Shawn Dochtermann has largely waged the fight on behalf of crew compensation on his own for the last six years, but a study for the U.S. Department of Commerce released in March shows that he's not alone.
An ethnographic study based on interviews with 134 current and former participants in the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands crab fishery revealed widespread discontent about how crew compensation has evolved under the rationalized program that awarded harvest shares to vessel owners, processers, Western Alaska communities and captains.
Skippers received 3 percent of the harvest share under the program. Rank-and-file crew received none. The top-end range of original proposals considered in 2002 were for captains and crew to receive either 20 percent or their historical split of about 35 percent of the harvest shares.
Dochtermann, executive director of the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands Crewman's Association, has fiercely protested the share allocations determined by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in 2002 and the negative effects on crew since 2005 caused by lost jobs and diminished pay as a percentage of the harvest.
The Crewman's Association represents 170 skippers and crew, with between 65 and 80 active in the crab fisheries and more than 2,500 years combined experience. The crew impact study, authored by researchers from University of Washington, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, largely backs up Dochtermann's complaints on behalf of crew.
Read the complete story from The Alaska Journal of Commerce.