juandesooka
Active Member
Interesting article about the halibut fishing issues in Alaska. Different than here, maybe not that directly relevant, but well written.
Keep your laws off our fish
Posted: Wednesday, May 4, 2011 2:54 pm
By Emma Brooks | 0 comments
If you don't understand the limited-entry charter boat fishery legislation just passed in Washington, think about it like a hike in taxation, only instead of taxing the big guys in order to help out the little guys, this legislation will downright eliminate the little guys. Lots of them. In fact, according to the Anchorage Daily News, the new rules will eliminate 327 small, new charters.
You're not down for that.
You're not down for that because you're from Homer, the quintessential charter boat fishing destination, a place of gut-wrenching natural beauty that offers little in the way of economic diversity and much in the way of undeniable charm and seduction, so that hordes and hordes of smart, degreed folks move there and set up shop and have no way to make money. Some of them open tourist shops and some of them buy a six-pack charter and some of them become teachers or open restaurants. If you want to live in Homer, those are about your only options, and the new legislation, either directly or indirectly, will affect all four of those options.
Of course, over-fishing is a lose-lose situation. Fisheries need management, and 99 percent of the time you're just glad that we still have fisheries to manage in Alaska. But when legislation comes around that restricts a fishery with such a relatively low impact while allowing fisheries-hel-lo bottom trawling-that desiccate massive numbers of the same fish species, not to mention hundreds of other species, your eyebrows go up.
And guess what? There are going to be a whole lot more eyebrows going up when the cost of going charter boat fishing skyrockets, and more still when the numbers of halibut don't rise as a result of the new legislation. In fact, according to the ADN, there's no saying what will happen to halibut numbers once the limited entry program has been implemented. Results in other fisheries have not been consistent.
Charter boat fishing is already expensive, but when competition is eliminated, costs are going to rise even farther, making it impossible for Joe Blow from Fairbanks or Soldotna or (gasp) Anchorage to roll on down to Homer for the weekend and take a charter. And unless he knows somebody with a boat, when he wants to eat some fresh halibut, Joe'll have to go to the grocery store, just like they do in the Lower 48, and buy some.
But here's the thing: Alaska is not the Lower 48. Alaska is Alaska, dammit. We live here because a long time ago, we decided that we were willing to give up things like affordable avocados and Black Keys shows if we could have the opportunity to, for a hundred some odd bucks, do things like fish the Gulf of Alaska, to get ankle deep in a deck full of slimy, slap-gasping halibut and maybe, just maybe, come home with 300-pounds of fresh, high quality protein.
You're willing to bet the federal judge who passed the new legislation knows nothing of the pleasure of cleaning fish on the stern while the captain motors in for the night. He doesn't know Chuck, the crooked-toothed man who captained the charter boat you worked on when you were 18, who smoked Marlboro Red after Marlboro Red and drank pot after pot of coffee and eyeballed the horizon and took the boat out to the Barren Islands even when it was rough, who worked you deckhands hard and never yelled at you, who raised four daughters largely on the money he made captaining the F/V Ultimate.
That judge doesn't know the way the sun lights the Barrens to brilliance, how sharp they rise green out of the blue of the Gulf. He doesn't know what halibut tastes like fresh from the grill-flaked, lemon-heavy-the day you catch it. He doesn't know Alaska or the people who live here, the raw primal pleasure of reeling and reeling and reeling and seeing out of the water emerge a fish that is the size of the family dog, bigger, the size of two or three family dogs, a fish that will fill all the empty space in the freezer and then some.
Like most Alaska residents, you want a strong halibut fishery more than you want anything else. But until something is done about bottom trawling-the maritime equivalent of hunting for moose by cutting down the entire forest-you're going to have a hard time seeing limits put on charter boat fishing. But even if you took bottom trawling out of the picture, Washington would still be a long, long way from Alaska. You can't help but wonder how much sense it makes for somebody that far away from us-not just physically, but, by dint of life choices, ideologically-to make important decisions about who has access to what resources in Alaska.
http://www.anchoragepress.com/arts_...cle_99bd83a8-76a1-11e0-a320-001cc4c03286.html
Keep your laws off our fish
Posted: Wednesday, May 4, 2011 2:54 pm
By Emma Brooks | 0 comments
If you don't understand the limited-entry charter boat fishery legislation just passed in Washington, think about it like a hike in taxation, only instead of taxing the big guys in order to help out the little guys, this legislation will downright eliminate the little guys. Lots of them. In fact, according to the Anchorage Daily News, the new rules will eliminate 327 small, new charters.
You're not down for that.
You're not down for that because you're from Homer, the quintessential charter boat fishing destination, a place of gut-wrenching natural beauty that offers little in the way of economic diversity and much in the way of undeniable charm and seduction, so that hordes and hordes of smart, degreed folks move there and set up shop and have no way to make money. Some of them open tourist shops and some of them buy a six-pack charter and some of them become teachers or open restaurants. If you want to live in Homer, those are about your only options, and the new legislation, either directly or indirectly, will affect all four of those options.
Of course, over-fishing is a lose-lose situation. Fisheries need management, and 99 percent of the time you're just glad that we still have fisheries to manage in Alaska. But when legislation comes around that restricts a fishery with such a relatively low impact while allowing fisheries-hel-lo bottom trawling-that desiccate massive numbers of the same fish species, not to mention hundreds of other species, your eyebrows go up.
And guess what? There are going to be a whole lot more eyebrows going up when the cost of going charter boat fishing skyrockets, and more still when the numbers of halibut don't rise as a result of the new legislation. In fact, according to the ADN, there's no saying what will happen to halibut numbers once the limited entry program has been implemented. Results in other fisheries have not been consistent.
Charter boat fishing is already expensive, but when competition is eliminated, costs are going to rise even farther, making it impossible for Joe Blow from Fairbanks or Soldotna or (gasp) Anchorage to roll on down to Homer for the weekend and take a charter. And unless he knows somebody with a boat, when he wants to eat some fresh halibut, Joe'll have to go to the grocery store, just like they do in the Lower 48, and buy some.
But here's the thing: Alaska is not the Lower 48. Alaska is Alaska, dammit. We live here because a long time ago, we decided that we were willing to give up things like affordable avocados and Black Keys shows if we could have the opportunity to, for a hundred some odd bucks, do things like fish the Gulf of Alaska, to get ankle deep in a deck full of slimy, slap-gasping halibut and maybe, just maybe, come home with 300-pounds of fresh, high quality protein.
You're willing to bet the federal judge who passed the new legislation knows nothing of the pleasure of cleaning fish on the stern while the captain motors in for the night. He doesn't know Chuck, the crooked-toothed man who captained the charter boat you worked on when you were 18, who smoked Marlboro Red after Marlboro Red and drank pot after pot of coffee and eyeballed the horizon and took the boat out to the Barren Islands even when it was rough, who worked you deckhands hard and never yelled at you, who raised four daughters largely on the money he made captaining the F/V Ultimate.
That judge doesn't know the way the sun lights the Barrens to brilliance, how sharp they rise green out of the blue of the Gulf. He doesn't know what halibut tastes like fresh from the grill-flaked, lemon-heavy-the day you catch it. He doesn't know Alaska or the people who live here, the raw primal pleasure of reeling and reeling and reeling and seeing out of the water emerge a fish that is the size of the family dog, bigger, the size of two or three family dogs, a fish that will fill all the empty space in the freezer and then some.
Like most Alaska residents, you want a strong halibut fishery more than you want anything else. But until something is done about bottom trawling-the maritime equivalent of hunting for moose by cutting down the entire forest-you're going to have a hard time seeing limits put on charter boat fishing. But even if you took bottom trawling out of the picture, Washington would still be a long, long way from Alaska. You can't help but wonder how much sense it makes for somebody that far away from us-not just physically, but, by dint of life choices, ideologically-to make important decisions about who has access to what resources in Alaska.
http://www.anchoragepress.com/arts_...cle_99bd83a8-76a1-11e0-a320-001cc4c03286.html
