Saving Seafood

AL BURCH: Governor should recognize value of Alaska groundfish industry

July 25, 2016 — My brother and I were some of the pioneers of the trawl fishery here in Kodiak. We started from scratch when the United States claimed a 200-mile zone. I remember the foreign fleets off our shores, and once they were replaced by U.S. vessels like ours, I remember how the trawl fishery for pollock and cod helped put the town back on its feet after the collapse of the crab and shrimp fisheries in the late 1970s. I am proud of the fact that the fishery I helped pioneer now supports a year-round fishing economy here in Kodiak.

Although I am retired now, I continue to follow how the fishery is run. And I am concerned.

In the past, when we were struggling to build the fishery, the state of Alaska was on our side. We worked hard together to build a fishery that was managed by scientific principles and research, with no overfishing. We pioneered putting observers on U.S. vessels, and unlike a lot of other fisheries here in Alaska we have had observers for roughly 30 years. We worked alongside the state and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to meet conservation and management challenges together, to ensure practical solutions that ensured an economically sustainable fishery for Kodiak and other Alaska coastal towns.

But now it seems that the state of Alaska is not concerned about the impacts of its decisions on the hard-working participants in this fishery and communities like mine that are dependent on groundfish.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: Council convenes in Kodiak with Gulf catch shares in focus

June 2, 2016 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Kodiak from June 6-14 to hear a discussion paper that has enraged the trawl industry since late 2015.

Two proposals are engineered to prevent harmful impacts such as the job losses and high cost of entry that have occurred under previous such programs in halibut and crab.

This is an official state position, and the North Pacific council holds a six-member majority of the 11-member body that governs federal Alaska waters.

Gov. Bill Walker’s administration prioritizes coastal communities’ economic prospects during the state’s oil-driven financial calamity. Part of that stance concerns keeping the fishing industry, the state’s largest private employer, in Alaskan fishermen’s hands.

“The greatest challenge facing fishery managers and communities to date has been how to adequately protect communities and working fishermen from the effects of fisheries privatization, notably excessive consolidation and concentration of fishing privileges, crew job loss, rising entry costs, absentee ownership of quota and high leasing fees, and the flight of fishing rights and wealth from fishery dependent communities,” the council’s discussion paper reads. “Collectively, these impacts are altering and in some cases severing the connection between Alaska coastal communities and fisheries.”

For years, the council has mulled over a regulations to install catch shares in the Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries. Mainly trawlers go after this fishery, which includes pollock, a midwater fish, and species such as Pacific cod and arrowtooth flounder, which are bottom, or pelagic, fish.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

North Pacific Fishery Management Council April 2016 Newsletter

April 18, 2016 — The following was released by the NPFMC:

The Council Newsletter is now available online. Documents, handouts, and motions are still available through links on that meeting’s Agenda.

Our next scheduled meeting will be in Kodiak, Alaska the week of June 6, 2016 at the Kodiak Harbor Convention Center.

ALASKA: Senator Dan Sullivan getting immersed in fishery issues in Congress

April 11, 2016 — KODIAK, Alaska — Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has scored seats on nearly every congressional committee that deals with issues on, over and under the oceans, fulfilling a commitment he made to Kodiak when he ran for office two years ago.

When he visited Kodiak last week, Sullivan ticked off a list of fishery-related actions he’s had a hand in getting accomplished over the last year: passage of an enforcement act to combat global fish pirating and seafood fraud; adding language to bills that lift pricey classification requirements on new fishing vessels; and a one-year water discharge exemption so fishermen don’t need special permits to hose down their decks.

He said he is “working to make sure new regulations don’t place an undue burden on the industry.

See the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: Lawmakers rewrite fisheries tax bill

April 8, 2016 — JUNEAU, Alaska — A House fisheries committee advanced a rewrite of Gov. Bill Walker’s fisheries tax bill on Tuesday, diverting half of the potential revenue into a seafood marketing fund.

The bill, one of six proposed taxes on industries from Walker, could raise an additional $18 million in revenue by adding a 1-percent tax increase to portions of the commercial fishing industry.

The new language requires that one-half of the tax increase be deposited into a newly created Alaska Seafood Marketing Fund. The Legislature also is given the option to appropriate the marketing fund to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Seafood marketing has been an ongoing fight in the Legislature. Both the House and the Senate cut the marketing institute’s budget in their respective versions of the state operating budget. Lawmakers said they wanted to see the institute become self-sustaining, with the Senate declaring that it wanted to see a plan by 2017 on how the institute would wean itself off of the general fund by 2019. The operating budget has yet to be finalized.

After the committee voted to move the bill to House Finance, chair Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, asked for an update from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Alaska Department of Revenue on taxing issues raised during public testimony on the bill.

See the full story at Homer News