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Alaska's halibut civil war ramps up as charters fire new salvoThe Valdez-based Prince William Sound Charter Boat Association has taken direct aim at Alaska commercial halibut fishermen in the latest round of what has become Alaska’s civil war over flatfish. The organization is petitioning the state Board of Fisheries to kick commercial operators out of state waters in the Sound and off the Copper River coast, arguing that long-line fisheries cause serious "near-shore depletions" of halibut. Supporting the idea is the Alaska Outdoor Council, the state's largest organization representing recreational fishing and hunting interests. Council executive director Rod Arno said Monday a ban on commercial halibut fishing within Alaska's three-mile territorial limit on marine waters would finally "make the state step up to the plate. I know we're not going to get anywhere in the (North Pacific Fisheries Management) Council. So what can the state do to help these guys out?" Dave Pope, owner of Shark Tooth Charters in Valdez, said he's tired of commercial longline halibut fishermen using charter boats as spotters to find fish. Commercial fishermen track which charters do well on any given day, Pope said, and then steam to the area to set their skates of gear. A halibut skate is a 100-fathom (600-foot) line to which about 100 hooks are attached. Commercial fishermen anchor their skates to the bottom, leave them to "soak" for hours, and then return to haul in their catch. When they set on a halibut hole a charter has located, Pope said, anglers fishing aboard the charter can abandon any hope of catching fish. 'It's frustrating'A federal law that essentially gave commercial fishermen ownership of halibut only worsened the problem of competition between sport and commercial interests. Years ago, commercial fishermen competed against each other in derby-style fisheries lasting only a few days. In the name of safety, the federal government eliminated the derby fisheries and gave fishermen individual fishing quotas (IFQs). An IFQ entitles each commercial fishermen to a certain amount of fish each season. With an all-but guaranteed annual catch and no need to compete with fellow commercial fishermen, many try to work as near to port as possible to save to on fuel and maximize their profit. In this situation, it’s good business to use charters as halibut locators. "It's frustrating," Pope said. "The commercial guys are a pain in the ass." Earlier this year, commercial fishermen convinced the North Pacific Council to approve a "catch-share plan" to reduce the catch of anglers who hire charter boats. The plan would have cut daily bag limits for anglers from two fish per day to one in Cook Inlet and around the rim of the Gulf of Alaska. Charter boat operators claimed that would put many of them out of business. The Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency with final authority over North Pacific Council actions, eventually took a rare stand against the fish-regulating entity that refers to itself as "the family." NOAA refused to approve the catch-share plan as written and sent it back to the North Pacific Council for another look. What happens next remains to be seen. Earlier in the year, however, NOAA did approve a North Pacific Council plan to limit who qualified to run a charter business, an action that put about a third of them out of business overnight. Meanwhile, citing halibut stock declines in the Alaska Panhandle, NOAA approved a planned backed by the North Pacific Council and the International Pacific Halibut Commission to cut the charter limit in that region to one fish less than 37 inches in length. Left out of the discussion are the most important people, the owners of the fish, the public. The government holds in trust the fish for the public. It is a trust relationship with the public, not the commercial fishermen nor charter boat operators; they do not own the fish. IF the carter boat operators will sue the feds and whoever else on behalf of the public, the non commercial fisherman, so that the non commercial fisherman can obtain their share of the public’s fish the carter boat operator will win and win big. I have lived and commercially fished in Alaska for 35 years. I for one have never thought I owned the fish in the ocean, as gasman has stated, I have always thought my permits allowed me to harvest the publics resource for a fee. I have always thought I provided the public access to their resource. There are many people who prefer access to their resource at the grocery store. Gasman, like may others are making wild assumptions about me and my piers without know us or asking us. I don't begrudge people who want to charter their boats to the public, I do mind that charter boat owners and their advocates want to claim they should be viewed differently than commercial fisherman. The charter industry and the commercial fishing industry are the same and should be viewed as such. Both are providing the public access to their resource for a fee. Clearly the Prince William Charterboat Association does not represent many of the charterboats in Prince William Sound. Having been one for 15 years I think it is safe to say this bunch of part time yahoos from Valdez is throwing gasoline on the fire with no reasonable solution. My observation is the Valdez boats run way too far and claim hundreds of miles of territory as their own and then blame the few small long liners that actually fish in those vast areas as the problem. Maybe they should look in the mirror and in their log books to see how many days they pound the same areas over and over and then look to others to blame when the fish are not around any more. Shame on you Prince William Sound Charter Boat Association. Maybe you should stay inside the Sound the take responsiblity for your own poor fishing practices. Shame on you Craig Medred for writing a story that does noone any good. I think it is high time the charter industry took on some responsibility for the situation state wide of missing their harvest quotas. Put your big kid pants on and take on your part of the blame and realize like everything else nothing stays the same. Over quota harvests in your industry is your problem not others. However you are making them other peoples. Plenty of cuts in commercial harvests have been made especially in south east. What makes you so special as to avoid a cut...? As for commercial fisherman spotting your supposed hot holes they must be a different breed than i am used to. Apparently you are the master close to shore fishermen with a monopoly on the close to shore hot spots. Maybe the state should tag those fish as" easy money fish just for the charter boys". Mr. Pope has it backwards.The charter boats are the pain in the ass. If you wont to see the future of this argument just look at the cod fishery in New England, same plan now no fish. catch data shows almost 32 million lbs of quota was not harvested by the comm fishery since IFQ started almost 2 decades ago. It shows overharvest in other areas has not happened. Bycatch has always been calculated into the allowable catch and exploitable biomass before IFQ were issued. In 2C charters overharvested about 4 million lbs in just 7 years, while the comm fishery has been cut 80% with an underharvest of about 1.4 million lbs..... Redbrdee: Footnotes please! What area(s) are you referring to? Certainly not 2C or 3A. Area 2C commercial fisherpeople overharvested the fishery CEY by 7.67 million pounds between 2006 and 2010 due to IPHC's unwise application of "slow up - fast down" (SUFD). Source: IPHC Bluebooks 2006-2010, Yes, they harvested what was given them, but the folks giving it to them (the IPHC commissioners) were giving them more than science said was sustainable. IPHC has seen the folly and suspended Fast Down this year. Much more importantly, why should bycatch be taken off the top? What justifies the yearly removal of upwards of 10-12 million pounds of halibut biomass, poundage that represents the loss of 120% in lost yield to fisheries that actually target the resource, and in fact a removal that does not float with abundance? Why shouldn't bycatch as well as wastage come off the top of each individual sector's (sport, directed fishery, subsistence, non-directed fishery) allocations that all float with abundance, with the remainder being the allowable catch for each sector? This would force a public discussion on the value of the resource and an economically based decision on the best use of the resource while providing a financial incentive for all sectors to minimize removals that result in wasted fish. I have been fishing Halibut out of Cordova since 1976. In those days we fished sometimes inside 3 miles, most of us were in skiffs and small seiners that couldn't fish off shore. Now days I don't know any longliners in Cordova that fish halibut inside. Most of us fish on the edge of the Continental Shelf, 50-70 miles offshore. Craig already knows this but chooses to listen to blatent lies from people like Pope. Its a joke when Pope says the commercial guys seagull him. If were going to change State water reg's., and I don't think we should, I would support no commercial fishing of Halibut by longliners or charter in inside waters. Leave the fish for the locals. Come on, Medred...if you're going to write these pieces, either make an attempt to quote a commercial fisherman or two or simply label it is an opinion piece. The quotes you use from the charter owners deserve a response, yet none is provided. Are you that biased or are you simply derelict in making the effort to present a balanced article on what is actually happening in the Sound? My family has longlined in the Sound out of Whittier since 1967. I don't own any IFQs, but I do have a state sablefish permit for Prince William Sound (as do two of my family members). We longline in waters between 1,800' and 2,600', well beyond the reach of any sportfishing charter unless they are using electric reels. We've never set gear in water shallower than 1,200', and we have never been within 5 miles of any charter boat that I'm aware of. We intentionally target areas that sportfishermen avoid - both because that's where our target fish live and because it is in our best interest to be a good neighbor. We are aware of some productive grounds nearer port, but we've chosen to not fish those areas because they likely feed the near-port areas that sportfishermen sometimes target. Your selective use of quotes portrays a very negative, very inaccurate view of commercial fishermen. I'm not asking you to write articles sympathetic to commercial fishermen, but come on...you can do better than this. Again, if it's an opinion piece, just label it as such. Otherwise articles like this masquerading as journalism do a disservice to the Dispatch, its readers, and the very important discussions surrounding resource management and allocation. Dangerous move for guides by proposing to kick commercial longliners out of the State waters by claiming localized depletion. When we looked at the problem locals had catching a halibut to eat here in Sitka which led to the Sitka Local Area Management Plan for Halibut (LAMP) which was endorsed unanimously by the Alaska Board of Fisheries, the Advisory Panel to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and passed the Council unanimously, it became clear that the guided sport fishery was, if not the problem, then a big part of the problem. Thus, the plan restricted both the guided sport halibut and commercial longline harvest in the LAMP. Eventually even halibut subsistence effort was reduced in the LAMP. Halibut is managed under the Halibut Act from the shoreline out to the 200 mile limit. The State has no authority to regulate halibut only. It could ban all commercial fishing within the 3 mile limit, but it cannot selectively ban halibut fishing. This issue came up a couple of years ago with regard to banning of charter skipper and crew retention of halibut in Area 3A; the only way the State could do it was to ban skipper and crew retention of all species. On the topic of managing the guided recreational harvest within allocation, we should realize that failure to do so for 7 years in Area 2C is not the fault of guided recreational anglers or charter operators; rather it is the failure of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NMFS to implement guided recreational harvest restrictions that effectively manage guided recreational harvest within allocation. Finally, readers should know that halibut is the only federally managed fishery where guided and unguided recreational anglers are treated differently in terms of bag limits. This is problematic because harvest restrictions that target guided anglers result in leakage of fishing effort to the unguided sector. Area 2C is a case in point: in 2007 upon implementation of one fish any size and one fish under 32 (a.k.a. the minnow rule) for guided recreational anglers, unguided harvest jumped 56%. The bottom line is unless all users are managed to their allocation either the resource is harmed, or one user group (commercial fishermen, most likely) is going to get allocated less. I can see that the AOC is casting around saying "See, it's not my fault"! Look at those commercial guys and the NPFMC it their fault! Good idea for SE, PWS and GOA. Craig, I am also convinced that the charter (commercial) operators are also problematic. it is true that it took seven years for them to get within their guideline harvest. All commercial harvest should be prohibited in territorial waters. I have spent lots of time as a deck hand on a commercial longliner and am also a avid substance user of Halibut. I agree that prohibiting commercial halibut harvest in all inside waters would be a good choice as long as the commercial sport guy had to be held to the same standard. it is causing a serious depletion of the resource and the Alaska constitution was written so that resources like halibut belonged to the common user first and were to be managed so that the people could harvest them. |
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