* Fishing Safety Training Grants. This provision authorizes up to $3 million annually for regional safety training programs. The Coast Guard bill makes training mandatory for vessel operators and also takes into account their years of experience as captains. It also requires vessel operators to take a refresher course every five years. Participation by crew members would be voluntary, and both operators and crew members would receive certificates of participation.

* Fishing Safety Research Grant. The bill adds fishing safety research to the Coast Guard's annual research and development efforts. Research topics eligible for funding would include vessel design, emergency and survival equipment, communications devices, de-icing and severe weather technology, and safety enhancements for vessel monitoring systems.

* Inspections and Equipment. The bill requires fishing boats to keep logs of the onboard safety drills required under existing law. In addition, all federally permitted vessels would be required to undergo a dockside inspection twice within a five-year period.

* Vessel Safety Standards. New fishing vessels 50 feet or more in length, or those that undergo major alteration after the bill is signed into law, would have to be constructed and maintained in accordance with the standards of a recognized classification society such as the American Bureau of Shipping. Also, any new fishing vessel over 79 feet would have to obtain a "load line."

The bill authorizes $10 billion in funding for the Coast Guard for fiscal year 2010, an increase of $200 million. It passed the House by a vote of 385-11.

Also on Capitol Hill, Senator Lisa Murkowski announced senate passage of a funding bill that includes a number of appropriations for Alaskan fisheries research and management.

The bill includes:

$300,000 for Bering Sea crab management and research, needed to conduct biological research and stock surveys and to gather fishery information in the remote areas of the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea.

$500,000 for U.S./Canada Yukon River salmon agreement studies, to provide quantitative measures of stock composition, abundance, escapement, stock distribution, and subsistence harvest.

$300,000 for seal and Stellar sea lion biological research, to allow for the monitoring of ice seal populations in Native villages and research on species delineation and the genetics of harbor seals, and to gain a better understanding of the population declines and to provide for population restoration.

$300,000 to UAF for extended continental shelf mapping, for the planning and engineering phase of a project to collect the bathymetric data necessary to support a U.S. claim to an "extended continental shelf" based on the "natural prolongation" of the continental shelf beyond their present exclusive economic zone. The study would determine the most appropriate instruments to deploy to conduct the mapping and provide a cost estimate of the project.

The bill now goes to a House/Senate committee for reconciliation.

Forty thousand Atlantic salmon escaped from a fish farm near Queen Charlotte Strait in British Columbia last month when workers removing dead fish from the pen created a hole.

The fish escaped on a Wednesday night, but a recapture vessel was not able to begin fishing until Thursday morning, by which time commercial gillnetters 25 miles away had begun catching the invasive species.

After two days of fishing, the recapture vessel had caught 1,100 of the escaped fish.

Despite initial assurances from the industry that Atlantic salmon could not survive or breed in B.C. waters, escaped farm fish have been found in 80 B.C. rivers. Populations of juvenile Atlantic salmon have been found in three rivers, including the Tsitika, in the same area as the latest escape.

Hundreds of escaped Atlantic salmon have been caught in Alaska's marine waters over the past decade, one as far north as the Bering Sea. Of greatest concern are the several adults that have been captured in Alaska Pacific salmon spawning streams since 1998. Fisheries scientists are concerned that Atlantic salmon may become established in Alaska by out-competing wild Pacific salmon, and rainbow and steelhead trout in areas where stocks or salmon spawning habitats are stressed.

Unlike Pacific salmon, Atlantic salmon do not die after spawning, and are capable of breeding up to four times.

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 realist468@gmail.com.