In reading the recent letters from some elements of the halibut charter fleet, the strategy of these charter operators is becoming apparent. Instead of addressing the chaos in the halibut industry (in both the sport/charter and commercial sectors) that their rapid growth is causing, the strategy seems to go something like this:
Talking Points: First, blame the commercial longline fleet for the charter fleet exceeding its guideline harvest level. Be relentless about this. Use the word “greedy” as often as possible when talking about commercial fishermen, and imply that commercial halibut fishermen are “millionaires” from Seattle.
Try to paint this as an “us against them” issue, Alaskans versus the Outsiders. Ignore the fact that hundreds of halibut IFQ holders are small boat Alaska fishermen, and there are a lot of them right here in Homer.
Imply that commercial longline fishermen are responsible for the halibut bycatch waste in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries. You don’t need to lie about this outright, just imply it with your word choice. We know this is false, but if we can tar them over the waste issue, most people won’t know the difference, and it helps to make them look bad.
Ignore the fact that commercial halibut fishermen have been at the forefront of efforts to make the trawl fisheries reduce their bycatch, it’s not our job to tell people that.
We need to ignore the problems within our industry that the current rush of entrants into the charter fishery is causing. Let’s paint ourselves as the champions of the public, and their right to go fishing. Let’s make this about them, not about us.
Let’s not lose sight of the prize. We want 50 percent of the allowable harvest of halibut in Alaska for ourselves (er ... actually, you should say it’s for the public), and we’re going to take it from the commercial IFQ fleet. We’re not going to tax ourselves to buy it, or develop our own IFQ system, or our own limited entry system, or any of that nonsense. We’re just going to make enough noise politically and we’re going to take it.
But, you say, that’s more than $300 million of IFQ value, and $70-80 million annually in lost revenue to the commercial halibut industry? That would bankrupt a lot of the fleet, you say? Why that’s no problem ... they’re all just greedy anyway, and besides, they’re Outsiders ... right? They deserve it.
I think that about sums up the strategy as I’m seeing it. I hope I’m wrong. I know reasonable people with all viewpoints are working on this issue, in ways that don’t make the news. It’s never easy when allocation of a fully utilized resource is on the table, but there’s got to be a better way than the “strategy” that’s apparent in so many of the letters I see.
I can’t even imagine how destructive that would be to this community.
Steve Brown lives in Homer. He is a commercial fisherman, who owns a small amount of halibut IFQ shares in Areas 3A and 3B.
