The danger of rumors is, of course, they may be false or purposely used as disinformation to manipulate various groups. In keeping with Wiglaf's policy of NOT promoting untruths, we withdraw this PVOA/FVOA rumor. However, the bottom line remains, dragger bycatch of halibut is intolerable, unconscionable, and unsustainable. To hammer on and kill the halibut ($6 per pound) while pursuing worthless flounders (.04 per pound) for the relatively valuable (.24 to .35 per pound) 20% bycatch of cod, which shouldn't be allowed anyway, but is, in hopes of "developing a flatfish fishery," remains bullshit. Whoever said the Russian oligarchs were so corrupt has never looked at Alaskan fishery politics...the last stronghold of real pirates.
Keep yer flippers wet.
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4 comments:
The irony of this is that 2C blames the 3A and 3B folks while it is the Arne's and Bobby T's and Cora's who are all for southeast but for anything west of there policy is dictated by what Icicle wants.
And what Icicle wants is no restrictions on it's draggers.
They have actually kept us from controlling trawl bycatch.
Exactly.
My memory may fail me but I seem to remember that when Icicle was buying fish in Adak, IPHC commishioner Ralph Hoard kept the IPHC from adopting the recommended cut in 4B but as soon as Icicle sold out of Adak he was all for the cut in quota.
Same story though inverted in 2C. For years he led the battle to keep 2C from taking staff recommended cuts but whenever an increase was recommended, well, away we go.
We need to get someone who will represent more than just Icicle as commissioner.
All that self congratulatory backslapping about "slow up, fast down" you hear coming out of 2C is just a little fairy tale they tell themselves while they do the opposite.
The surveys are the only reliable way to estimate halibut population. This is what we should be looking at, more than even the IPHC population model. And this goes for all areas.
The survey doesn't lie. We may not understand why the population is doing what it is but that doesn't matter.
Check out Linda Beknhen's comments on the IPHC website. She's trying to explain why a lousy survey means lots of fish.
Assembly members,
I have been reading some Kodiak blogs, the Kodiak Mirror and some Borough minutes regarding proposed halibut quotas for 2011 and a meeting I mentioned to some folks. I think my comments have been greatly pushed and pulled. I had lunch at Chinooks here in Seattle with a representative of PVOA. We both were concerned about the significant drops in quota in areas 3B,3A and 2c. (24, 28 and 47 percent respectively. ) In part these reductions reflect some new assumptions on how much of the total quota should be harvested in the 10 regulatory areas. The new model that distributes harvests has been questioned by all participants as it has allocation implications beyond just biological implications. On the biological side the decreases in the IPHC survey WPUE (weight per unit of effort) in my opinion, and I am sure many others, do not match up with the staff IPHC proposed harvest increases and decreases this year. Such as area 4 WPUE goes down yet quotas go up and in 2c there is a 5 to 6 percent change yet the quota goes down 47%. There is room for some disagreement about the staff proposals, and those concerns were discussed over my lunch meeting.
During the past 32 years that I have helped chair the industry Conference board at IPHC annual meetings the fishermen from all the different areas have supported the staff recommendations for the most part, never being more than a total of a million and a half pounds out of phase with the scientist on the high side and have often recommended well below that on the low side of recommendations. The IPHC lately wants to go to a coast wide model for distributing quotas as apposed to setting quotas based on the individual science by each area. Unfortunately this drives in my opinion more politics than the old method. SE and other areas including the Canadians have objected to this new model in that it can short different areas from historical harvest limits. The western and central GOA participants worry that the model over states historical harvest that may have been too large in the past hence takes away from the central and western GOA. The IPHC Commissioners in the recent past have added quota in some areas and deducted quotas in others in order to fit with the total recommended removals, even though individual areas ended up being over or below the scientist staff recommendations. This has unfortunately brought the complaint of politics being played between regulatory areas. So when I have lunch with someone and we both complain, based on the new model, our respective complaints could mean some else is could to be shorted if our concerns are agreed with by the Commissioners and they follow their past adding and subtracting. If you multiply my concerns over 10 regulatory areas you can get a gist of how complicated things can get between the regulatory areas. I think this is why most of the time the fishermen end up supporting the staff recommendations.
I am certain the PVOA members and their representative nor myself ever intended the interpretations of my fish and chip lunch, halibut, as replayed in blogs, public testimony before the Borough and expressed elsewhere to reach the current level of galloping senility that it has. But since I am over 60 perhaps senility is my best defense. I apologize if I am the one that got this snow ball rolling, but on the other hand, it is one hell of snowball. bob alverson manager FVOA See you all in Victoria
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