Sue Aspelund, special assistant to the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that the state began by distributing an op-ed piece written by Commissioner McKie Campbell that spelled out the state’s goals for Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries.
The op-ed piece states, “We believe that most harvesters, processors, and community members would share the state’s three goals for managing our fisheries: 1. Manage for optimum sustained yield in a manner that minimizes bycatch; 2. Manage for the greatest value in each fishery; and 3. Help Alaskans capture the greatest possible share of that value.”
Aspelund said the state has some ideas about how to reach those goals, but has not yet put anything in writing until they pass muster with the state Department of Law.
“There’s no sense in distributing them and then have them panned by the Attorney General’s office,” she said.
However, Aspelund said that the state is willing to talk about its plans with stakeholders and counter some of the criticism commonly heard.
“There’s a real strong contingent that sees rationalization as privatization, and they don’t want it,” she noted. “What we tried to explain is that our goals don’t really support the contention that it’s privatization.
Aspelund covered the sorts of things being discussed at the state level.
“We’re evaluating things like limited duration of shares so that the quota shares don’t become a permanent property right like we’ve seen in some of the other rationalization programs,” she said. “By having a limited duration you can take them to the bank, you can get financing on them. We want them to be of a long enough term that it enables that, but that it would decrease windfall profits at initial issuance, it would keep the price of shares depressed so that we could better assure entry level access and meet some other social goals that were inconsistent with pure privatization of a resource while still enabling the benefits of a rationalization system: slowing down the race for fish, allowing for better value-added opportunities, bycatch avoidance, safety, and all of those other things you always hear.”
Campbell, Aspelund, and other participants at the Comfish Kodiak meeting were prepared to get into specifics of the possible plans for state waters, but the discussion was driven by the stakeholders and what they wanted to talk about, which apparently was the federal plans, according to Aspelund.
“We didn’t really get into state fisheries, which we were surprised about,” she said. “Ed Dersham was there with us and was willing to talk about how we might manage the parallel fishery inside three miles, in response to or in coordination with rationalization of the federal program, but we didn’t ever really get that far. The whole discussion was centered on the federal rationalization process. We didn’t really have an opportunity to get into some of the options that the state might consider.”
Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She also designs and builds gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and gillnets salmon in upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist. She can be reached at cristy-fry@excite.com.
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