Pacific Salmon Treaty
Dear Editor: Four wolves and a sheep solemnly sit down to a sober vote on what’s for dinner. (And – surprise! – the sheep gets devoured again.)
This is the malign dynamic that exists in the Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST) negotiations, and Alaska is decidely the sheep. If we accept the current treaty as presently configured, which calls for yet more arbitrary and draconian and permanent king salmon cuts for our state, we Alaskans are chumps. Yes, chumps. And we will get rolled. Again. And by “we,” I mean every citizen in Southeast Alaska, because this treaty affects all Alaskans in our region.
True, treaty cuts affect commercial trollers most. We are the canary in the coalmine most likely to turn turtle by this onslaught of cuts. Our very livelihoods are in peril. We feel it keenly.
But when treaty cuts are imposed on Alaska’s harvest share of kings, yet again, every Alaskan’s piece of the king pie gets smaller. Sports. Charter. Subsistence. Seiners. Gillnetters. To say nothing of the proud heritage of coastal towns like Sitka and Craig and Yakutat and Ketchikan and Wrangell and Petersburg and Hoonah and Juneau who have trollers living within their communities, contributing to the wealth and richness and vibrancy of life, as do 85 percent of Alaska’s commercial trollers. We live here. We are your friends and neighbors. Someone’s gotta pay fish taxes and moorage and electric and buy groceries and gear and give wayward deckhands something to grumble about and make sure the lights stay on at the PBar and add local color to a town. If commercial trollers are driven out of business, where does that leave Sitka, where we feel these cuts most deeply? True fact: We are all in the same king boat together, guys, whether we like it or not.
Is this hyperbole? Don’t think so. Consider:
The treaty process is broken and has been for some time. It is skewed unfairly against Alaska attaining our rightful harvest share of kings. How do we know this? One telling data point: Since 2009, when Alaska gave up yet another 15 percent in the interests of conservation, Alaska has seen a 63 percent reduction in its historical harvest share of kings, whereas Washington and Oregon, as documented by the Alaskan Congressional delegation, has seen an increase in its harvest share of 41 percent. I ain’t real good at math, but I believe that’s a hundred-plus-percent swing.
Here’s the real gut-punch: Alaska’s fair share of kings are being reallocated elsewhere. This, friends, is how you legally steal a resource: bake unfairness into the cake.
How unfair? Why unfair?
Harvest levels are based upon a figure called the abundance index (AI), which is a fancy way of saying this is what the best minds in fisheries management think the numbers on king returns will be (the biologists, not the bureaucrats, understand; bureaucrats are the sorts of people who cavalierly rescind the second king opener in August of last year and cannot, to this very day, sensibly explain why).
Historically, our Alaskan harvest share was roughly 335,000 kings during the base-period years from ’79-’82, when AI is pegged at 1.0. In 1985, when the treaty was originally signed, Alaskan trollers agreed to a cut right from jumps despite abundance ranges well above 1.0 in the years ‘85-’89 (1.3-2.1) in the interests of rebuilding stocks. So Alaskans, as has long been our proud and commendable history in conservation of the king resource, willingly agreed to cuts to rebuild stocks, over and over again, with the understanding that, later, when abundance is high, fairness demands that we will get those fish back, as per the treaty language to “provide optimum production.”
So what happened? That promise has been betrayed. The ratchet only turns one way for Alaska. The cuts kept coming, irrespective of abundance. Alaskans paid for the virtue of conserving the king resource by seeing the other parties in the treaty reap the benefits without fairly sharing the burdens. Heads you win, tails I lose. We got rolled in treaty by having our good-faith conservation stewardship used against us. Repeatedly.
Another salient data point: In 2015, despite clear early evidence of extraordinary Chinook abundance and aggressive efforts by Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game, the other treaty stakeholders cried bloody murder and prevented Alaskans (once again) from harvesting our fair share of kings, bottling up our quota share well short of where it should have been. And the obscene epilogue? Tens of thousands of unharvested king salmon wound up rotting, yes shamefully rotting, in landfills in Washington. (And: history proved our biologists were bang-on in their AI estimation. Again.)
So where are we now in this treaty mess? It’s actually worse. As of now, if Alaska agrees to the present treaty language, Alaska cannot – I repeat – cannot win; it can only lose less on a pathetic sliding scale. How so? Treaty language stipulates that Alaska must accept cuts irrespective of AI. Yeah, lemme repeat that: Alaska suffers severe cuts whether there’s lots of kings or not. Tails you win, heads I lose.
The rap sheet already reads as follows: If AI meets or exceeds 1.5, Alaska must accept a 49 percent reduction in its harvest share; if AI falls between 1.5 and 1.2, it’s a 55 percent reduction; and if AI falls below 1.2, Alaska must swallow a stupendous 63 percent reduction! More bad news: The latest iteration of the treaty asks Alaska to once again accept another 7.5 percent cut. Drastic cuts are the forced gruel Alaskans must choke down no matter what if we accept this treaty! There is no benefit – none – for Alaska’s sacrifices to rebuild king stocks. This is wrong, and it is unjust.
Most of the fish that return south spend the majority of their lives, three to five years, getting big and fat and healthy right up here in the Gulf of Alaska. Perhaps we should start charging grazing fees? It’s insulting that Alaska is compelled to bow and scrape and go hat-in-hand before our treaty partners merely to accept drastic cuts to our harvest share, all while acting as a rearing ground for our treaty partners to catch more kings. Who, exactly, is doing who a favor here?
I could go on (accurate data in Alaska, poor and self-serving data elsewhere; catch limits for Alaska, no catch limit on inside waters for BC, and none at all for Washington, etc.), but you get the idea.
Enough is enough. So what do we want?
Redress of the unfair, arbitrary and punitive terms of the PST for Alaskans. Specifically, we want Gov. Walker to show executive leadership and refuse to sign the present treaty. (The current PST runs until 2019, so there is no reason – none – why this treaty must be signed now. To do so just means accepting Alaska’s being railroaded with eyes wide open. Again.)
We want Gov. Walker to intercede on our behalf to not just review but reform the treaty process. Fairness and civic pride as an Alaskan demands as much. Take it up to the Sec. of Commerce or the President if need be. Ideally, Alaskan trollers can return to harvesting our historic share based upon a fairly determined AI and have done. When kings are abundant, we get more; when kings are less abundant, we get less – precisely as prudent stewardship of the resource dictates. No more, no less. But the imposed cuts under which we presently suffer are arbitrary and punitive and transparently unfair in asking Alaska to shoulder all of the burdens of conservation while reaping none of the benefits.
We ain’t asking for a handout or charity. It’s galling that we must raise hell just to receive our fair share of king salmon without being jobbed at every turn, but there it is.
People often lament, “Yeah, it sucks, but what can I do?” I will tell you. You can show up to the rally at Eliason Harbor at 2 p.m. this Sunday. Be you a troller or a sportsfisher or just a concerned citizen. Make your voice and your face and your solidarity heard and felt by your community and by Gov. Walker’s administration.
Everyone has a stake in king salmon, the life’s-blood of Sitka. We all choose to live here because we love this magical place, and, I am unashamed to say, we need you. Come join us. It’ll be fun. And you’ll feel a sense of civic pride for having done so.
After all, how often do you have the opportunity to hoot and holler in common cause with your fellow neighbor? Who knows, it might even work!
David Richey, F/V Albee Rose
