantics.

Is what frosts me is the automatic "bristling" (let's see a "gotcha" on that description) by the Council members as Greenpeace presented proof that the canyons of the Bering Sea appear to be "critical fish habitat."(Oh, no they aren't, yes they ARE, etc.) We all know the federal fishery management Councils are appointed from "industry" which has the job of maximizing production, even from a "critical habitat."

I'm reminded of the Japanese egg technician that described being on a trawler off Africa going for octopus. They would use a totally chain trawl and drag up a deckload of boulders, then in fifteen minutes the deck would turn red with squirming octopus trying to get away. Even now, when trawlers of all stripes are allowed, by the none-the-wiser citizenry and politicians, they will take out the bottom too. Always have, always will. Greenpeace didn't just come along and make this up. Remember, they have pictures.

One last story I promise. Having to take pictures when the government isn't doing it's job in protecting the environment isn't new in Alaska. I was just out of college in the early 70s when my Dad and his good buddy Earl "Mile High" Walker took a helicopter to Prince of Whales Island to photograph the logged off riparian zones of the salmon streams . Then they displayed the eight by ten glossys in a store-front window on main street Petersburg. And remember when the late Ted Evans hired a Lear jet to fly him out to the international "Doughnut hole" to photograph Russian trawlers illegally fishing?

I'm telling ya, all this squandering of halibut and king salmon in the Gulf of Alaska may seem politically correct, because the U.S. Senators from Alaska(who are under criminal investigation) have sanctioned it. It has also been well camouflaged, but lots of people are laughing, and crying. The value of the lost fish is many times more than the value of the Pacific cod these few trawlers catch. There is no conscionable way anyone in their right mind could label the P. cod fishery "sustainable." And that doesn't touch the subject of damage to the ecology of the bottom that all species need intact. As of December 2006, the havoc that bottom trawling wreaks on the bottom and on non-target species is against the law, look it up.

The "Young Guns" in Juneau might not know all this, but the Republican Alaska delegation to Congress sure does; they just hope they and their aparatchiks can keep bullying dissenting voices. Republicans will need to fix these wasteful and destructive practices, of which I just touch on in this piece, in order to regain the public's trust. Remember when Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens tried to put brakes on Internet free speech? That was the Republican way to fix things. The only hope for the Republican Party is to let these loose cannons go over the side to make way for real Republicans. The Democrats would never think of letting our food supply go to waste, would they?

October Fisheries Memo

2007-09-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

"I think lobbyists should get a lifetime tag, not fishermen." "In privatization, the good crewmen have all left Kodiak." The Kodiak Fisheries Advisory Committee is taking all this to heart.(maybe)

Greenpeace diving spheres out to look at critical fish habitat for the first time in the Bering Sea.

It used to be a very divisive process, with large trawl owners and large shore-based processors pitted against crewmen, small boat owners and the public. To quote Senator Stevens, I don't want to comment, so as not to give the perception that I'm influencing the outcome. LOL

"Trawlers: wrong gear for rockfish in the Gulf of Alaska." That old salt, John Finley of Kodiak, and I had a discussion about this not long ago. I know how effective finfish pots can be, since I rustled up a design for the first go at using them in Alaska. In Alaska it has been a case of the longliners lobbying to get pots banned from an area because they work so good. Pots will catch more fish than the crew of any boat can handle if the skipper isn't careful. Everything will try go into a pot; halibut will even try to ram themselves through a cod pot tunnel.

As the new version of the Magnuson-Stevens Act kicks in to protect non-target species through science, the fact that pot fishermen can throw non-target fish back alive and trawlers can't, cannot be ignored anymore. There's no hurry to trawl up the masses of Pacific ocean perch, since they live as long as humans. They are just recovering from Japanese trawlers efforts 40 years ago. Is that not a cautionary tale?

"You hear a lot that these areas are just mud and silt, and there's no real need to protect them." "But on every dive we found areas where there's hard bottom, coral, sponges, anemones: things that create habitat for fish." This from the cruise of the Greenpeace vessel "Esperanza" to the huge underwater canyons of the Bering Sea. Is what baffles me is the widespread mentality that fishing in the Bering Sea canyons should continue as usual until solid proof of harm is gathered. How about the other way around; don't fish until bottom trawlers can prove they do no harm. That would have saved the commercial fishing industry on both coasts of the continental U.S. I still marvel at reporters who imply that strict catch limits are the fault of government, like they were going out at night in stealth craft and mopping up the fish.

Fishing Jobs Outlook: U.S. Department of Labor

"Employment of fishers and fishing vessel operators is expected to decline through the year 2014. Fishers and fishing vessel operators depend on the natural ability of fish stocks to replenish themselves through growth and reproduction, as well as on governmental regulation to promote replenishment of fisheries. Many operations are currently at or beyond the maximum sustainable yield, partially because of habitat destruction, and the number of workers who can earn an adequate income from fishing is expected to decline. Many fishers and fishing vessel operators leave the occupation because of the strenuous and hazardous nature of the job and the lack of steady, year-round income."

Quality of Life Report on Fishing: U.K.

This would piss off the Pope of Commercial Fishing in Alaska. "The report proposes that the one million recreational fishermen, who mostly fish within three miles of the shore, should have a greater say in the management of fish stocks." Around the British Isles, the commercial fishing industry had their crack at managing the fish, and guess how many are left. Big commercial fishing centers bigger than Kodiak are practically ghost towns now.

This is what I alluded to last time, "............and a third category of protected area would allow fishing but only by small boats using selective techniques." I remember fishing halibut from a skiff for eleven cents a pound and even at that a lot of people were doing it to supplement their income. Not catching tons on weekends, but using just enough gear to make it worth their while.

I think that a community committee, like a draft board, should give some quota share to obviously professional halibut and black cod crew(and of course, king crab crew) that got nothing the first time around. And make it illegal for a halibut vessel owner to ask a crewman to buy quota shares just to be hired on.

Oh, but I forgot, quality of life issues are for big boat owners and above: fishing companies, processors(large ones only, please), fishery management council members and elected officials. In the seafood industry food chain, not enough falls to the bottom to keep the ports viable in the long run, especially under privatization(rationalization) of the fish. Distant owners of the fish, unlike the historical norm of the guy with a hook and line attached to the fish, care especially little for the habitat their fish, (and everyone else's), need to sustain themselves.

Look at what the European Union is talking about to save their fisheries: "Our future policy will concentrate on four priorities: maximising the economic use of the oceans and seas in a sustainable way; making the most of knowledge and innovation; ensuring a high quality of life in coastal regions; and securing a maritime role for Europe in the world." Trawling up 200,000 plus king salmon(some think it's twice that) and throwing 'em back dead every year in the N. Pacific doesn't exactly match THEIR thinking. Well, Alaska has it covered, they've built 34 hatcheries to create a "ocean ranching" sector that is now one quarter of the whole salmon harvest. Half, if you are just looking at pink salmon.

And, for you economics junkies, here's a report on ferries, that includes a section on fish.

And mine clean-up talk in Oregon. Salmon canning at the mouth of the Rogue River and mining in and around the river pretty much did in the runs. One mine was closed a long time ago but is still biting them in the rear with copper leaching into the Rogue.(They say copper messes with a salmon's homing mechanism.) To top it off, nobody has the guts to make the mid-river fishery a catch and release fishery, for the ones that got by the trawlers in Washington anyway.

Distortion of Bottom Trawling Observer Data: The Sequel
Did you hear about all the dead salmon and rockfish that drifted up on a Washington beach after being dumped over by a trawler this summer? The skipper turned off his "video observer" for the big toss it turns out. There was more confirmation from a former government employee that my 200,000 plus dead and thrown back king salmon from the Alaska trawl fleet is accurate. The harvest this summer in Alaska was about 300,000 fish short of the projected catch.

300,000 fish, times a 17 lb average, gutted, is 4,590,000 lbs headed. Times $12.95 a lb, equals a retail value of $59,440,500. A conservative by-catch of 200,000 kings would be a $40,000,000 loss to the seafood industry along the distribution chain, without a multiplier effect added on.

Sept. Fisheries Memo

2007-08-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Seems the oldest son of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia started a marine conservation foundation. They sure have good equipment. (Dirk Pitt would have been jealous, for you Clive Cussler books fans.) But the video statement of the Executive Director struck me as a good goal for all of us, especially those on the U.S. federal fisheries management councils.

Yours truly getting some exercise at the headwaters of the Rogue River, Crater Lake.

The new Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management and Conservation Reauthorization Act of 2006 makes it clear that "science" is the control rod in this process. This is what Capt. Renaud, USN (Ret.), is talking about in the video. Look at the reefs they have been studying and listen to his words, then contrast that with a "canyon buster" trawl pulverizing the whole scene and catching anything swimming, in giant swaths. This is the exemplary management the fishing companies and Sen. Ted Stevens, that run the NPFMC, are referring to? Incredible!

Look at what New Zealand is saying about discovering their marine biodiversity, not pulverizing it. That we need to see what lives down there first. That's contrasted with Ted Stevens and Co.'s plans to expand bottom trawling in the Gulf of Alaska out to where the Pacific ocean perch are. Most on the NPFM Council are convinced that certain types of vessels need to trawl everything because it's "more efficient." What has that to do with science?

Science would dictate that deep-sea capable schooners like the old halibut schooners sit out there and use pots on those newly restored stocks of Pacific ocean perch, not bottom trawlers. Not possible to get the quota that way? Remember when two big Japanese-financed schooners took the entire Gulf of Alaska black cod quota in a month or so, before the traditional fleet could get out on the grounds in the spring? Remember the Alamo, I mean the dorys.

So Sen. Stevens wears Incredible Hulk ties? Well, the latest incredible factoid about him is his telling a television reporter that he didn't hear any derogatory comments on his trip to Kodiak recently. Where, in fact, he was heckled for over a minute from a distance of 25 feet by a crowd of fishermen that have finally had it with his trading fish, and their jobs, for campaign contributions.

Election campaigns are the demon seed for ecological catastrophe, and Capt. Renaud refers to the environment being ALL our responsibility. On a recent trip to Oregon's coast I was reminded that we didn't inherit very good genes for preserving intact habitat, seeing all the former good salmon streams and rivers, and reading an article about the encroachment of the Western juniper. It's good habitat that science says is necessary for the wellbeing of mankind, right?

So why can't anyone stop wholesale environmental degradation like bottom trawling? And midwater by-catch of so many valuable species, such as king salmon, or bait fish such as squid. I keep hearing how king salmon is a cultural icon out West here. But nobody wants to, or more likely, can, take on the U.S. Senators behind the destruction. Remember the election campaigns?

There's probably only one Senator I would bank on now and that's Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, the "pork-buster-in-chief." But then Sen. McCain tried admirably to stop Sen. Ted Stevens and his "midnight rider" from taking the crab away from the fishermen and giving it to the big shore plants in Dutch Harbor. And don't forget that Oregon's Sen. Gordon Smith stood there and watched while the water was turned off to the Klamath River in 2002, killing the baby salmon first, then the adults when they came into the river that year. The result was the coup de' grais to the West coast troll fishery and all the incomes dependent on that fishery in the communities.

And what's with Congresswoman Hooley of Oregon going on a "revitalization road trip" along the Willamette River, with the only things on her itinerary being bridges and riverside development. If Congress' definition of "revitalization of rivers" and "science based fishing" is just helping a few folks pay for their next round of TV commercials, then we'd all like to know about it. But would we believe them if they explained it anyway, with about a 15% approval rating for Congress?

My guess is that we'll be hearing more from environmental voters as more people catch the words of Captain Philip Renaud, the former Oceanographer for the U.S. Navy. One lobbyist in Juneau, AK has thought to lobby under the "Environmental Voter" banner already. And he doesn't represent the Middleton Island Trawl Fishermen's Association, or some such with another hat on, like most all lobbyists.

So, there's our marching orders: be an environmental voter, then hold our elected representatives and bureaucrats responsible for our own environment before sermonizing on other countries' abuse of land and marine environments. We wouldn't need offshore fish farms if we got rid of the bottom trawls and fixed our streams and rivers. But just think of the political contributions that could be garnered from permitting the first industrial scale off-shore fish farms. You know it will be the first permitees that capture the lion's share of the U.S. market for such fish.

Monday Fisheries Headlines 8/13

2007-08-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Sign reported(?) on door of Calhoun Street fisheries building in Juneau: BEAT IT, WE'RE CLOSED! Do we dare hope? One of the "proprietors" was recently charged by the State Troopers with having an unlicensed crewman on his boat.

Launching a robot from the "Esperanza" to take videos of areas of the Bering Sea where trawlers have been.

Groundswell Fisheries Movement is starting to take an active look at the new Farm Bill. Fishermen are now considered peers of farmers and could stand to gain much if the stars in this Bill line up for them. (This is a hint to Alaska's Congressional delegation. Their recent actions now allow a fisherman to process up to 10,000 lbs of catch a week without major red tape.) I wonder if the Petersburg Economic Development Department will recognize these fishermen as processors now that the Feds do.

Here's good reason for fishing village business owners to pay attention to federal fisheries management.
Maine now has restrictions on taking marine related property out of service for marine use and that means the owners can't make a killing selling it to whoever has the most money anymore. For good reason. But there is the problem that the federal fisheries management councils don't operate efficiently like a corporation. Not even like the Military. More like the Clan of the Cave Bear. I didn't read the book, it just sounded primitive is all. So maybe the owners of the property around boat harbors should do what they should have all along, that is, weigh in on policies like "rationalization" which shrink the fleet and favor mega-vessels who can deliver a long ways away.

This article is a good account of what it looks like if you walk around the harbor, but the important underlying causes are never mentioned. Again we see reporters just saying "decline of the fishing industry," like it's something that falls out of the sky. It's funny sometimes seeing some people in the industry confusing "trollers" with "trawlers," which is so common with politicians and other landlubbers. The effect on communities of key people keeping their heads in the sand practically makes me cry.

The Discovery Channel wants us to learn about the importance of a healthy marine environment.
A special called Deep Blue is premiering this week. It's about the deep oceans. I have a hard time seeing the "big picture" in these specials because of the emphasis on visual effects and simplistic dialogue geared for the young. You won't see underwater footage of a mega-trawler scooping up fish, and the bottom too, in one of their films, which has much more influence on the ecosystem than everything else combined.

Greenpeace is getting footage of what it looks like AFTER the trawlers have gone through an area. Maybe if they can photograph the trawler up ahead of them, then jump to a live feed from the bathysphere and then to an area not touched by a bottom trawl, we'd see what is really going on. Remember, Oregon studies show that 30% of the species complex is wiped out from bottom trawling. Great way to leave the continental shelf for our kids and grand-kids.

Logging takes new form.
I don't usually delve into other industries, but this article sounded like some folks in British Columbia are making sense, and there was a big article on the Tongass in S.E. Alaska in the July issue of National Geographic. The Tongass issue is becoming one of "how much say does the public have in ecosystem preservation?" This has a bearing on "how much say does the public have on marine ecosystem preservation?" Since most all of the U.S. public lives in big cities, does it matter if a few Congressmen let a few big companies make a pile of money screwing up the "out-of-sight" parts of America?

Given the way Congress has it fixed, the taxpayer could just pay every timber worker in S.E. Alaska $142,000 a year to stay home. The big advantage is that the very complex old-growth ecosystem would be saved. Everything else in the equation would be equal. I did a report on this with my son on old growth forests in Oregon and it was a real eye-opener. I grew up in the Tongass not having an opinion one way or the other on cutting the old growth. But I couldn't go back and hunt in areas that they logged, that was for sure.

The stuff is hitting the fan for fisheries managers to consider the crewmen.
Greetings Miss Crome,(the fisheries advisor to the Governor of Alaska)

I've attached the endorsement letter for the Governor, the
reallocation
proposal for the Bering Sea Crab Crewmen's Cooperative, and
the Fishheads
February 2007 testimony to the NPFMC.

The Crewman's Association is sponsoring the BSCCC
reallocation proposal; we
have submitted our proposal as a basis for future FMP
changes for all US
fisheries, as crewmen are the true laborers/harvesters in
the commercial
fishing industry.  I have not attached the 30 pages of
National Standards
which we will use as basis for judicial review and for the
Congress to
review crab rationalization.

I will refer you to page 17 of 30, National Standard #4
section C (3)
Factors in making allocations

(i)  Fairness and equity. (A)  An allocation of fishing
privileges should be
rationally connected to the achievement of OY or with the
furtherance of a
legitimate FMP objective.  Inherent in an allocation is the
advantaging of
one group to the detriment of another. THE MOTIVE FOR
MAKING A PARTICULAR
ALLOCATION SHOULD BE JUSTIFIED IN TERMS OF THE OBJECTIVE OF
THE FMP;
OTHERWISE, THE DISADVANTAGED USER GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS
WOULD SUFFER WITHOUT
CAUSE. FOR INSTANCE, AN FMP OBJECTIVE TO PRESERVE [page 36]
THE ECONOMIC
STATUS QUO CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY EXCLUDING A GROUP OF
LONG-TERM PARTICIPANTS
IN THE FISHERY.  On the other hand, there is a rational
connection between
an objective of harvesting shrimp at their maximum size and
closing a
nursery area to trawling.

(iii) Avoidance of excessive shares. An allocation scheme
must be designed
to deter any person or other entity from acquiring an
excessive share of
fishing privileges, and to avoid creating conditions
fostering inordinate
control, by buyer or sellers, that would not otherwise
exist.


We will have a complete packet ready for future legal
review.  We have made
contact with Congress and submitted the same documents.
We'll be sending a
delegation to D.C. this Fall to work on new legislation to
amend crab
rationalization for the crewmen of the BS/AI crab
fisheries.

We appreciate that you will be conferring with Commissioner
Lloyd and then
provide Governor Palin with all of these documents.

We look forward to a timely response from your office, as
well as the
Governor's endorsement of our proposal.

Shawn C. Dochtermann
Secretary
Crewmen's Association
Kodiak, AK

Well, the response was not exactly timely as I understand from further copies of correspondence. But then we didn't even know who this woman was when she was appointed. We don't hold that against the Governor, but there is some expectation of response through the usual channels of governance, not through some council.

Monday Fisheries Headlines 8/6

2007-07-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

The fight over fish oil.
"The omega-3s helped rebuild the damaged gray and white matter of his brain," says Dr. Bailes, who now takes his own medicine, swallowing a fish-oil supplement each morning. On his orders, McCloy, still recuperating at home, continues to take fish oil daily. "I would say he should be on it for a lifetime," says Dr. Bailes. "But then, I think everybody should."

You can't keep a good Alaskan off the beaches. My son Morgan.

Eye doctors prescribe it for everyone with macular degeneration too. At this rate we should at least get the oil out of the 3 billion pounds of fish that fishermen dump over the side off U.S. shores every year. Check here whether you should take cod liver oil or fish oil. What is our national policy on all this anyway?

When fish stocks dwindle.
"Like many coastal communities, Kitkatla lost its main source of employment and revenue when fish stocks dwindled in the eighties." Reporters say this in the same breath as "it was a cold winter" or "the northern lights were sure bright last night." Like the fish stocks just do that by themselves. I've bitten my tongue for too long as East Coast reporters bemoan the "lack of fish." Just say it, fishermen caught them all. Of course the various governments allowed it. Canada is no different than the U.S., just a little ahead on the fishing-'em-out curve.

Politics trump Science in this Administration
"Repeated troubling reports that political considerations are trumping scientific facts in the implementation of the Endangered Species Act ... constitute just one area in a long line of problems plaguing the Interior Department that deserve scrutiny by the Congress." And Dick Cheney declined to attend the Klamath fish kill hearings for which he is largely blamed. Watch video testimony of an Oregon Congressman who sugar-coats the king salmon die-off.

Another interesting Google Earth exercise is to look at the Oregon-California border area in question, where there used to be so much waterfowl habitat. It's all farm land now. I lived on the Pacific Flyway in Southeast Alaska for many years, and just like people grieve the absence of blue whales, I grieve the loss of the massive clouds of ducks and geese.

Here's a simple idea: Let's stop paying people to overfish
The University of British Columbia calculates that countries kick in $20 to $30 billion a year to support overfishing. Now one third of all the commercial fish have gone the way of the buffalo. Bottom trawling is implicated largely. These statistics mirror Oregon's study showing that bottom trawling causes the total loss of 30% of the species complex in the area.

Photos from the "Esperanzna" voyage to see if the trawlers left anything around the Pribilofs.

John,
Hi, here's a couple shots of subs in the water and a ROV
about to go in. We were in the Prib canyon Tues, Wed and Thurs,
and I just got back to the isle early this morning. At
500-800 meters I expected a lot of stuff down below, but it
seemed sparse, some rat fish, perch, halibut, eels, starfish,
sponges, black cod, but nothing in mass numbers. There is a
lot of other video that I haven't seen yet though. There was
coral and also some other things that could not be
identified yet, but I'm sure after some studying they will come up
with a name or even new names. There were 3 mega trawlers
that steamed past us going NW to the Zemchug. There was
also a longliner that claimed he was doing Halibut
surveys....but in 700 meters and for 2 days with no gear down? Seems
awful strange to me.
The Esperanza should be steaming towards the Zemchug as I
type and I remain hopeful they find a plethora of coral and
new species.

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew Malavansky
St. George Island Alaska
http://www.stgeorgephotos.com

Monday Fisheries Headlines 7/30

2007-07-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Sea Change or Pocket Change?
The Marine Conservation Alliance just has to keep trying to put a good face on the buffalo hunting of it's members. This time they dragged into the fray a midwater trawl organization and the Institute for Social and Economic Manipulation, I mean, Research.

TROLLERS lives are getting still lonlier, thanks to the TRAWLERS who are catching and dumping their kings.

I give Sarah Palin another month or so to catch on to ISER. They aren't horrible, but just don't hit the nail on the head.

But I wanted to comment on this new publicity stunt of Dave Benton's MCA. Remember, these are the same folks that bring you cod ends of trawl nets half full of halibut and king salmon by-catch that they throw over the side dead. Eventually a crewman or skipper will try to absolve his conscience and turn in photos of the carnage. As it is, the MCA members, who also run the North Pacific Council, say it's just hearsay. The average OBSERVED chinook catch in the GOA has been 17,643 kings(2000-2004), but there has only been about 3.5% observer coverage!!!! There are some official statistics like 87,000 king salmon killed in the pollock A and B seasons in one year in the Bering Sea, which has higher observer coverage. It's just as bad in the whiting fishery off Oregon and Washington. Real smart, Ted and Don.

You can write all the problem solving reports like this you want, but it still boils down to the fact that the Magnuson-Stevens Act still allows the big trawl companies and their allies to make the laws. Chief among these allies is Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, who are under criminal investigation. The reauthorized MSA is really under a black cloud now that it's author is being implicated as a crook. The rampant greed and corruption in the Alaska seafood industry has been common knowledge from the first signing of the MSA in 1976.

I won't discuss this report line item by line item. It's great stuff if it were being practiced. There is no guarantee, and no evident will on the part of the NPFMC, that it ever will. All these principles were being forwarded by Larry Merculief, a Pribilof islander and Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development, in the early '90s. The NPFMC still allowed so much trawling around the Pribilof Islands that the new $85 million harbors were rendered moot for use by a local fleet. There weren't any fish left for man nor sea-bird, nor marine mammal.

Again, this report is a good argument for conservation, but won't go anywhere, under the MSA. News laws will be needed. If the NPFMC had an ounce of thought for conservation they wouldn't be calling a give-away of national marine treasures to a few already very wealthy individuals "market-based." The quota system they want for the Gulf of Alaska, like what they did for the Bering Sea, will destroy billions of dollars of marketable seafood.

Two similar stories came in this week, one true, and the other made up, I think.
"John, I will tell you a true story about a Cordovan who has lived in Mexico for over twenty years. He is on the coast where

the Mexicans in this little village would go to the beach and line up and hold a small beach seine out from the beach in a straight line.

They would maybe get enough fish to partly fill a pick up truck.

He watched this operation and told them. Don’t hold it out in a straight line, put a hook at the end of it and you will get more fish. So they did this and caught enough fish to fill three pick up trucks. The next day they were mad as hell at Gene Mc Bride

(you might know him) They had taken the catch to town

and over loaded the market, could not even sell most of the catch and ruined the price they were getting."

Here's the parable:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long" answered the Mexican.

"Why then didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was adequate to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs... I enjoy a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can HELP you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then SELL the extra fish you catch. With the extra money, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your OWN plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your HUGE enterprise!"

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that?"

"Afterwards! That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really! And after that?"

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take siesta with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking and playing your guitar and enjoying life with your friends."

The moral of the story? Sen. Ted Stevens got a law passed called the Magnuson-Stevens Act that is designed to weed out the lifestyle fishermen in favor of the high octane fisherman, who may be driven to extremes by a chemical imbalance for all anyone knows. Sen. Stevens has even said, at one meeting at least, that the fishery(ies?) need to get down to "the real bread-winners." These are the high-voltage, take no prisoners guys that never see their families, break fisheries laws when possible, kill and dump over the side mass quantities of by-catch species of fish, hire lobbyists to make fisheries laws to favor them only, fly Congressmen to fishing lodges, etc.

It's sugar coated by calling it "market-based," and it comes in the form of Limited Access Programs/Individual Fishing Quotas. The guys that have the upper hand in fisheries currently without IFQs, have the money to grease the skids. They have the "fishing history" to get even more money with the free gift of large annual allotments, to make the IFQ fight with the little guys a barracuda/sardine contest.

Martin Luther King had a lot to say about the large numbers of people that won't speak up for what is right. Reporters don't get involved because they don't understand all this, so the public knows nothing of the life and death struggle between the "wants-everyone's-shares" and the "have-all-they-wants." Who do you think shows up at the remote federal fisheries management meetings, the former or the latter? And make no mistake, environmentalist- sounding organizations get bought just like politicians. Check it out.

So, if you buy into privatizing the fisheries with IFQs, heed the old Chinese Proverb, "Be careful what you wish for." Eventually there will be exactly three fishing companies in every "rationalized" fishery. That's the type of "market-based" fishery that is prescribed by MSA. And those companies will be so big they sure aren't going to "deliver" to ye old fishing village.