The race for fish under the old management programs had resulted in ridiculously short seasons: 24 hour openers for halibut, 2 day openers for king crab and 5 days for snow crab. We were losing vessels and crewmen every year, our product quality was terrible, and sustainable resource management goals were practically impossible to meet.
Saving Seafood received the following letter to the editor from Edward Poulsen. Mr. Poulsen is Executive Director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange Policy Advocacy Committee (ICEPAC) which states that it represents approximately 70% of the harvesters that fish crab in the Bering Sea. ICEPAC says they are "grateful to the US Congress, North Pacific Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service and Alaska Department of Fish and Game for our catch share program which has allowed for our industry to stabilize privately instead of relying on government bailouts."
April 23, 2010
The recent Catch Shares controversy stirred up by letters from Kodiak and King Cove, Alaska are based on strong opinion but not supported by the facts. Alaska’s halibut and crab catch share programs were developed specifically to address those fisheries when they were near collapse. The race for fish under the old management programs had resulted in ridiculously short seasons: 24 hour openers for halibut, 2 day openers for king crab and 5 days for snow crab. We were losing vessels and crewmen every year, our product quality was terrible, and sustainable resource management goals were practically impossible to meet.
Since implementation of these two programs, the loss of vessels and crewmen’s lives has been halted and a significant measure of economic stability has been restored to every sector — including our fishing communities.
This isn’t just my opinion. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council conducts program reviews on a regular basis, and socio-economic analysis is a major aspect of those reviews, given Alaska’s dependence on the fisheries. There has also been a steady stream of program reviews by independent third parties — including two analyses of impacts from the crab program by a widely known University of Alaska seafood industry economist — on Kodiak and the Aleutians East Borough (where King Cove is located). In the case of the crab program, these studies all show that Kodiak and King Cove continue to receive their historic share of the landings (as guaranteed under the program), and that even after the necessary fleet consolidation, the Kodiak fleet is now harvesting a greater percentage of the TAC than they ever did during the derby fisheries.
Kodiak’s own 2010 Economic Profile, funded by the City and Borough of Kodiak, finds that “… Total retail sales within the city have increased more than 79% since 1994 (not adjusted for inflation). There is a close correlation between retail sales and the strength of local fisheries.” It is also difficult to understand how a community such as Kodiak can claim to be devastated by the halibut program when Kodiak has ranked in the top two ports for halibut IFQ landings each year since implementation of the catch share program in 1995. (Emphasis added).
Edward Poulsen