Mark-Select Fishing
Dear Editor: The Alaskan commercial troll fleet is under siege. We cite the the gut-punch of the treaty cuts and the bewildering push to impose mark-select fishing (MSF) upon the troll fleet by the previous administration. Treaty negotiations were conducted in secrecy, and they produced an outcome that trollers strongly oppose. We welcome the new administration, headed by Commissioner Vincent-Lang, who will be visiting Sitka on Tuesday, and we hope to establish a productive relationship built on mutual trust and good faith going forward.
The latest iteration of the Pacific Salmon Treaty is grossly unjust to trollers and must not be allowed to stand for 10 years. Trollers strongly recommend that it be renegotiated promptly. The $22 million in mitigation funds is viewed as a short-term stop-gap measure; mitigation is decidedly *not* the way trollers wish to proceed in future. What trollers want from treaty is simple: the opportunity to catch our fair share of abundance-based kings that we are legally entitled to. The previous administration (and even our treaty representatives) got rolled at treaty largely because they bought into the blinkered view that "Alaskans were catching British Columbia and Washington and Oregon's fish." But ask yourself: Where do these king salmon spend the vast majority of their lives getting big and fat and healthy but right here in Alaskan waters? Wait till we send our treaty neighbors the bill for 25 years of grazing fees.
If the treaty cannot be ratified unless the mitigation issue is resolved, then I and many trollers suggest refusing the mitigation money and insisting upon the treaty being renegotiated as soon as possible (with new troll treaty representatives who share the confidence of the troll fleet). Alaskan trollers should not be forced to go cap-in-hand panhandling for crumbs when our very livelihood is being stolen. Trollers should be granted the right and dignity of harvesting the very treaty stocks we have helped to rebuild at great personal sacrifice over the years. That's the fairest approach.
If the treaty cannot be revisited because of decisions that have already been made, and if trollers are stuck with accepting mitigation money or go without recompense of any kind, then I propose that trollers ask for direct payment of mitigation funds, shared equally fleet-wide amongst all participating trollers, in the amount proportional to our 80% stake in treaty losses (sportfishers receiving the other 20%, disbursed however they choose). As the largest stakeholder, by far, commercial trollers should be empowered to make determinative decisions on how the proportional share of funds are disbursed on our behalf. It is our ox that has been repeatedly gored, and we should stand polite but firm (and certainly not apologetic) about making that abundantly clear.
Trollers oppose mitigation funds being appropriated for any aspect of MSF, including purchasing trailers or studies on MSF. We stand unequivocally and adamantly opposed to this radical unnecessary approach. Why? Two big reasons:
1. It won't help.
MSF will diminish the troll fleets' opportunity and ability to harvest its legally mandated share of abundance-based king salmon. MSF is a counterproductive consolatory sop that promises something it cannot deliver, it wastefully hoovers up lots of money better spent elsewhere, and most tellingly, it derails Alaskan fisheries away from abundance-based management. MSF forces trollers to be complicit in culling wild kings to find the winning pull-tab of a mass-marked hatchery king. This is a policy so mind-bendingly wrong-headed, it makes many trollers sick to their stomachs.
MSF is a covert Trojan Horse that will kneecap commercial trollers' right and access to their legal share of treaty kings. We've all seen this movie before, and it didn't end well. After having had our second king-opener stolen in August of 2017, and after having no credible reason given for why this happened (and after 150 trollers and those sympathetic to our plight showed up to voice our displeasure at Centennial Hall in Sitka to no avail), trollers are feeling picked on. Re: MSF, ask yourself: How many good ideas do you know that are surreptitiously advanced, that seek to do an end-around subterfuge to the Board of Fisheries process in favor of implementation by bureaucratic fiat, that ask you to pay for something you don't want and that squelch all input from the stakeholders, including hatcheries? MSF will bake failure into the cake, and trollers will be blamed for it. No thank you.
2. It will hurt.
MSF is a dirty fishery. It's a pull-tab fishery. No study is necessary to establish that MSF will increase incidental mortality, the one thing that no troller wants to do. Consider the defects: a troller participating in a spring MSF fishery catches five legal-sized kings -- and has to release three? Or four? Or all of them? Who does that serve? How does that help? To say nothing of the difficulties of trying to see what ain't there (i.e. an adipose fin-clip). How exactly does one safely yard a thrashing king salmon aboard in a heaving sea to determine if it's the winning pull-tab you're searching for without endangering its survival if it isn't? Why incentivize bad behavior, and why promote that risk? It makes no sense. The troll fleet is united in opposing an expensive unnecessary MSF program that will violate good fisheries management and irresponsibly endanger the resource. MSF is wrong for trollers, and more importantly, it is wrong for king salmon, and we must not entertain much less support such a reckless venture.
And the capstone argument: We do NOT need MSF. We *already have* a management system that works. Historically, ADF&G employs a directed-fisheries approach that empowers fisheries biologists (not bureaucrats) to use empirical, science-based data to make targeted abundance-based management decisions. The troll fleet to a person complies with these decisions. Without objection. The approach is nimble, targeted, strategic and just.
The troll fleet has a long and proud history of making sacrifices in the interests of conservation of the king salmon resource. We are proud of the work we do, and we care. 89% of commercial trollers reside in Alaska. We live here. We are part of the fabric of our communities, and we have proven our committment to maintaining a healthy viable king resource. We are not seeking a handout here: We are only seeking the opportunity to catch our fair share of our legally mandated apportionment of kings. When the abundance index is low, we catch fewer kings; when it is high, we get more. If we can get the treaty to reflect this, that's fair -- and that's all we are asking.
David Richey, Sitka
PFD Bills
Dear Editor: I testified at the LIO Thursday night and this is what I said.
Why ... Why is our governor wanting to clean up the swamp? Those swampy things like education, ferries, swimming pools and towns? He is doing this because he and his financially well-off associates do not want a state income tax.
Yes ... I am fully aware that many people do not like taxes. Taxes are what makes a government. Those who have a little income will pay very little. Those who have a big income will pay much more.
Why are they quite so eager to increase the Permanent Fund Dividend amount? That is a bribe. That buys the vote of many who dearly need the dividend.
Some of you will question the validity of some of these statements. I highly suggest you read ‘‘Dark Money,’’ by Jane Meyer. This is a hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. If that does not enlighten your mind, then I suggest you read ‘‘The Corrosion of Conservatism, Why I Left the Right,’’ by Max Boot.
I have lived in Sitka for 78 years. After my dear wife Maryann and I had sold our Baranof Building Supply to Spenard Builders Supply, we traveled the world looking for a better place to live than Sitka.
There isn’t any place better than Sitka ...
Larry Calvin, Sitka
