Sitka Economy
Dear Editor: Attached is a letter I sent to the city administrator, Assembly and SEDA.
Greetings and a sincere “Thank you” for your time and efforts regarding Sitka’s economic future.
I recently read the Sitka Sentinel article on the economic development plans for Sitka. Since the mill closure around 1993 there has been a strong focus on developing and expanding the visitor industry presence and infrastructure with municipality funds. This along with our long established commercial fisheries industry has provided some means of economic stability for our community.
As things move forward, it would be prudent if the focus would be heavily directed at enabling and establishing industry that provides both year round and sustainable family oriented wages. Our vigorous visitor industry is roughly five months a year with wages most suitable for those living a light and nomadic lifestyle or those seeking supplemental income, but rarely enough to support or retain families in our community.
Our school district as of this year has seen the largest exodus of families in recent history with those numbers continuing to increase. Simply put, families, unless financially well off, are not making ends meet here, thus moving and removing their economic contribution to our town.
The most viable, untapped and sustainable industry I envision for Sitka is related to the maritime industry. Sitka is geographically the only Southeast port with direct access to the Gulf of Alaska which sees a substantial amount of maritime traffic year round. Secondarily is our unique deep water port access at the Gary Paxton Industrial Complex that could accommodate a wide spectrum of deep draft vessels.
During times of reduced budgets and high debt, municipalities benefit by enabling private industry to take the reins on developing viable economic infrastructure while also assuming the liability and required maintenance of said facilities, all the while, generating taxable income and revenue for the municipality.
Defer your focus on the city-funded visitor industry and potential cruise ship docks for awhile. Re-aim your vision at providing a supportive and welcoming environment for maritime-related private industries that will enable year round, family sustaining, skilled labor jobs.
Thank you for your time,
Eric Van Cise, Sitka
Herring Stocks
Dear Editor: For decades now, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has evaded responsibility for the ongoing collapse of herring stocks in Southeast Alaska. They have ignored the testimony and observations of locals, the needs of subsistence users, the wisdom of traditional ecological knowledge, and the emergence of telling archaelogic, anthropologic, and scientific evidence that this fishery has demolished the health of herring stocks in the region. They have made a habit of arbitrary and capricious and deeply dangerous decision-making that represents a black mark on the department and a defiance of public trust. Hanging in the balance are the health of the economies, ecosystems, and life-ways of the region.
Now, out of options and out of time, and in the face of yet another disastrous subsistence (and commercial) season in Sitka Sound, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska has filed suit against the State of Alaska and the Board of Fish. I write in support of STA.
The sac roe herring fishery targets the eldest and most fecund 20 percent of the herring in the days before they would otherwise spawn. It is a fishery that defies basic understanding of the birds & the bees, so much so that even the Alaska Oil and Guano Company - pioneers of the disastrous reduction fishery which crashed stocks in Chatham Strait and Cape Ommaney - suggested in 1911 that “During the spawning period, all fishing should be prohibited... enough is known of the habits of this fish to at least inaugurate an effort at regulation.”
Instead, the opposite occurred, and since the inauguration of sac roe fisheries in the mid-’60’s, locals have watched the collapse of herring in Lynn Canal and Auke Bay, Kah Shakes and Cat Island, Seymour Canal, Hobart Bay, and West Behm.
In the face of that history, ADF&G’s Dec. 3 update on the fishery reads as a smug and selective account of silver linings. Despite an abundance of worrying evidence, the fishery will go on so long as the numbers indicate even a hint of a marketable biomass.
ADF&G’s routine dismissal of local concern is reminiscent of the final years of other sac roe fisheries in Southeast Alaska, when - despite warning signs - the fishery managers yielded to industry pressure, made a variety of assumptions and decisions, and allowed the fishery to go on (Hebert, 2011). Goodbye, herring.
It is a poor practice to ignore local observation, and in particular the hard-earned and time-tested ecological knowledge of indigenous people. It’s been a slow and cruel road, but some traditional ideas that allowed the people of Southeast Alaska to coexist sustainably with herring for thousands of years are finally finding support from western science.
There are a number of examples of this: the belief in regional sub-populations of herring and the belief that herring are sensitive to noise disturbance during spawning are both beginning to gain traction in western science. One of the elements of TEK that is most pertinent to the sac roe fishery is the notion that herring learn from older fish where to go for successful and safe spawning. Supporting that theory is a new paper from the Ocean Modeling Forum (MacCall et al, 2018), which builds on the scientifically confirmed Entrainment Hypothesis (Petitgas et al, 2006: “Repeat spawners would have the knowledge of migration routes and would be those that are responsible for the persistence of the life cycle spatial organisation”).
In short, that paper (MacCall et al, 2018) suggests that first time spawners “Go With Older Fish” to the spots that those fish know, leading to the abandonment of once successful spawning sites and consolidating populations in times of decline. If true, it means that in times of population decline, young herring will abandon minor spawning areas to follow older fish, consolidating there with the appearance of healthy biomass while the regional meta-polulation has quietly declined. That consolidated stronghold becomes particularly vulnerable to fishing or to bad years, and also to the lost memory of a diversity of historically productive areas.
The paper points to the moment that many of us believe we have arrived at with the Sitka Sound herring population.
Subsistence users are not finding eggs of the quality and quantity that we know used to exist. Their struggle to harvest eggs in Sitka Sound must be considered a signal of emergency, and that emergency must be addressed immediately.
If decades of ADF&G management reports and Board of Fish meetings and accountability evasions are any indication, they will stay on the defensive, telling a broken story based on bad science and basic formulas. To believe in what ADF&G is doing with herring is to believe that the ocean is simple and unchanging. Their story is nothing compared to the one told by thousands of years of archaelogical records, the deep wisdom of traditional ecological knowledge, the pain of losing herring through the region in recent decades, the ever-deepening understanding of western science, and the hope and joy and nourishment that the herring bring to every living creature wherever they show up.
Please help guide ADF&G to a better way - keep an eye on the case (first court dates are on Feb. 19 and 20), let your legislator and the ADF&G commissioner know what you think, and lend your support in any other ways you can.
Peter Bradley,
peterbradleypeterbradley@gmail.com
