Many in Alaska would like to believe the outlaw Arne Fuglvog -- an aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, this week exposed as a fish pirate -- is an aberration. Since statehood in 1959, residents have prided themselves on the management of complex, mixed-stock Alaska fisheries. A large part of the drive for statehood, in fact, hinged on the myth that incompetent federal biologists and fish traps owned by wealthy and powerful Seattle interests had devastated the fisheries of the Alaska Territory.

The reality was somewhat more complex. Climate played a key role in a major downturn in Alaska salmon runs for a couple decades from the 1950s into the 1970s. Even with the traps gone, salmon runs remained low into the 1970s when the young state developed what would become a new, national model for fisheries management, after voters approved a constitutional amendment that allowed for passage of what was called the "Limited Entry Act.''

The act capped the number of salmon fishermen in Alaska. By limiting competition, the act boosted a lot of fishermen from the edge of poverty to wealth or near to it. But that was not the real intent.

The real intent was to make commercial fishermen a class of professionals interested in the long-term health of the resources supporting them. Limited entry was widely praised, a shining path, as Alaska salmon harvests climbed from about 25 million fish per year when it was enacted in 1975 to more than 200 million fish per year two decades later. Climate changes that helped boost salmon numbers were largely ignored. Overlooked, too, were the management efforts of Alaska Department and Fish and Game biologists, who'd sometimes had their lives threatened by fishermen told they couldn't fish because runs needed to be protected.

Instead there arose the myth of the frugal fishermen working with scientists to carefully manage state fisheries. That myth fueled a drive for limited entry in more Alaska fisheries, both inshore and off. Herring, crab, halibut and sablefish were all limited. There was opposition to some of this, but it was pushed back.

Clarence Pautzke, the former executive director of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, praised that federal body for its "courage'' in following the state's lead in salmon management by imposing a form of limited entry -- individual fishing quotas or IFQs -- in federal fisheries off Alaska's coast.

Preaching the quota system while abusing it

Born and reared in a fishing family in the Southeast Alaska community of Petersburg, where fishing is king, Arne Fuglvog was one of the many vocal backers of the IFQ concept, which basically gave fishermen an ownership interest in the fisheries. In a 2002 interview with Habitat Media, he praised Individual Transferable Quotas, an IFQ variant.

Implemented by the federal government to limit the number of fishermen pursuing halibut and sablefish, ITQs were "the biggest positive ... in regards to the conservation of the resource," Fuglvog said. "We were exceeding the TAC (total allowable catch) fairly regularly, even for halibut, more so for sable fish than halibut. But since ITQs, we have not exceeded the TAC in any area, even once."

What Fuglvog didn't tell Habitat Media at the time was that he was, federal officials now charge, regularly and secretly engaged in ripping off the very management system of which he spoke so highly.

The management system itself was and is pretty simple. For sablefish, for instance, scientists divide the Gulf of Alaska into five fishing zones stretching from the Aleutian Islands in the west to the Panhandle in the east. The scientists then calculate the biomass of each zone, determine how many pounds of fish can be produced in the zone each year, and set a catch limit equal to what the zone can basically grow in a season.

This catch limit is then divvied up between the relatively small number of fishermen holding fishing quotas.

The key to the system working rests in fishermen sticking to their zones and staying within their quotas.

Fuglvog has now confessed that he didn't.