A News Miner article of intrest for halibut chasers on the board... Sportsmen on the short end of the stick once again.
One fish, two fish.
Published January 27, 2007
No fishermen has ever pulled a halibut from the waters of Interior Alaska, but plenty of Fairbanksans take an interest in that mighty ocean flatfish. Unfortunately, they could soon have less reason to be interested.
A regulatory commission last week voted to cut back the daily catch limit on charter boats off much of Alaska’s coastline to one fish per person for the last half of June.
Many Fairbankans, and their stampede of annual summer visitors, catch halibut from charter boats, and they’ve already been paying hefty sums for the none-to-generous opportunity to catch two fish in a day.
That’s the same limit that applies to people on private boats, unless you live in a rural area or are a member a Native tribe with traditional use of halibut in an area. Then it’s 20 per day.
The new one-fish rule comes courtesy of the International Pacific Halibut Commission, a six-member group — half Canadian and half American — with staff headquarters at the University of Washington in Seattle. It met in British Columbia last week.
The commission’s action is likely to become regulation unless rejected by top officials at the federal departments of Commerce or State.
The commission acted because charter boat fishing has grown rapidly in recent years and exceeded some guidelines set by another regulatory body, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
In the Gulf of Alaska, commercial fishing boats took 24.95 million pounds of halibut in 2006. The charter boats took about 3.95 million pounds.
The charter take was about 8 percent above the North Pacific council’s guideline level of 3.65 million pounds, though. The previous year, charters exceeded the guideline by just 1 percent, after many years of staying well below it.
This doesn’t seem like great reason for alarm.
The statistics from Southeast Alaska, while of less interest to Fairbanks, better explain some of the concern from regulators and commercial fishermen.
In Southeast waters, the commercial take was 10.34 million pounds and the charter take was more than 2 million pounds in 2006. The charter take was at least 42 percent above the North Pacific council’s guideline harvest of 1.43 million pounds. That was on top of a 36 percent exceedance in 2005.
Commercial halibut fishermen in Alaska work under individual fishing quotas. Each holder of an individual quota can catch a precise share of the total catch quota and no more.
Charter boats aren’t assigned individual “Q.” At least not yet. Efforts are well underway to apply the same system to them, but they are not quite final.
As a result, the recent growth in charter boat harvests has had to come out of the total quota allowed to commercial fishermen. This reallocation of the resource hasn’t made the commercial “Q” holders happy, and understandably so.
The North Pacific council indicated that it would not be able to respond to this unhappiness until at least 2008, given its public process requirements.
So the halibut commission stepped in. The “overharvesting” undermines the commission’s goals for the halibut populations, it said in a news release.
Whether this is actually overharvesting is debatable. The guidelines are exactly that — guidelines. They are not hard caps.
The increased charter take is clearly forcing a reallocation, though. The question is whether that reallocation is a bad thing.
Answers to that question depend on the value and values that we assign to fish harvests. Commercial fishermen support families and communities with their jobs. Charter boat fishermen do the same, and the economic return per fish is much higher. If we just had an economic judgment to make, the charter boats would win.
But that’s not the way to resolve this argument. It’s not a bidding contest.
We must recognize the values–economic, spiritual, social–that come from personally participating in Alaska’s fishing opportunities. Personal use is arguably the highest use of Alaska’s wild resources. It’s part of what makes this state unique and precious.
To protect a meaningful opportunity for personal use of halibut, federal managers should not clamp down so hard on charters that they become one fish this side of sightseeing tours. And managers shouldn’t discriminate against individuals just because they drop their lines from charter boats instead of private boats.
The halibut commission’s decision goes too far on both scores. If harvest on charter boats is rising and causing some reallocation, so be it. These boats are the one way the common Alaskan can find a halibut … or two.
http://newsminer.com/2007/01/27/4756/ (ftp://http://newsminer.com/2007/01/27/4756/)
