Halibut Dilemma
Dear Editor: This letter is written for all those who appreciate halibut. If you eat halibut, catch halibut, or have an interest in a healthy halibut resource you need to be aware of what’s happened at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Sitka this past week. Simply put, halibut stocks in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) are down and the problem is slowly affecting all of us.
Even though the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted late Sunday to favor the status quo this problem will continue to persist to the detriment of the halibut resource and the coastal communities that depend on it.
The amount of harvestable halibut is steadily decreasing, the Seattle-based factory trawl fleet has managed to secure the same bycatch cap for the past 20 years. Year after year the Seattle based trawlers are allowed to kill and discard 1,000’s of metric tons of high value juvenile halibut in order to harvest low-value bottom fish which are sent to China for secondary processing. The trawlers were able to harvest and waste seven times more fish than the directed longline fishery was able to harvest. Last year 1 million (avg wt 4.8#) dead halibut were thrown overboard! The residents of the area (St. Paul) who have invested millions in CDQ’s (Community Development Quotas) and processing plants find themselves facing the very real possibility of having no directed halibut fishing in future years. Imagine the frustration of every sport, commercial, charter, and subsistence fisherman sitting on the beach watching the trawl fleet kill and discard the entire harvestable amount of halibut. I can only imagine the outrage if that same scenario played itself out in Sitka.
Unfortunately, this problem is heading our way! As the International Pacific Halibut Commission gets more sophisticated in monitoring halibut they’re finding that the BSAI is a halibut nursery ground where many of the fish leave on a southbound migration. Tagged BSAI halibut have been recovered as far south as Northern California. In fact, 70 percent have been recovered in other areas. There’s a good chance that the fish you caught at Vitskari Rocks originated in the Bering Sea! Since so many of these juveniles are killed and discarded by trawlers relentlessly scouring the BSAI, many halibut are never able to make the journey.
The Council needs to make the long-overdue decision to reduce the trawl bycatch cap by at least 50 percent. Public testimony at the meeting was overwhelmingly in favor of a reduction in bycatch. Whether the call for bycatch reductions gets any traction with the Council remains to be seen. The Seattle based factory trawl industry objects strenuously. They argue that they’ve tried to reduce bycatch, but cuts will bring financial hardship for the companies, crews, suppliers, Chinese processors and shareholders. Most of the commercial halibut fishermen who testified have seen their own halibut quotas reduced by 65 percent in the past 10 years. The trawlers have been able to enjoy the same quota for the past 20 years while all other user groups have responsibly shouldered the necessary conservation measures that ensure the health and sustainability of the halibut stocks.
The Council has the ability and moral responsibility to correct this festering problem before halibut become 100 percent utilized as trawl bycatch. A 50 percent bycatch cut will give the trawlers a strong incentive to clean up their act. I have great faith in the intelligence, ingenuity, and innovativeness of the trawlers to tackle this problem. When I look at the trawl fleets tied up during the winter in Seattle I am amazed at the size and complexity of these operations. These folks know how to solve problems! A 50 percent quota reduction would bring about short-term pain for long-term gain. The threat of having to tie up a $10-20 million boat because of going over your quota is strong incentive to innovate. Leaving big money sitting on the bottom is also strong motivation to find a solution. In this age of technological advancement there are solutions if you’re forced to look hard enough. Those vessels who could solve this challenge would be able to stay fishing and increase their catches while others who could not innovate would be forced out of the fishery. In our economy those who can’t adapt to shifting challenges eventually find themselves replaced by those who can.
The Council needs to act on this issue before the halibut stocks that have been an important part of the Alaskan coastal economy for the past 100 years are threatened. Reducing trawl bycatch is good management for the halibut stocks and for the livelihood of all who depend on it. It’s the right thing to do! The relationship of the Seattle trawl industry to Alaska is basically colonial. The resource and the money are extracted leaving an empty seabed with 1,000,000 dead juvenile halibut. Some Council members are heavily influenced by the trawl lobby and will always favor the Seattle fleet rather than the fish. I’m hoping a majority of Council members see the urgency and necessity in maintaining a healthy coastwide halibut resource!
Charlie Wilber, Sitka
F/V Alexa K
Sitka’s Tax Structure
Dear Editor: I am writing to provide a rebuttal to the recent argument advanced by the City Assessor Wendy Lawrence and City Administrator Mark Gorman that Sitka’s tax structure is “askew” because Sitka collects substantially more revenue from sales tax than property tax. (Assembly Work Session of May 27, 2015, as reported in the May 28 edition of the Sitka Sentinel.) The “average” figures that the Sentinel article referred to appear to be calculated from total revenue collected, rather than on a community-by-community basis. Weighting the figures based on revenue causes them to be highly biased towards Anchorage and a handful of high-revenue boroughs that do not collect sales tax at all. When compared to places without any sales tax, of course Sitka’s sales tax receipts appear high.
For more appropriate comparisons, I looked at the State of Alaska Department of Commerce’s community on-line database. It provides 2014 sales tax, property tax and total tax receipts (from all sources) from 56 local governments including cities, boroughs and unified city-boroughs. Of these, 13 report no sales OR property tax revenue at all; 7 entities (like Anchorage) collect property tax but not sales tax, while 11 collect sales tax but not property tax. This leaves 26 communities like Sitka that collect both property tax and sales tax. Based on the most recent available data (2014) these communities get between 34 percent-97 percent of their revenue from sales tax. Sitka’s 57 percent is 15th from the top out of 26 in terms of percentage of total revenue derived from sales tax. Our percentage of revenue derived from property tax (37 percent) is 11th out of 26. Other communities get between 3 percent-66 percent of their revenue from property tax. In other words, when compared to other Alaskan communities that impose both sales and property tax, the composition of Sitka’s tax structure is very typical.
Not that Sitka should strive to be “normal” or to be like any other city, but contrary to statements made in the article, our local tax structure is not “way off base” when compared to similar communities. Our 37 percent of revenue from property tax is actually slightly higher than the median (34 percent) and our 57 percent of revenue from sales tax slightly lower than the median (62 percent).
Tad Fujioka, Sitka
Dress Like a Bear
Dear Editor: Fortress of the Bear would like to thank the Bayview Pub for hosting a ‘‘dress like a bear’’ night in support of the organization.
They would also like to thank Harris Air, Anne’s Gavan Hill B&B, Allison’s Wonderland Cakes and the Hames Center for donating prizes to the raffle.
We had a great time and I hope everyone that attended did too.
Chris Turner for
Fortress of the Bear
