Fishermen who stay in the fishery will repay the loan over 30 years, beginning in 2006. The bill also includes a $75 million loan for fleet reduction in the Bering Sea-Aleutian Islands groundfish fishery (excluding pollock), which was added by Washington Sen. Patty Murray on behalf of her constituent fishermen from Puget Sound.
provisions go to the House next week as part of a resolution regarding the omnibus bill, which is expected to be approved.
Alaska also fared well in the final agricultural appropriations spending bill for FY '05 that passed the Senate on Nov. 20. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens jointly sought funding to aid the Alaska salmon industry.They obtained $1.108 million for the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service to fund research into development of alternative salmon products.
Some $1 million will go for overall salmon products including nutritional supplements with another $443,000 going for research and development into using salmon as a base for baby foods. The goal is to increase the market for salmon by encouraging the production of more "value-added" salmon products.
They also won approval for $1.06 million to fund seafood harvesting, processing and marketing programs. The pair also won language in the bill encouraging the Agricultural Marketing Service to make grants to both Kenai and to Alaska regional marketing organizations to promote the sale of "wild salmon."
The skipper and first mate of the trawler Unimak face serious consequences for deliberately under-reporting halibut bycatch.
On Nov. 10, Paul Ison and Daniel Skauge pleaded guilty in Anchorage Federal District Court, and Judge Robert Beistline ordered them each to spend four months in prison; pay fines of $25,000 and restitution of $25,000 to the International Pacific Halibut Commission; forego employment in the fishing industry for one year; and write an article for publication in a fishing journal explaining their criminal behavior.
Ison, 49, and Skauge, 49, of Woodinville, Wash., each pleaded guilty to violating the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act by filing false daily and weekly reports with the National Marine Fisheries Service concerning the amount of halibut caught by the Unimak while the vessel fished for rex sole, rock sole and other groundfish in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska in 2000.
During groundfish fishing operations, halibut are incidentally caught in groundfish trawl nets and are considered a "prohibited species" which may not be retained aboard vessels such as the Unimak.
Observers stationed aboard the trawlers measure the amount of groundfish and prohibited species, including halibut caught and report the information along to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
NMFS tracks this information on a daily basis and closes groundfish fisheries based on that information. Groundfish fisheries are immediately closed when bycatch quotas are met.
"Manipulation of bycatch reporting, by falsifying weekly production reports and causing sample bias in the observer reports, damages the government's ability to manage fisheries and can lead to serious over-harvesting of fish populations," said Special Agent Mike Adams of the NOAA Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement.
According to Adams, this "presorting" of halibut from the observer's samples, leads to significant under-reporting and the consequent extension of the groundfish season beyond when it would otherwise be ordered closed.
Alaskans are not the only ones worried about the potential for disaster by staging fish farms on the migratory routes of wild Pacific salmon. The Juneau Empire reports that the Skeena-Queen Charlotte Regional District Board voted 6-3 on Friday night to ask federal Canadian and British Columbia regulators to halt new salmon farms in their 7,696-square-mile district bordering Alaska's Inside Passage.
The board did say it would support lifting the moratorium once a "closed-containment" system is developed that is guaranteed to prevent the escape of farmed salmon into the wild.
The Empire noted that the Canadian government has already approved one farm this year in Anger Anchorage, near Prince Rupert, and two other projects remain under review.
The Kitkatla tribe has signed an agreement with Pan Fish, based in Campbell River, British Columbia, to develop a total of 10 farms in a 30-year period.
Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978 and has also designed and built gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and sablefish, and gillnets salmon in Upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist.
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