Letters Critical

To the twenty-six followers of this blog and all the others of you out there who read this, I know, you're busy, and you don't want to write a letter.  But your personal letter could make a huge difference with the NPFMC in it's decision to roll back PSC bycatch of halibut for draggers and longliners in its June meeting here in Kodiak.  Go to http://www.akmarine.org/our-work/conserve-fisheries-marine-life/halibut-bycatch-sample-letter?portal_status_message=Changes%20saved for guidance in writing a personalized letter to the NPFMC to be received by May 29, 2012.  AMCC has prepared a good plan for you to follow.  For greenies, they are okay, after all.

Your letter can make a huge difference in this struggle for fair treatment for the resource.  If you won't do it, who will?  Certainly the opposition will have all their paid staff working overtime to win this one and they will be doing plenty of arm twisting. 

KYFW

Unconfirmed Reports and Confirmed Observations

Unconfirmed reports have it that the IPHC staff is about split on whether halibut fishing opportunities should be entirely shut down for at least three years to allow for recovery of the stocks. 

Confirmed observations from the fishing grounds are that halibut are indeed scarce, with returning longliners for the most part catching only a small fraction of their intended deliveries.

Dragger crews report lots of halibut PSC bycatch of small fish.  But the drag fleet can't be cut back, remember?  Now is the time to move the NPFMC off of center and get them to take action on halibut bycatch.  Two weeks left to get in written testimony.  We need you.

KYFW

NPFMC Will Cut Halibut Bycatch by 7.5%

At least according to M., who is purported to be a major player in all this fisheries intrigue.  M. says the compromises are already worked out and all that needs to happen is the public theatre and the official vote.  The idea is that nobody will be happy but the Council will be seen as having done their job on a difficult issue.

But this is a rather jaded and cynical view.  It is a view that helps convince the public not to engage.  It promotes the disenfranchisement of the public.  It is a poisonous perspective that harms democracy.  Or is it Realpolitiks?

You can prove M. wrong by moving the Governor's representative and the majority of the Council to vote for at least a 15% rollback and save our halibut.

It is the least you can do.

KYFW

"Reduce the Waste of Our Alaska Halibut," Paul Seaton

"Senator Ted Stevens and I had a conversation over 15 years ago about why the federal government allowed some net-loss bottom trawl fisheries. He advised that we should “just shut them down” at the Management Council and that there was no federal requirement to keep such a fishery going if it destroyed more value for others in the crab and halibut fisheries than the value created by its targeted fishing. However, fish politics being what it is, this is the first real action for the Gulf of Alaska since that time. Although a 15 percent reduction doesn’t seem like much compared to Ted Stevens’ suggestion for a high bycatch fishery, after 15 years of waste it would be a start and would set the Management Council on the pathway of saving our halibut resource for real utilization by Alaskans."
http://juneauempire.com/opinion/2012-05-17/my-turn-reduce-waste-our-alaska-halibut

KYFW.

Write Parnell!

Alaska's Governor Sean Parnell has just taken a whipping on oil taxes.  Here is a perfect opportunity for him to win one on a state's rights issue.  Call or write his office and request he use his influence to roll back the allowable halibut PSC bycatch.  The drag fleet will argue it is good for processors and processor workers and good for Kodiak's and the the state's economy to allow continued business as usual.  The truth is that dragger waste mostly benefits interests outside of the state, such as foreign owned processors or outside owned processors and much of the drag fleet are actually from outside, etc.  While this is federally regulated issue, the Governor has great influence, should he choose to use it, in influencing the NPFMC, who are going to vote on this PSC limit.

Governor Sean Parnell could win one for all Alaskans (and himself) by supporting a rollback on the halibut PSC.  Call or write and tell him so.

Keep your flippers wet.

Dirty Draggers-Round Up The Usual Suspects

With the June meeting of the North Pacific Fisheries management Council scheduled for Kodiak, the drag fleet has been busy killing off the halibut.  Foisting the argument that "we just can't do better on halibut bycatch" these trawlers continually hammer on the halibut stocks as they have, basically without controls for the past few decades.  It is no wonder halibut in is decline. 

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2012/pscinfo.htm

The Sea Mac's nearly 40% tow of halibut while targeting cod was reported as a result of one observed tow, so he will argue that that was an unlucky exception.  He had a total of seven observed tows, this one being particularly bad.  Unless the new observer program fixes the gaming, Sea Mac's dirty dragging and others will continue to hammer the halibut.

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2012/car150_goa_halibut_mortality.pdf

In the first season, Sea Mac and the usual suspects exceeded the already liberal Prohibited Species Catch (PSC) by 9% or 39 metric tons (85,800 pounds).  In the second season, they did even worse, with a 28% overage, or 85 metric tons (187,000 pounds).  So the drag fleet is on its way to hitting the cap of 2000 metric tons of halibut this year...4,400,000 pounds of halibut wasted.  "But we can't do better."  This argument is like 'I can't drive unless I'm drunk.'  It is bullshit.  Besides the other cleaner gear types could easily harvest and employ more fishermen harvesting cod, where so much of the bycatch occurs.  Just saying.  But the NPFMC has given that away already with the sector split.

Press the NPFMC here in Kodiak at the June meeting for a tougher policy on halibut (and other) bycatch .  At least 15%.

Keep yer flippers wet.

One Pound of Bycatch Leads Up To Five Pounds of Lost Spawning Biomass

According to an article in Fishermen's News:

'Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association in Sitka, was among those attending the halibut workshop in Seattle.  Behnken said that the group concluded that bycatch has had a significant impact on the spawning biomass of halibut.  "It's a conservation concern with allocative implications," she said.  "The direct yield loss of a pound of bycatch taken in the trawl fleet is a pound to the commercial <longline> fleet, maybe a little bit more, and the impact to the female spawning biomass of one pound of bycatch ranges from two to five pounds of impact to the spawning biomass, depending on where the fish is taken and the size of the fish."'

That is frightening, but hardly news, as we have reported here before.  You can't keep killing the geese without affecting the numbers of golden eggs.

Julie Bonney, spokesman for the drag and processor interests had a different spin: The 'executive director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank at Kodiak, said there is so much unknown about the status of the halibut resource that a better plan would be a comprehensive five-year work plan to get a better understanding of the science surrounding the fishery.'

Typical Julie Bonney to obfuscate and delay any meaningful changes to the way the drag fleet scrapes up their low value / high volume fish at whatever the cost to the long term health of the Gulf of Alaska.  She is a superior excuse maker.  Whenever the Council is feeling hesitant or impotent, they hear her gilded words about five year plans and more and better studies, complete with such bureaucratic platitudes as "comprehensive" and "unknowns" and delay action again.  Unfortunately, they most often move on the side of caution, ding the small players and concede to corporate interests.  It is not information they lack, but the courage to look to the best interests of the whole Gulf of Alaska and control the drag fleet.  Time is over for excuses, we need action.

The Council has scheduled two days in Kodiak on this issue and this is a perfect opportunity to let the Council know how you feel about wasting the Gulf.  Come here and testify.

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/PDFdocuments/meetings/612Agenda.pdf

By the way, where the hell is our illustrious governor on this?  I have heard he is very impressed with Julie Bonney's line of bullshit.  Too bad for him and us.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Where Has Wiglaf Been?

Out foraging.  A sealion has to eat.

There is only so much one can say about the drag fleet.  Roughly forty drag boats currently control the Federal fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska.  Watch them push for permanent ownership of pollock and other species because "we just don't have the tools to control ourselves" in regard to bycatch.  It is amazing that if you can get the public to hear the same message long enough, they eventually believe it, some of the Council, too.  Over one hundred articles in this blog illustrate the real problems.  If you haven't read them all, roll up your eyelids.  It is redundant to hammer the same points over and over again for the sake of  'news.'

During this ComFish, the NMFS takes great pride in presenting the 'restructured' observer program after only 38 years of lackluster, half-ass performance, that even they now concede has been gamed in a sophisticated effort to assure the public and managers that all is well in Draggerville.  Of course, it isn't and the sad truth is, it just might be too late; shrimp are a historical footnote, King crab is an endangered species, Tanner crab populations decline, halibut now disappear as their juveniles clog cod ends, and the Gulf becomes increasingly imbalanced with arrowtooth and other dragger dreams.  Ownership of Federal Gulf resources by dragger owners will eventually push out all small boat owners and then the draggers and the processors will sue each other over which will ultimately own the Gulf.

So why not quit and surrender your heritage to the Bonney crew?  Because, quitters always become extinct.  If you gotta go down, at least go down swinging!  Or swimming!

Attendance at the June NPFMC meeting in Kodiak should be one of your top priorities.  Get your testimony lined up regarding halibut bycatch and the other issues that concern you.  We will endeavor to get some preparatory material published by then.

So...

Keep yer flippers wet.

NOAA Comes Out of the Closet as Decidedly Pro-Trawler

“Julie Bonney (Alaska Groundfish Data Bank) is the Kodiak Fisheries Advisory Board representative for the 5 large closed-class processors currently suing the SOC/NOAA/NMFS on the Rockfish Amdt. 88 in hopes of restoring the Rockfish Pilot Program.  She also manages the Big-5 cooperatives that were linked to those processors under the Rockfish Pilot Program.  This is not an appropriate time to appoint what could be a key player in the lawsuit’s discovery to NOAA’s MAFAC.  What was going through the mind of the Secretary of Commerce?”

So it becomes blatantly clear that NOAA intends to give the Gulf of Alaska to the highest impact, most wasteful fishing group, the trawlers.  As we have watched the NPFMC process in the past and seen clearly that Julie Bonnie and her merry band of draggers have repeated turned aside attempts to make the Gulf of Alaska a sustainable place for fishermen of all stripes by assuring that bycatch is credibly controlled, and resources are fairly distributed.  That NOAA would select such a completely biased person to serve on this group is a slap in the face to those who would prevent a complete give away of the Gulf of Alaska groundfish resources to the dirtiest gear group, comprised of something less than 40 vessels.  Outrageous. But not a big surprise, as we have warned before.  NOAA is in bed with the draggers and the process industry to the detriment of us all.

Keep yer flippers thawed,

Trawlers Want Rewards for Behaving Badly

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In another piece of outstanding journalism, Andrew Jensen cuts through the fog of the NPFMC and NOAA to reveal what is going on with bycatch controls foot dragging and much more. Here it is in his words.:Alaska Journal of Commerce.

Keep yer flippers wet.