Halibut charter companies are already reeling from the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s decision to restrict the charter catch to one fish per customer in Area 3A from June 15-30.

Less than two weeks have passed since the IPHC made the decision, and already customers are complaining, changing plans or canceling altogether, said Donna Bondioli, the executive administrator of the Alaska Charter Association.

“There are people that have not booked yet because they wanted a different month than June,” she said. “There are some that just plain canceled.”

The association and others are working on a letter-writing campaign that has gathered some steam in hopes of curtailing the restriction before it becomes law.

Since the IPHC is a treaty organization between the United States and Canada, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez must sign the commission’s ruling before it becomes law.

Because of this, Capt. Scott Glosser of Captain Scott’s Sport Fishing in Homer said he has asked several concerned customers to take a wait-and-see approach.

“We still have a chance to stop it,” he said. “We’re trying to get people to send letters.”

So far, Glosser said, a couple hundred letters have been sent from Homer.

On Friday after its Thursday meeting, the Homer Chamber of Commerce board of directors also sent a letter to Rice, urging her to reject the commission’s decision.

The letter calls the commission’s decision a “devastating blow to our already struggling economy” and “an act of discrimination, favoring those that own a boat with a two fish limit while those that must rely on a charter vessel to access their halibut resource are restricted to one fish.”

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game jumped into the fray on Friday when it issued an emergency order prohibiting captains and crew from retaining fish while paying clients are on board.

Last Thursday, in a letter to Dr. James W. Balsiger, the regional administrator of the Alaska Region of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Fish and Game Acting Commissioner Denby Lloyd said the captain and crew prohibition will do more to reduce harvest levels in Area 3A than the IPHC action.

Glosser agreed, and said that prohibition and a proposed moratorium on new entrants to the fleet after December 2005 would be better alternatives to the one-fish plan.

In Washington D.C., the IPHC decision has also raised concerns from Alaska’s senior U.S. Senator, Ted Stevens.

“The International Pacific Halibut Commission does not have the same level of public comment and analysis as our North Pacific Fishery Management Council,” said Stevens in a statement released Wednesday by his communications director, Aaron Saunders. “I do understand that we have to be careful about maintaining a healthy halibut population but this should be done through an open process.”

Stevens said the council is analyzing several management measures for halibut and its

review will be completed in June.

“Our Council has a proven track record of sustainable fisheries management and has no overfished stocks,” he said. “It is not right for the Commission to make such a decision without input from them. I support further analysis of the harvest and input from both the

commercial and recreational sectors. This ruling can have an enormous impact on the economy and cannot be dealt with by an arbitrary decision.”

The IPHC decision also has at least one critic on the Homer City Council, Matt Shadle. Even though Shadle owns commercial halibut Individual Fishing Quota shares, he said he will propose a resolution apposing the IPHC decision.

“The resolution’s overall goal is to tell the secretary of state and (secretary of) commerce that the city of Homer opposes the one fish limit and it hopes it rescinds it,” Shadle said.

“I think it would be horrible not to weigh in on this. The one-fish limit is going to hurt the charter guys. I’m not a charter guy, I’m a commercial guy. But I think this is going to affect the town enough that I need to weigh in on this.”

Shadle’s comments point to a silver lining to a cloud of debate on this issue. The commercial fishing versus charter fishing conflict that is prevalent in Southeast Alaska is somewhat muted in the Homer area.

The main reason for this, Shadle said, is that the commercial fleet and charter fleet generally don’t fish the same grounds here like they do in Southeast.

Bondioli agreed, saying she is quick to make a distinction between Homer area longliners and statewide commercial fishing politics.

But several Homer-area charters now agree that the byproduct of the conflict in Southeast Alaska has now spread to Southcentral.

Ben Stuart can be reached at ben.stuart@homernews.com.