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Pacific Fishing (ISSN 0195-6515) is published 12 times a year (monthly) by Pacific Fishing Magazine. Editorial, Circulation, and Advertising offices at 1000 Andover Park East, Seattle, WA 98188, U.S.A. Telephone (206) 324-5644. ■■ Subscriptions: One-year rate for U.S., $18.75, two-year $30.75, three-year $39.75; Canadian subscriptions paid in U.S. funds add $10 per year. Canadian subscriptions paid in Canadian funds add $10 per year. Other foreign surface is $36 per year; foreign airmail is $84 per year. ■■ The publisher of Pacific Fishing makes no warranty, express or implied, nor assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the information contained in Pacific Fishing. ■■ Periodicals postage paid at Seattle, Washington. Postmaster: Send address changes to Pacific Fishing, 1000 Andover Park East, Seattle, WA 98188. Copyright © 2010 by Pacific Fishing Magazine. Contents may not be reproduced without permission. POST OFFICE: Please send address changes to Pacific Fishing, 1000 Andover Park East, Seattle, WA 98188

THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE FOR FISHERMEN

VOLUME XXXI, NO. 8 • AUGUST 2010

IN THIS ISSUE Editor's note®

INSIDE:

Don McManman

NOAA’s mess:NOAA’s mess:Page 5Page 5

On the cover:

Top TV in Gitmo:Top TV in Gitmo: Page 10 Page 10

Pacific Seafood suit:Pacific Seafood suit:Page 13Page 13

Groundfish ratz debate:Groundfish ratz debate:Page 18Page 18

Jesse Welsh-Armer photographed this troller near Kruzof Island in Southeast during the summer of 2008.

Several years ago, I had a medical condition that left me nearly crippled. So I did what I do best: felt sorry for myself.

At least until I spent a few minutes in the waiting room of a medical school’s Neurology Clinic. There, I saw true agony in my fellow patients. I also saw grace and courage.

I left — not cured — but understanding how lucky I was. Reality is a great palliative.

Earlier this year, I was talking with a fisherman out of Astoria. He recount-ed a litany of bad breaks, bad judgment, and thoroughly bad enforcement by NOAA. The guy seemed crushed. Any direction he looked, he saw a black wall. Despair.

I thought about the Astoria guy a few weeks ago when I was at the Grants Pass horse track. I became re-acquainted with Ralph Garcia, who’s raced pretty much everywhere in the West.

As a kid, he fell in with the wrong crowd. So his mother shipped him out to a Califor-nia ranch. Ralph was on his own. He was 13.

Three years later, Ralph got his first mount, at Golden Gate Fields near San Francisco. H e b e g a n a d a n g e ro u s , grueling life.

Jockeys don’t wear much more protection than a kid at a hamburger joint. Yet jockeys must guide 1,200 pounds of muscle at speeds reaching 40 mph. You’re surrounded by a half-dozen other horses, some literally breathing down your neck.

If you’re particularly unlucky, you could fall and the horses behind will trample you to death. Or your horse could fall and break your back. Or you could be slammed into a rail like a bug on a windshield.

Health insurance? None. You ride in the dust when it’s 100 degrees or in the mud when it’s 38. You move constantly, from track to track. But you don’t miss home because you don’t have one.

I asked Garcia how many bones he’s broken. He had to stop and think. “Five. I’ve been lucky.” He meant it. Unlucky jockeys break five ribs in a single fall.

But 10 years ago, he got a job at a breeding operation in Southern Oregon, breaking green horses. Easy work for a jockey. Then came the economic recession. The breeder went out of business, and Garcia had no job.

There was only one option: “A buddy is telling me I’m nuts if I want to ride again, but I have a family to support.”

Simple as that. He’s 52.Fishermen and jockeys: Both lead harsh lives. Both do what must be done,

with grace, regardless of despair. But Garcia has one advantage over fishermen: You can’t drown on a race course. �

a I e d s e

e r -s

h n

h Ralph Garcia and daughters Sierra, left, and Shyann, right, also a jockey. Wife Jackie stands behind. Dan Guthrie photo

GraceGrace

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CORDOVA DISTRICTFISHERMEN UNITED

UNITED FISHERMEN OF ALASKA

WASHINGTON DUNGENESSCRAB FISHERMEN’S ASSOC.

WESTERN FISHBOAT OWNERS ASSOC.

STATS PACK

Fish harvesting jobs in Alaska have shown two distinct trends over the past nine years. From 2000 to 2002, employment numbers fell dramatically. Then, fishing jobs stabilized and recovered a bit through 2008.

Over the entire period, harvesting employment lost 1,436 jobs, a 16.5 percent decrease. That’s just one of the fishing facts found in the state Labor Department’s monthly publication “Alaska Economic Trends,” which focuses on employment in Alaska’s seafood industry.

Other highlights: When harvesters are combined with processing workers, 52,000 people were direct-ly employed in the seafood industry last year. A breakdown by age groups shows that 47 percent of Alaska deckhands were 29 years old or younger.

Permit holders were much older than their crew, with an average age of 46. Processing workers had an average age of 39. Forty-six percent of Alaska’s

crew members lived outside the state. Of the 54 percent who lived in Alaska, 82 percent lived in a coastal region and 18 percent lived in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Twenty-seven percent of Alaska permit holders were nonresidents, and 74 percent of seafood process-ing workers lived outside the state.

Salmon accounted for 51 percent of all harvest-ing jobs last year. Aside from fishing jobs, nearly 37 percent of permit holders held another job during the year.

Alaska has been the top fishing state since 1975. More than 55 percent of total U.S. seafood landings comes from Alaska, and 39 percent of the total value. That’s pretty impressive for a state whose popula-tion amounts to only two-tenths of one percent of the nation’s total.

Find the employment report at the Department of Labor website: www.labor.alaska.gov/trends/nov09.pdf. �

Fish harvest jobs rebound from 2000 depression

Alaska salmon has shown a big shift in the ways it goes out to market.

More wild salmon is being sold as pricier fresh/frozen or fillets, instead of going into cans. The “Alaska Salmon Price Report” covers first wholesale volume and value, by species and area, for six key Alaska salmon products.

The price report covers canned salmon, fresh and frozen headed and gutted, fresh fillets, frozen fillets, and salmon roe.

Analyst Chris McDowell compiles salmon data for ASMI’s Seafood Market Information Service. He has combed through six years of salmon production data, and it reveals some notable trends.

Buyers appear to be over their fresh versus frozen bias. At wholesale, the value for frozen H&G salmon in the last sales quarter was $147 million, up from $128 million for the same time in 2008.

Both chum and sockeye showed big wholesale val-ue boosts: chums up from $1.17 to $1.28 per pound, and frozen sockeye up from $2.52 to $2.74 per pound.

Ray Riutta, director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, credits chefs and ASMI’s national “Cook It Frozen” campaign for building consumer confidence in frozen fish.

For the priciest product form — salmon fillets — Alaska sockeye shows the most stable growth. Frozen sockeye fillets increased from 4 million to 16 million pounds from 2004 to 2009.

Average wholesale price for frozen sockeye fillets increased to $5.23 per pound, marking the first time that product has reached the $5 benchmark.

Canned sockeye production has declined steadily for four years, from 32 percent to 26 percent last year.

For pinks, about 55 percent is being canned, with the rest being frozen.

Business analyst McDowell said more acceptance of frozen seafood has big implications for Alaska. It equates to pennies or nickels per pound in transporta-tion costs instead of dimes and quarters — or more — for fresh. It also reduces risk.

“Filleting salmon and sending it out fresh repre-sents a tremendous risk in terms of shelf life. That’s a real important value component among big buyers,” McDowell said. � – Laine Welch

Alaska salmon present a new(and pricier) face in market

newket

g /

Deckhand Podge Elvestar rides a deckload in Prince William Sound in 2007. Michael Leese photo


Law and orderYOUR BUSINESS

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Your Partner in Fishing

Enforcement of NOAA’s Vessel Monitoring Systems has resulted in serious fines — and unknown futures — for some North Pacific fishermen who have violated fisheries regulations.

Tommy Morrison of the F/V Captain Ryan out of Warrenton, Ore., has at least eight outstanding fines in addition to four he’s already settled. The initial amount for those first four was $78,000, which was later settled for $25,000. Attorney’s fees cost him another $5,000.

As for fighting the remaining charges, “I’m not even going to bother getting a lawyer this time. I can’t afford it.”

In response to congressional pressure and complaints by commercial fishermen about enforcement policies and the perceived severity of fines, Jane Lubchenco, the new administrator of NOAA, requested the Department of Commerce to evaluate NOAA’s fisheries enforcement programs and operations.

The department’s Inspector General’s Office released its review on Jan. 21. Though primarily focused on Northeast fisheries, it detailed issues that included concerns about excessive fining of fishermen who have violated VMS regulations.

Arbitrary: In the report, Inspector General Todd Zinser wrote, “We find it difficult to argue with those who view the process as

by Jennifer Hawks

Drift over the line just once, and NOAA will haunt you Stunningly huge fines await those who innocently violate VMS areas

continued on page 6

NOAA collects a fortune from North Pacifi c fi shermen.

And how does the agency spend the loot?

It’ll shock you.

See Page 7.

arbitrary and in need of reform.”Lubchenco responded to the report with a promise that NOAA

would address those issues. She also acknowledged the need for stronger leadership at the agency and the need for annual reviews of their enforcement program.

During the IG’s investigation, it was revealed that the agency’s enforcement chief, Dale Jones, had shredded certain documents, though which documents and what they pertained to were not publicly disclosed. Jones was replaced by Alan Risenhoover in

April, though the reasons were not announced. It’s also unclear if Jones was fired or will eventually return to his role as chief.

For many fishermen, it’s not just the severity of the fines. It’s that they don’t always know when they’ve


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violated a rule. Stories of mistakenly drifting over boundary lines are

common. Sometimes it’s because the captain, admittedly, wasn’t paying attention. Other times it’s due to malfunc-tioning navigational equipment that falsely indicated they were in legal waters.

Not intentional: “No one’s doing it intentionally,” said Morrison. “There’s no economic benefit. You can’t retain anything you catch illegally.”

But as Morrison of the Captain Ryan points out, it’s culpability, not intent.

“It’s a civil offense, not criminal, so jail is not an option. Once you cross that [boundary] line, you’re guilty. There’s no warnings, no excuses. It’s black and white.”

Gary Sjostrom, captain of the F/V Homebrew, also out of Warrenton, was charged with one count of fishing in the Trawl Rockfish Conservation Area and one count of fishing in a conservation area. He was fined more than $40,000.

“My computer navigation line moved [about 600 feet]. As far as I know, I was fishing on the [legal] side of the line,” Sjostrom said.

Sjostrom was given 30 days in which to pay his fine. He said that during at least one of two phone con-versations with NOAA’s attorney, he was told that if he didn’t come up with the money, they would seize his house as an asset.

Niel Moeller, NOAA’s general counsel for enforce-ment and litigation attor-ney for the Northwest Region, denies having made any such statement to Sjostrom, who subsequently hired an attorney to represent him.

“You start dealing with them—people don’t know how bad they

are,” Sjostrom said. Hours in court: After Sjostrom spent eight hours in court, the

judge had yet to make a decision on the case. “My lawyer’s fees were getting so expensive — $20,000 by then

— so he said I should cut a deal.”

He settled with a $10,000 fine and was restricted from trawling in May of this year, which is traditionally his best month. As part of a probationary agreement, if it’s proven he’s violated another federal or state fishery law within the next year, it will earn him an automatic fine of $15,000, Sjostrom said.

Ron Wright is the owner of Jensen Communica-

tions in Warrenton, Ore. Because his company supplies much of the West Coast fleet with their VMS gear, he’s heard lots of horror stories. Though he agrees with the VMS program in principle, in

practice he doesn’t see it as a very well-implemented system.

“Enforcement,” he said, “has been an absolute shocker.”

Enforcement complaints seem mostly directed not at NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement, the agents in charge of inves-tigating the violations. Rather, complaints seem targeted at NOAA’s Office of Gener-al Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation, the attorneys who try the cases.

NOAA delays: Part of the problem is the delay at NOAA while the agency decides what to do about an alleged violation. Months or years can pass before a fisherman gets a letter demanding tens of

Gary Sjostrom’s F/V Homebrew: Two counts of fishing in conservation areas resulted in a $40,000 fine.

Are you a victim?If you’ve tangled with NOAA’s enforcement agents and

attorneys over VMS issues, let us know. We’d like to tell your story.

Send a brief summary of the case and what transpired to editor@pacifi cfi shing.com. Also, please send a telephone number where you can be reached.

We won’t use your name unless you later give us permission.

Thanks!

‘I could sell the boat and still get hit with fi nes fi ve years later. I think about it 24 hours a day. It’s making me sick.’


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CorruptionYOUR BUSINESSthousands of dollars.

Vicki Nomura, special agent in charge of NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement in the Northwest Division, said a potential violation is carefully reviewed and then forwarded to a supervisor if it appears to merit prosecution. An enforcement agent further investigates, sometimes closing cases that the agent determines aren’t priorities, such as those with minor technical violations or mitigating circum-stances that clearly warrant closing without further action.

Because enforcement is short-staffed, it can take a long time to notify individuals of violations. A fine (or multiple fines for repeat infractions) can be levied up to five years after the incursion.

“It’s never our intent to stack violations against somebody,” explains Nomura. “Lots of times we don’t discover a problem until there are several violations.” And oftentimes additional violations occur while investigations are ongoing, she said.

The delay is costly for fishermen, both in dollars and for the stress it causes. In addition to fines Morrison has paid already, as well as those pending, he’s concerned about what might be lurking in his future.

“I could sell the boat and still get hit with fines five years later. I think about it 24 hours a day. It’s making me sick.”

Distrust: There’s distrust among some fishermen who are concerned that even if they inadvertently drift over a boundary line during an emergency, or are motoring at trawl speed due to hazardous conditions, that they’ll be prosecuted.

Joe Albert, VMS program manager for NOAA, said this isn’t true. “Do whatever you have to do to ensure your safety and then come

tell us about it. It’s much more different if someone calls us and says, ‘This is what happened to me.’ I think we’re really good at that. Just one phone call to our Declaration number [at 1-888-585-5518] is all it takes.”

Ensuring your VMS and navigational equipment is properly func-tioning is another way to eliminate potential violations, he said.

The IG’s report acknowledges dozens of complaints from fishermen that detail charges of abuse of authority by NOAA enforcement officers and excessive fines. The IG is reviewing those complaints and the corresponding case files to possibly recommend further action.

But if you’ve already settled with NOAA, the agency’s review won’t do you any good.

NOAA said the agency won’t be reviewing any settled VMS cas-es outside of its established civil administrative process. That pro-cess allows for a person who has been assessed a civil penalty to challenge that assessment by requesting a hearing before an admin-istrative law judge, as well as the right to appeal that decision, first to the administrator of NOAA and then to federal District Court.

In the meantime, some fishermen like Sjostrom are considering refitting for tuna. “In three years, I’ve made only 10 trips bottom fishing. There’s getting to be so many regulations, it’s not even worth going anymore. And there’s no VMS for the tuna fishery.”

Yet. �

‘Do whatever you have to do to ensure your safety and then come tell us about it. It’s much more diff erent if someone calls us and says, “This is what happened to me.” I think we’re really good at that.’

Tens of millions in fines levied against U.S. commer-cial fishermen held in an unrecorded account were used by the fisheries law enforcement division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fuel extravagant purchases and foreign travel, according to a forensic audit for a U.S. inspector general.

Among the discoveries by the accounting firm KPMG, brought in by the Department of Commerce IG’s office, was that NOAA police own more vehicles “by a substantial margin” than they have officers — 202 vehicles for 172 officers.

The audit also found multiple purchases on the same day from the same vendor, six-figure overseas convention spending, and the purchase of 22 vessels — including a $300,000 “undercover” vessel described by the manufacturer as “luxurious,” with a “beautifully appointed cabin.” All of those purchases bypassed internal review, the audit found.

CORRUPTIONINCOMPETENCEo

r

Audit reveals shocking details about NOAA’s use of slush fund

continued on page 8


Corruption continued from page 7YOUR BUSINESS

Vice President Joe Biden officiates at the swearing in of Jan Lubchenco as administrator of NOAA on April 9, 2009. Lubchenco, a former scientist at Oregon State University, is responsible for the actions of NOAA’s enforcement branch.

In all, the mass of an asset forfeiture fund — used by the police and legal divisions — was of a magnitude greater than estimated by the initial investigators of IG Todd Zinser.

While the Asset Forfeiture Fund was loosely estimated last spring to involve $8.5 million, the forensic audit concluded that

NOAA fisheries law enforcement may have brought in as much as $96 million over 4-1/2 years through June 2009 and spent $49 million via more than 82,000 transactions.

Although the investigation of the fund cov-ers only as far back as January 2005, the police chief, Dale Jones, was appointed in 1999 late in the administration of President Bill Clinton.

Jones apparently was re-moved from his office — if not the payroll — in March after Zinser announced his findings at a congressio-nal oversight hearing.

The next day, at a different oversight hear-ing into NOAA law enforcement abuses, Zin-ser made another major accusation — that Jones had ordered the shredding of documents while the IG’s investigation was nearing its conclusion.

The only subsequent notice of the law enforcement scandal that followed, however, was a cryptic announcement from NOAA that a career fisheries manager had been named acting head of law enforcement. The announcement of the departmental change did not even mention Jones’ name.

NOAA Chief Counsel Lois Schiffer and Eric Schwaab, who heads NOAA Fisheries for Admin-istrator Jane Lubchenco, announced his report after the IG’s preliminary report of police abuses that there would be no looking back or effort to rectify past miscarriages of justice.

NOAA has also fought against Freedom of Information Act requests by the Gloucester (Mass.) seeking official clarification of whether Jones remains on the federal payroll.

Lubchenco did not respond to an invitation to comment after the latest revelation, but NOAA released a statement saying the agency “expected this review, appreciates the level of detail it provides, and is evaluating the data and results carefully.”

“Based upon the earlier IG input and public feedback, NOAA has already taken action to improve policies, management processes, and internal controls of the fund,” NOAA said.

In a statement, NOAA said it was shifting management of the asset forfeiture fund to NOAA’s comptroller and requiring the comptrol-ler to approve any expenditure over $1,000. It said it was working to have the fund monitored by an independent accounting firm.

In his report, Zinser said the money collected in fines and penal-ties appears to be restricted by law to “expenses directly related to investigations and civil or criminal enforcement proceedings.”

But the IG cited several expenses it said didn’t appear to meet that standard, including vehicles for managers who used the cars mainly for their daily commute.

The audit also said the law enforcement office spent $2.7 million on 22 boats. In addition, the audit said the fund was charged $580,000 for international travel between January 2005 and June 2009, but only 17 percent of the cost was for travel directly related to investigations or enforcement proceedings.

The rest, the audit said, was for training and meetings, including a weeklong fisheries enforcement training workshop in Norway in 2008 attended by 15 federal employees at a cost of $109,000. �

– From Richard Gaines of the Gloucester Times and from other news outlets.

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Law and OrderYOUR BUSINESS

After the latest damning investigation concerning NOAA and its spending habits, you’d figure the agen-cy would be ready for a few questions.

You’d be wrong.Seems the agency’s regional directors won’t

say how many cars, boats, or even employees they supervise.

The NOAA inspector general investiga-tion concerned a slush fund fueled by fisher-men fines, such as those levied for drifting into no-fishing zones as recorded by vessel monitoring systems.

Here’s what the inspector general found, in a nutshell:

In the four years up to June 2009, NOAA took in about $96 million in fines and forfeitures from fishermen. The agency spent $49 million in more than 82,000 transactions.

As for the $47 million left over — well, it’s not there. NOAA reportedly had only $8.8 million in the account on June 14.

Some of the outrage focused on NOAA was sparked by the revelations that it bought automobiles and boats, in one case a “luxurious” yacht with a “beautifully appointed cabin.”

So, we thought we’d ask NOAA West Coast and Alaska enforcement outposts, not about the report, but simply how many boats and cars they had. This required simple counting.

First up, Vicki Nomura, special agent in charge of the Northwest headquarters in Seattle.

She was out of the office but on her cell phone. Off the top of her head, she didn’t know how many boats and cars her division had. She also didn’t know how many employees were in her division:

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OAA

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How many NOAA officers wear this patch on the West Coast? NOAA’s not telling.

Ask a simple question and … don’t get an answer“Maybe 18 or 22.”

She suggested we contact her deputy special agent in charge, Brad Vinish. He returned our call

and left a message saying, essentially, he had been ordered not to say a word about the entire inspector general’s report.

But we wanted to know only how many cars and boats NOAA had in the Northwest.

But Vinish implied we wouldn’t get that information from him.

So we called Deputy Special Agent in Charge Matthew Brown in Juneau.

“The instruction I have is to send all media contacts to headquarters,” Brown said.

We called Don Masters, the special agent in charge in Long Beach, Calif.

Same answer: Call headquarters.And back in HQ, the young woman assigned

to answer all such questions — Lesli Bales-Sherrod — couldn’t be reached. Granted, it was the beginning of a long weekend for federal employ-ees, but it was still within business hours for public servants on the Potomac.

Crime and Punishment: As we were rummag-ing around the NOAA Enforcement web pages for someone who might be willing to talk to us, we came across an announcement of a special display this summer: Ironically, the new exhibit by the National Museum of Crime and Punishment, in cooperation with NOAA, “exposes crime on the high seas.” �

NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is dedicated to enforcing laws that conserve and protect our nation’s living marine resources and their natural habi-tat. Our goal is to assure that the many people who enjoy these resources for recreation or rely on them for business follow the rules that will maintain the species for future generations.

NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement protects fish stocks from depletion and marine mammals from extinction. We also protect the livelihoods of commercial fishers, the hobbies of recreational fishers, and the health of seafood consumers.

While scientists provide the research and councils provide the regulatory framework to manage our nation’s fisheries, NOAA’s mandate to end overfishing would be impossible without its Office of Law Enforcement to follow through on the rest of NOAA’s hard work.

Formed in 1970, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement now has 146 special agents and 17 enforcement officers working out of six divisional offices and 52 field offices throughout the United States and U.S. territories. Headquarters are in Silver Spring, Md.

The primary geographic jurisdiction of NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is the waters within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, which covers ocean waters between 3 and 200 miles off shore and adjacent to all U.S. states and territories. Jurisdiction extends to protected marine species, however, regardless of their location within the United States.

NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is one of only two federal agencies accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

In its own wordsHERE IS HOW NOAA ENFORCEMENT DESCRIBES ITSELF


Show bizYOUR BUSINESS

On the second season of Deadliest Catch, Andy Hillstrand, captain of the Time Bandit, described the experience of being on a crab boat as follows: “Like prison, with the chance of drowning.”

He borrowed the line from the essayist Samuel Johnson, who made the comparison more than two centuries ago. After all, the quarters of a fishing vessel are cramped. The conditions can be brutal. The women are scarce to absent. And the weather gear is often orange.

Maybe that’s why the detainees at Guantanamo Bay love Deadliest Catch more than any other show. The Discovery Channel series is the most requested program out of the detention camp’s 1,400-DVD library.

“My understanding is it’s the most popular television show on DVD. I don’t know how many other shows they have, but it’s the most popular television show they ask for,” says Lt. Col. Andrew McManus, the deputy commander of Guantanamo’s joint detention group. “Now understood, there are some things they would never watch ….”

Like say, political thrillers or Cinemax programming, which are off limits.

But among the other things they would watch are soccer, action movies (“like Jackie Chan action movies”), the Harry Potter series, and cartoons.

For more than a year now, Guantanamo’s joint detention group has allowed detainees with demonstrated good behavior access to television 20 hours a day. It’s improved their relationships with the guards and helps kill time as they wait for trial or transfer to their home countries, according to officials.

If you ignore the leg irons on the floor and the presence of guards, Camp 6 — where most of the “compliant” detainees are housed — has an A/V set-up that could rival any sports bar. There are 50-inch flatscreen TVs mounted in every block, and detainees can watch their favorite shows right from their cells. Here, Deadliest Catch is tops.

“You know, I’ve heard that before,” says Keith Colburn, captain of the Wizard and four-season veteran of the show. “Someone told me that the inmates at Guantanamo Bay are hooked on Deadliest Catch.”

No one’s really sure why that is exactly. The Samuel Johnson joke aside, the experience of a crab fisherman is so dramatically removed from the lives of the detainees — 5,000 miles removed, roughly. The culture, the climate, the economy up in Alaska are foreign to someone from Yemen or Afghanistan. It’s highly doubt-ful that any of the detainees have ever eaten king crab, and even unlikelier that they’ve been on a crab fishing boat. And as for the islands that serve as the two groups’ homes away from home, about the only thing that Dutch Harbor and Guantanamo have in common is that they’re both surrounded by water.

Colburn suggests that might be exactly why the detainees like it so much. “It’s escapism,” he says.

That may be true. Nature shows are generally popular, and the

by Alexandra M. Gutierrez

In Gitmo, prisoners can’t miss the latest episode of Deadliest CatchThe Alaskan fi shing melodrama is pure escapism — and pardon the pun

continued on page 12

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magazine National Geographic gets more love than a fresh Us Weekly might in a Hollywood gym. The show might also provide a type of emotional escapism.

“They can get totally immersed in what’s happening,” Colburn adds. “It’s like a soap opera, where every show ends with an event that keeps you hanging.”

John McMurria, a professor of communications at the University of California San Diego, agrees that could be part of it.

“Soap operas in particular are popular in times of crisis,” he says. “There might be something to Deadliest Catch’s melodramatic structure. It’s life or death.”

Colburn and McMurria also think there might be something to the show’s focus on male camaraderie and the treatment it gives masculinity.

“We’re bullet-proof to the umpteenth degree, but at the end of the day, we all have a soft side,” says Colburn. “As a captain, there are times when you can sit there and be emotional in more ways than being this screaming, maniacal lunatic. You can be yourself.”

“You wouldn’t expect these tough men that are fighting the elements to have these moments of revelation about their emotional experiences,” echoes McMurria. “Perhaps that’s what we’re all looking for — the detainees too.”

Deadliest Catch is also easy to follow and not too heavy on the dialogue. You can watch it sequentially, but you don’t necessarily need to.

“Most of the detainees speak English, but even if you didn’t, you would still be able to watch it,” says McManus. “You would still be able to understand what’s going on.”

There’s also little on Deadliest Catch that could offend someone who might be religiously or culturally conservative.

Andrea Prasow, a senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, points out that there are mostly men on the show, which might make some detainees more comfortable.

The show might also just be popular by default. “The general category of restrictions makes nature shows

accessible,” says Prasow. “Anything that would deal with politics is restricted. It might be out of a limited category of shows, that’s the most popular one.” She trails off. “Maybe it’s the epic struggle.”

At any rate, for Colburn, bemused curiosity is the only feeling provoked by Deadliest Catch’s popularity at Guantanamo.

“I really didn’t have a reaction one way or another,” says Colburn. “I mean, I can’t say that I’m upset that these guys watch the show or that a bunch of terrorists enjoy watching what I do for a living.” �

Federal prisoners — mostly from the arid Middle East — now residing on an arid sliver of Cuba prefer a soggy melodrama set in Dutch Harbor.

The resourceYOUR BUSINESS

STUDY:Fishermen fi sh for top profi tsPeople who fish for a living pursue top profits, not necessarily top

predators, according to the first-ever analysis of worldwide catch and economic data for the past 55 years.

This differs from the observation raised 10 years ago that humans were “fishing down” the food web. It was assumed that catches of the predators at the top of the food chain — such as halibut and tuna — were declining after fishermen started landing more fish from lower on the food chain, such as herring and anchovies.

Fishing down the food web has been debated by biologists and fisheries managers since the idea emerged. Some in the news media, however, as well as a number of conservation groups and individuals, accepted the hypothesis without question, according to Suresh Sethi, a University of Washington doctoral student in aquatic and fishery sciences.

“We wanted to examine why fishermen might be motivated to preferentially harvest different trophic levels, and our data showed that fishing down the food web — by moving from higher- to lower-value species — is an incomplete story of the evolution of global fish-ery development,” says Sethi, lead author of a paper on the subject published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We found no evidence that humans first developed commer-cial fisheries on top predators then sequentially moved to species lower in the food web since the 1950s. Instead, those who fish for a living have pursued high revenue fisheries, no matter what the trophic level of the species.”

It’s important to know what motivates those who fish for a living as nations move toward ecosystem-based management, Sethi says.

“Attributes related to economic opportunity will be important for understanding which species are susceptible to new fishery development or expansion of existing harvest when costs and benefits are altered, for example, through government subsidies,” the paper says.


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by Cassandra Marie Profi ta

Lawsuit claims Pacifi c Seafood holds too much market power

rightful pay and to box competitors out of the market.

In their anti-trust lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Oregon, the fishermen filed more than 50 separate allegations against Pacific Seafood Group of Portland and its owner, Frank Dulcich.

The fishermen assert:• The Pacific Seafood companies stole

money from the fishing fleet by illegally suppressing groundfish, shrimp, and crab prices by 15 to 20 percent and whiting pric-es by up to 50 percent.

• The companies deliberately miscalcu-lated landed fish weights and “weighbacks” of unusable product.

• The companies have left fishermen with nowhere to turn in a “competitively crippled” regional seafood industry.

“If unchecked, the company will force competitors out of business and prices will be further suppressed,” the filing said.

The suit asks that the company be forced to give up 30 percent of its processing mar-ket share (which the fishermen claim has grown to 50 percent in the onshore whit-ing fishery, 60 percent in shrimp, 65 percent in crab, and 70 percent in groundfish) and pay between $394 million and $520 million

in damages.In addition, the plaintiffs asked that the

company be:• Divested of all permits, fishing vessels,

and unused waterfront properties.• Barred from accepting any processor

shares in the groundfish individual fishing quota program.

• Required to sign an agreement — pos-sibly with the Fishermen’s Marketing Asso-ciation — for monitoring of its seafood offloading and weighing operations.

The company, through its general counsel Craig Urness, said the claims are “without merit” and include “gross misrepresen-tations.” Urness vowed that Pacific Sea-food would “aggressively defend against the allegations.”

The claims go back four years, in keep-ing with allowances under the Sherman Antitrust Act. But the filing includes a history of Pacific’s rise to power over the past 27 years.

In 1980, there were 50 seafood processors on the West Coast. Since Pacific bought its first plant in Warrenton in 1983, its collec-tion has grown to 18 plants, including the only plants in seven coastal cities.


With its network of 54 companies and its dominance in West Coast seafood markets, has fish processing giant Pacific Seafood Group crossed the line from sweeping suc-cess story to illegal price-fixing monopoly?

Everybody’s thought about it. Now two Oregon fishermen are taking

the question to court on behalf of more than 3,000 fishermen who may share a common complaint as Pacific has grabbed larger and larger market shares of the four most valuable fisheries on the West Coast: Pacific whiting, Dungeness crab, groundfish, and pink shrimp.

The corporation has grown predatory and exclusionary, the fishermen say, and it’s using its heft — as well as numerous “dirty tricks” and anti-competitive tactics — to bully and cheat fishermen out of their


Legal continued from page 13YOUR BUSINESS

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Some of the plants were acquired below market price, the filing said, through a tactic wherein Pacific loaned money to a processor with strings attached and later leveraged its power as a lender to buy at a discount.

Largest buyer: Pacific has been the largest fish buyer on the West Coast for the past 10 years, with 14 U.S. fishing vessels and an unknown number plying Russian waters.

Competitors who crossed Pacific in pricing would receive “expletive-filled messages” from Frank Dulcich vowing retali-ation, the lawsuit says.

The company also retaliated against fishermen who delivered product to competing processors by putting them on the “B list” and denying them the privi-leges of its “A list” boats, according to the anti-trust complaint. If a fisherman wanted to sell one product to Pacific, documents say, the purchase would be tied into an agreement requiring him to deliver all the rest of his product to Pacific plants as well.

The company also extended loans to fishermen with the condition that all their deliveries would come to Pacific processors.

Fishermen Lloyd and Todd Whaley of Brookings, Ore., father and son, own four fishing vessels: Miss Sarah, B.J. Thomas, Cape

Sebastian, and Dynamic. They claim they were forced out of the shrimp fishery by Pacific’s “B list” tactics in Brookings, where the company had purchased a Eureka Fish Co. plant in 2003 and shut it down, leav-ing the town without a processing facility. Pacific proceeded to buy shrimp from “A list” boats and truck them to plants in Eureka, Calif., or Charleston, Ore., the lawsuit says, while “B list” boats had to pay to truck the product themselves.

Plants shut down: Three other processing plants acquired by the company through the Eureka Fish Co. purchase were shut down in Eureka and Crescent City, Calif., and Coos Bay, Ore.

Other complaints focus on Pacific’s attempts to stop the Pacific groundfish rationalization, which is due to start in Janu-ary 2011 and might undermine the com-pany’s market control, and on conspira-cies in price negotiations, one of which the plaintiffs argue led to the delayed start of the 2005-06 Dungeness crab season. Pacif-ic claimed the dungies weren’t ready for harvest, critics claim, only because the company wanted to wait until its brown crab harvest in Russian waters was over.

Pete Leipzig, director of the West Coast trawlers’ group Fishermen’s Marketing Association, said he’s surprised a suit like

this wasn’t filed sooner. In 2006-07, Pacific Seafood essentially “broke” the FMA by terminating its marketing contracts during a trawl fleet strike. The fleet was trying to assert more control over falling groundfish prices, but it didn’t work.

Warrenton trawler Kevin Dunn, who delivers to the Astoria and Bellingham fish processor Bornstein Seafoods, said some fishermen wouldn’t have anywhere to go if Pacific Seafoods decided not to buy their fish. Meanwhile, with Pacific being such a big buyer coastwide, it’s hard for oth-er, higher-paying fish companies to meet Pacific’s prices on the wholesale market.

Success against Weyerhaeuser: The Whaley’s attorney, Michael Haglund of Haglund Kelley Horngren Jones & Wilder, is known for his success in filing a similar anti-trust suit against Weyerhaeuser in 2001 on behalf of 12 alder sawmills.

He said the case does have parallels to this suit, and that Weyerhaeuser ultimately paid out $82 million in damages and took volun-tary action to reduce its market share.

“It was a big battle, but the Sherman Anti-trust Act is extremely powerful and has the ability to reform an industry that has become too concentrated,” he said.

One of his first actions will be to ask the court for injunctive relief to protect fishermen who are going to be asked to testify to Pacific’s illegal moves.

“The company has multiple ways to cheat or steal from fishermen,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of fear of Pacific Seafood Group. These two fishermen, father and son, are showing tremendous courage in taking on this fight. They’re doing it on behalf of all West Coast fishermen and fish boat owners.”

Haglund said after a six-month investi-gation he found Pacific’s business dealings have hurt fishermen and coastal communi-ties more than any other market force over the past four years.

Damages: “The whole goal of this case is to stop the battery of illegal, anti-competitive tactics that Pacific Seafood has used, and continues to use,” Haglund said. “We want to recover the damages that they’ve inflicted on fishermen in the last four years, break up this network of companies into smaller units, and restore open competition to the seafood industry on the West Coast.”

In 2002, the company-owned Pacific Surimi pleaded no contest to first-degree theft charg-es. The case concluded the company had short-changed fishermen for Pacific whiting by fraudulently increasing the percentage of their catch that was unsellable. The company agreed to pay $800,000 in restitution. �


Too much of a good thingYOUR BUSINESS

Oregon and Washington salmon trollers found plenty of fish in the May and June openers. Maybe even a few too many.

As the season progressed and salmon from Alaska and Canada came into the market, prices dropped from $6.75 a pound to $4 to $4.50 a pound.

“We’re getting more fish than we expected,” said Darus Peake, chairman of the Oregon Trawl Commission and owner of the Tillamook Bay Boathouse fish market in Garibaldi.

Glut: “It glutted the market, and that hurt everybody. The price had to fall. We stopped buying. Larger plants are buying them and putting them in the freezer.”

Peake said every year, in late June when Alaskan salmon fisheries kick into gear, and Canadian and tribal fisher-ies are in force, the price for West Coast ocean troll salmon falls. He was happy to be selling whole Chinook for $6.95 a pound at the end of June.


Lots of fi sh, falling prices for mid-coast salmon trollers

“The last few weeks of June are histori-cally plugged,” he said. “Wildlife managers and marketing don’t get together. We get a lot of fish in from everywhere.”

The boats in the fishery north of Cape Falcon were consistently catching their cap, and toward the end of June had to reduce the cap per weekly opener from 150 to 40 fish for the rest of the summer.

Jim Olson of the Washington Trollers Association said 130 Washington boats were fishing and catching their quota too quickly. To extend the season, managers reduced the limit of Chinook and coho each boat could catch per week.

So many fish so fast: “There were so many boats out there, we went through so many fish so fast,” Olson said. “We’re

trying to protect that summer fishery and keep that fish in front of customers.”

Prices did fall dramatically, Olson said, but $4 a pound is still a good price compared with years past.

“If you got $4 for your fish four years ago, you were doing jumping jacks,” he said.

Eric Schindler of the Oregon Depart-ment of Fish and Wildlife said, “A late burst of catch” in the Columbia River area drew lots of boats up north and resulted in a spike of thousands of fish caught in a matter of days in mid-June.

With a week left in the May-June season, the weekly cap for trollers north of Cape Falcon was reduced to 25 Chinook per boat. With high-quality fish averaging around 13 pounds, though, Olson said it was still worth the effort.

“It’s not very many, but it’ll put $1,000 to $1,500 in guys’ pockets,” Olson said. “I don’t know about you, but I could use an extra $1,500.” �

‘If you got $4 for your fi sh four years ago, you were doing jumping jacks.’

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The shoreside hake season got off to a rocky start in June and ended — at least temporarily — on July 5.

There were plenty of fish off the West Coast, but most of them were too small for processors to sell into the food market.

Plants were paying a respectable 10 cents a pound for fish 14 inches and up, but with 40 to 50 percent of many hauls coming up undersized, the price per pound to fishermen was effectively sliced in half. Boats found a few pockets of larger hake, but they were a long trek from processing plants in Oregon and southwest Washington, and also chock-full of protected canary rockfish.

“We’re having a lot of difficulties,” said Warrenton trawler Gary Wintersteen, who was traveling 12 to 14 hours each way to get the bigger fish near the Juan de Fuca Canyon.

Fouled-up year: “I’ve been doing this for 20 years now, and this is the most fouled-up year I can remember. … If you can get a load of fish they can buy, you’re still on the plus side but one little misstep with the smaller fish and you’re basically breaking even.”

Andrew Bornstein, manager at Bornstein Seafoods in Astoria, said the bigger fish were starting to come in at the end of June,


Good price, but small fi sh and bycatch stymie hake fl eetbut boats had to travel up to Neah Bay to get them. Bigger fish can go into bait and canning markets in Korea and Japan, he said, but smaller fish don’t have buyers.

Small fish might not play well in the mar-kets, but they’re probably indicative of a positive trend for hake stocks, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Bob Emmett.

Warmer currents: Emmett said his studies show that since 2005 Pacific hake have started spawning off the coast of Oregon as far north as the Columbia River — likely as a result of warmer ocean currents. The same is true of sardines, he said. As a result, the adults don’t separate themselves from the juveniles as they migrate up the coast to feed.

“Hake would migrate to Southern California to spawn and then adults would come back to Oregon and all the way up [to British Columbia] to feed,” Emmett said. “That would separate the juveniles from the adults.”

Other factors that could be yielding smaller hake are also tied to warmer ocean patterns, he said, including a lack of food and an abun-dance of Humboldt squid.

To find schools of bigger hake, some Newport boats were traveling all the way to

the U.S./Canada border and as far south as Trinidad, Calif., in June. The fleet considered shutting down for a while to wait for bigger fish to show up, but initially decided against it in June.

Rockfish bycatch: Meanwhile, boats that did find bigger hake also found far too many canary rockfish in their nets. The fleet has around 132 million pounds of hake to catch this year but a tiny allowance of canary rockfish bycatch. Reports surfaced in late June that 40 percent of the canary quota had been landed in one day.

“That’s a horrible situation for us,” Wintersteen said. “We’re policing ourselves in the areas with the known canary bycatch. It’s very unfortunate because the hake in that area are nice, big hake.”

In one day, Wintersteen delivered 293 pounds of canaries — “more than I delivered last year the whole year. … We consider our-selves professionals, and we do a good job, but when you’re trying to avoid a fish that’s becoming more and more plentiful, we’re struggling in a fishery that shouldn’t have these kinds of problems up to our ears.”

The rockfish catch, coupled with smaller hake, finally caused fishermen to voluntarily stop fishing until July 20. �


The resourceYOUR BUSINESS

Tracking f i sh across Alaska ’s vas t continental shelves can present a challenge to any scientist studying Alaska’s seas.

So, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have successfully tested a possible solution in the form of underwater gliders.

Recently, Peter Winsor, associate professor of physical oceanography, and Andrew Seitz, assistant professor of fisheries, tested the use of autonomous underwater vehicles, called gliders, for tracking tagged fish.

Winsor and Seitz suspended acoustic tags, usually implanted in fish, at different depths along a buoy line near Juneau. They then deployed two gliders fitted with an acoustic listening device to “hear” the signals from the tags.

Winsor and Seitz say these are the first gliders to be deployed in Alaska with an acoustic monitoring device to track tagged fish.

Each glider is about five feet long and flies like an airplane through the water in an up-and-down motion. They are pro-pelled using an internal bladder that works much like a fish’s swim bladder. When the bladder expands, the glider moves toward the surface. When it contracts, it moves toward the seafloor.

Alaska scientists send out underwater drone to follow fi sh“They convert changes in water depth into

forward movement,” said Seitz.Operates for months: The gliders move

at a speed of nearly 1 mph and can operate for up to three months. According to Winsor, the gliders can cover thousands of miles of ocean. At the surface, the glider transmits data, including its location and oceanograph-ic readings, directly to scientists.

“With the gliders, we not only learn about where the fish go, but we can also mea-sure the physical, chemical, and biological environment of the ocean at the same time,” said Winsor.

Traditional methods of tracking tagged fish include using a ship equipped with an acoustic listening device, or by using what scientists call a “listening line,” which is a series of hydrophones attached to the seafloor.

“The problem with using hydrophones is that they stay in one place and the tagged fish have to move near enough to the hydrophones to be detected,” said Seitz. “This can create big geographic gaps in your data, especially in the vast oceans surround-ing Alaska.”

Seitz and Winsor say that the gliders can be programmed to follow tagged fish. The

technology is ideal for Alaska waters because the gliders can cover large distances and are much less expensive than using a ship or sets of hydrophones.

Scientists are planning to use the gliders to gather oceanographic information in the Chukchi Sea. �– UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences

An underwater “glider” can track tagged fish closely for months.


Groundfi sh rationalizationYOUR BUSINESS by Rob Seitz

Rationalize fi rstRationalize fi rstThis will be achieved through 100 percent

observer coverage, meaning an observer will record every bit of each trawler’s catch. Once a trawler has reached his quota on one species, he’s done fishing unless he either buys or leases more quota.

Under the current system, there’s a financial incentive to discard fish and no incentive to fish sustainably.

Another benefit of the observer cover-age will be better science. As it now stands we rely on flawed computer models to determine our stock assessments. With total observer coverage, we’ll know exactly what’s being caught.

When a species starts to show signs of depletion, we’ll know much sooner and be able to adjust our take. By the same token, when a stock is stronger than what was thought, we’ll be able to catch more. This will make our fishery sustainable for both the fish and the fisherman.

The gear-switching provision of the catch shares program is another aspect that will

benefit fish and fishermen alike. Not all species of fish that I catch need to be caught with a trawl net. Sablefish, for example, can be caught either by longline or in pots. The price for long-line and pot-caught sable-fish is much higher than for trawl catch.

And sablefish are fast swimmers, so a large net is needed to catch them. Towing a big net requires more fuel, so being able to switch gear types will both save fuel and increase our price, significantly helping our bottom line.

I’ve been a hired captain for the last 12 years and a deck hand for seven years before that. It’s always been my goal to purchase my own boat and permit. Under the current system, that’s next to impossible unless you can find a seller willing to carry the contract.

A skipper wishing to buy in faces the cost of the whole package at once, and that’s out of reach for all but a few of us. With the catch shares program, I’ll be able to buy a small amount of quota, fish it on the boat I’m currently running, and use the money to buy more until I’ve worked my way up to where it’s feasible to have my own operation.

Although I will not receive any initial allocation of quota, there will be more opportunity for advancement than under the current system.

There are sure to be some features of the catch shares program that are flawed, but the pros far outweigh the cons. And in order to do more fine-tuning, we need to implement the program to find out what the problems are. Until then, the criticisms are all just speculation. �

Rob Seitz is a trawl fisherman based in Warrenton. This essay first appeared inThe Oregonian.

and solve the problems laterYESAs a participant in the West Coast trawl fishery for the last 20 years, I’m looking forward to the imple-

mentation of the “catch shares” program for the groundfish trawl fishery that’s been developed over the last seven years.

Everyone has aspects of the program they would like to change, which is probably a good sign that it doesn’t favor any single group. Nobody I’ve spoken with believes it’s a perfect system. I do believe, however, that it’s far better than our current system of management, which forces fishermen to discard perfectly good fish and has led to the deterioration of fishing infrastructure up and down the coast.

Progress rather than perfection should be our aim. If we try to keep tweaking the program until it’s perfect, we run the risk of continuing to fish under a failed system.

Under the new plan as it now stands, bycatch — fish that are unintention-ally caught — will be greatly reduced by holding individual fishermen responsible. Dirty fishing practices will be punished and clean fishing rewarded.

‘With the catch shares program, I’ll be able to buy a small amount of quota, fi sh it on the boat I’m currently running, and use the money to buy more until I’ve worked my way up to where it’s feasible to have my own operation.’


NOI am a retired biologist and statistician who has for some time been involved in local fishing issues, especially in attempting

to save our local commercial fishing fleet. This letter is to respectfully urge caution, in light of the implied intention of changing policy so as to create catch shares as a new market commodity.

Obviously, if fishing quotas, permits, etc., are commoditized, they will by definition become property. Then, if the government finds that this proposed fishery management policy (like so many of the management pol-icies before it) is not working out, they are going to have problems of buying out own-ers or facing lawsuits regarding perceived and potentially real takings.

Family-owned small boats will cease to exist if catch shares are implemented as a commodity that may be speculated upon. This is true even if the catch shares are time-limited to, say, 10 years. Small fishing boats are, as from the beginning of history, just barely supporting their families as it is.

If catch shares become commodities, the market price will soon soar out of the reach of such small family businesses. In New Zealand, such catch share programs have quickly led to 85 to 90 percent of all the shares being controlled by five

by Lewis E. MacCarter

will eliminate family-owned small boatsRationalizationRationalizationcompanies; similar results have been experi-enced in some Alaska crab fisheries. There is abundant evidence in other fisheries global-ly, as well as other food production systems, that consolidation on an industrial scale degrades the environment and undermines food security. This industrial scale consolida-tion of the fishing industry will also be the literal death of the fishing community, which the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires you to protect.

A fishing community is not a location but a culture centering on small family-owned boats and the businesses they support. Assigning catch shares to a geographic loca-tion, under the assumption that a geographic “fishing community” is being protected, is giving all price decisions to local processors and buyers so that the fishermen will have to take whatever is offered. This has in the past proven unsatisfactory because there is not a lot of different processors or buyers in any given area to provide competition for each other. Fishing boats are mobile, but fuel is expensive and it costs to go elsewhere, so the local buyers or processors have a modest advantage anyway if they offer a fair price.

If this policy must be implemented in any

form, it is essential that:1. Transferability shall be permitted only

among fishermen and permit banks inex-tricably tied to fishermen or community fishing associations (of fishermen and wom-en, not processors, or buyers) for the use and benefit of the fishermen and family-based professional fishing community.

2. Transfers shall only be allowed at no greater cost than the original cost of the share and only when the purchaser does not already own one or more shares (shares shall not be loan collateral).

3. Shares shall be assigned to persons and/or boats — not processors, not buyers, not geographic locales.

4. Strict limitations shall be set upon what percentage of the catch may be assigned to, or controlled by, a single boat, or a single individual or person (whether a flesh-and-blood person or a single corporation).

5. Fish and fish quotas shall not be allowed into investment markets.

I look forward to attaining a workable, environmentally sound, and equitable ocean policy. �Lewis E. MacCarter is a retired biologist and statistician in Morro Bay, Calif.


They say that life should not be measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

I would suggest that the Deepwater Horizon blowout is one such moment. It should take our breath away. It’s the clearest example yet of the potential for significant and lasting damage to the ocean environment from offshore drilling, an environment where we make our living.

This catastrophe has been writ large upon America’s consciousness. It has been so egregious and so devastating that it has exposed what fishermen and environmen-talists have been saying for years:

Strictly business: Oil companies, logi-cally enough, behave like corporations, maximizing profits, aggressively lobbying for reduced regulations and oversight, and spending as little as possible on safety, pre-vention, and response.

In the case of BP’s Deepwater Horizon, this behavior came back with a deep bite, and now there are rumblings of real changes: a reorganization of the regulatory agency, the Minerals Management Service (previ-ously the MMS, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement), a moratorium on new drilling, raising liability caps, and more.

Time will tell. We seem to have a remark-able capacity for forgetfulness and an aggravatingly short attention span.

Even as the gulf disaster plays out — in the awful face of dead and dying sea tur-tles and dolphins and oiled pelicans — the cry still goes up for more drilling in the gulf and also in Alaska: in Bristol Bay, the Bering, Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Never mind the dangers or the consequences.

Pressure to drill: Though President Obama protected Bristol Bay and the Ber-ing Sea until 2017, pressure is still on to open this area to oil and gas development, and since the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas don’t fall under the presidential withdraw-al, they also are only temporarily exempt from drilling.

Shell Oil, the interested operator in Alas-ka, claims that the shallow waters in the north preclude the kind of accident that befell the Deepwater Horizon. But the Mon-tara blowout off Australia in August of last year was drilled at a depth of only 220 feet.

This spill lasted 74 days before a relief well was able to plug it.

Lois Epstein, an engineer and oil industry specialist with the Cook Inlet Keeper, called the shallow depth argument a “distinction without a difference.” Pressures might be less and the well casing can be thinner, but the same possibilities exist for accidents, equipment failures, human error, and blowouts.

Shallow blowouts: In fact, a 2007 MMS study found that “most blowouts occurred in water depths of less than 500 feet.” And it’s debatable whether 200 feet down in the waters of the Bering Sea (envision winter storm conditions) is any more accessible than a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

And this just speaks to the more visibly spectacular blowouts. If development were to go forward, all the associated risks and pollution we’ve chronicled and warned about — seismic disruption, toxic discharg-es, potential spills from tank-ers and pipelines, etc. — remain just as dangerous. The Deepwater Horizon is the ultimate I told you so. The gulf fishermen didn’t need that. Alaskan and Pacific Northwest fisher-men don’t need that.

Shell also claims that it has the technology to clean oil in ice-covered waters. An industry-funded study performed experiments in the Barents Sea off Norway, and technicians reported cleanup efforts this year that sound just as effec-tive and sanitary as those promised by BP in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lies: But now we know that BP’s promises for the gulf were bald-faced lies, without the slightest modicum of truth. Can we believe Shell’s soothing assurances?

For example, we have learned that dumping mil-lions of gallons of toxic dispersants onto the oil to

make it harder to see is not a wise thing to do to marine life. The EPA banned Corexit from use in the gulf after an investigation. Yet an earlier report from the same com-pany that Shell bases its response claims on declares that “Dispersants provide an invaluable third response option when strong wind and sea conditions make mechanical cleanup and in situ burn tech-niques unsafe.”

And they list Corexit as the weapon of choice.

BP exec Tony Hayward’s now-famous quip — “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny…”— ignores the fact that it’s been significant enough to kill thousands and thousands of fish and birds and marine mammals.

The oil-and-ice report also states, “In the event that ice conditions preclude safe surface operations, the oiled ice could be

by Dan Strickland

y say that life should not be measured b f b h k b b

This spill lasted 74 days before a relief well bl l

make it harder to see is not a wise thing to d l f Th EPA b d C

A breathtaking glimpse of Alaska’s future

Your turnYOUR BUSINESS


BP spent millions to promote a clean-green corporate image, left, while below is what the company delivered.

Shell’s promise about your Arctic

tracked until spring.” Oilspeak: This is deceptively benign oil-

speak, admitting that if a gulf-magnitude spill occurred in Alaskan waters during the winter months (our longest season), Shell could no more effectively attack it than BP has been able to respond to its own nightmare.

Albert Einstein once said, “Today’s prob-lems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them.” It’s time for us to face the true consequences of doing business as usual. We’re destroying our oceans, and ultimately, if we continue, we’ll destroy ourselves.

Let’s resolve to protect our oceans from the dangers of offshore drilling. �

Long-time Alaska fisherman Dan Strickland is the Bristol Bay fisheries liaison for the Alaska Marine Conservation Council.

This comes with Shell’s official plan to deal with oil spills and blowouts in its offshore drilling operations in Alaska’s Arctic:

For the remote possibility of a major spill, Shell has provided, on location, a highly trained response team and the best available resourc-es for an immediate response to contain, recover, and/or eliminate the discharge, thereby minimizing environmental impacts.

The drilling program will begin after the near-shore fast ice has broken up and proceed in predominantly open water conditions until freeze-up. Because of the possibility of ice incursions during the open water period and natural variability of the timing and duration of freeze-up, Shell’s oil spill response strategies and tactics have been designed to cover a wide range of open water and ice conditions.

With the potential for spill control in broken ice, strategies will include the recovery of isolated pockets of oil contained naturally by the ice as well as the elimination of oil using controlled burning.

Shell’s operations are significant as the oil industry expands its offshore oil exploration and production activities in cold climates worldwide. Using innovative concepts and equipment, Shell’s highly skilled team will be on location and ready to respond to a major spill and mitigate any impacts to the environment or subsistence activities.

You can read all of Shell’s Beaufort Sea Exploratory Drilling Program Oil Spill Prevention and Response at Pacific Fishing ’s website: www.pacificfishing.com.

Once there, look for “Pacific Fishing Resources” at the bottom on the right side of the page. Click. There, you will find a link called “Shell’s Oil Spill Plan for Alaska’s Arctic.” �


MID-COAST REPORT by Cassandra Marie Profi ta

Monterey Aquarium blunder, halibut bycatch, salmon geneticsHalibut bedevils groundfish fleet: Halibut is a lucrative catch

for some fishermen but a looming death knell for West Coast groundfish trawlers.

The allocated halibut quota shares for the fleet are about half of what the fishery caught last year.

“Nobody has enough fish,” said Warrenton trawler Paul Kujala.But Kujala said trawlers thought they might work around

the problem by making shorter tows with smaller volume and releasing live halibut unharmed.

The fleet is not allowed to keep any halibut — a rule designed to prevent trawl boats from targeting them.

Then came the really bad news, delivered at a Groundfish Advisory Committee meeting in June. The International Halibut Commission rules will automatically dock the trawlers for 20 percent delayed mortality on whatever hali-but they release.

“The observers on board are going to grade them, mark which ones are dead and alive, and we thought we’d only be counted for dead ones,” Kujala said. “We were planning on that.”

Under halibut commission rules, the best rating trawl-caught halibut can get after it’s hauled aboard is “good” condition, which assumes that when the fish are released, 20 percent of them will die.

“Basically, no matter what, there will be 20 percent mortality on what you catch,” said Kujala. “A lot of us only have a few hundred pounds. You can catch that in one tow.”

Pete Leipzig, director of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association, said the halibut commission numbers are based on out-dated studies taken from fisheries in Alaska when foreign fishing operations were still occurring.

“The size is so different from our fishery,” Leipzig said. “We make smaller tows. Our total catches are smaller. … These fish are going to be caught and returned to the sea, and if zero mortality occurs, you could make the system work. Having such a strict mortality standard … we’re going to have to revisit that. When the best you can do is 20 percent mortality, that starts to add up real quick.”

Meanwhile, several boats have begun testing halibut excluders — so far to no avail.

“We tried them, and we got just as many,” Kujala said. “One time it excluded everything, just about. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m saying nobody’s figured out how to do it yet.”

Leipzig said several fishermen are looking at what boats have done in the North Pacific, adjusting their net design and adding excluders to make their fishing techniques more efficient. But boats in the northern fisheries are a lot bigger than most West Coast trawlers, he said, and they have bigger crews too.

“People are talking, and they’re thinking,” he said. “Fishermen are creative people, and one of the outcomes of the IFQ program is, in order to avoid species they have very little quota for, people will become more creative in tweaking their gear.”

� � � �Just plain wrong: Oregon troll-caught

salmon: DO NOT BUY?The horror! The Monterey Bay Aquarium shocked fish-

ermen in June by listing Oregon and California troll-caught wild salmon on its “do not buy” list.

The aquarium sets the industry standard for eco-friendly grocers and restaurants, and it took a firm stand backing Alaskan fisheries and Washington troll-caught salmon in June.

But, the site announced, eco-minded buyers should “avoid wild-caught salmon from California and Oregon.”

Alaskan fisheries are “the most intensively managed” fisheries with “excellent management” and 10 times as much fish as Oregon, Washington, and California combined.

“It’s relatively pristine and does not face the same development, deforestation as salmon in California and the Pacific Northwest.”

Oregon Salmon Commission Chairman Darus Peake was aghast.

“They lumped us together with farmed fish!” he said. “This is a first, and it’s a hell of a hit. Here we are with a glut, and they’re trying to sustain it. This hurts. It really hurts.”

Peake said he thought the listing was “so false” because many of the salmon caught in Alaska migrate north from Oregon.

“Many come from the Columbia River and hatcheries off the coast,” he said. “All those raised in Alaska still drink the same water and eat the same food. … This is a very frustrating thing to do to fishermen.”

� � � �Salmon genetic study on again: A

genetic stock identification program look-ing at distribution patterns and migra-tory timing of Chinook salmon stocks off the coast of Oregon is back in full swing,

with fishermen collecting fish samples and marking the location of their catches. The study aims to identify the river of origin and look at where certain runs are in the ocean so fishery managers can set ocean fishing seasons that will protect fragile stocks.

Renee Bellinger of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport said the program had sampled 1,500 fish in the central and southern Oregon areas by late June.

A report on May’s sampling of 550 Chinook showed mid–Columbia River tules were a dominant component of the catch off central and southern Oregon.

South of Florence, the mid–Columbia River tules and Central Valley fall Chinook made up about equal portions of the catch. In both fisheries, the next largest portions of the catch after the Colum-bia tules and Central Valley fall Chinook, in descending order, were mid–Oregon Coast, Rogue River, Upper Columbia River summer and fall, Klamath River, and lower Columbia fall fish.

The project wasn’t able to sample during the troll season in 2008 and 2009, but sampled around 8,000 fish in 2006 and 2007.

Pacific Fishing columnist Cassandra Marie Profita covers commercial fishing for The Daily Astorian.

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gFolks who own these pretty windows in Monterey decided to throw rocks at the commercial salmon fishery offCalifornia and much of Oregon.


by Wesley LoyALASKA NOTEBOOKRationalized rockfi sh, money for Kodiak, charter boat stings

Rockfish renewal: The North Pacific Fishery Management Council in June approved a catch shares program for the central Gulf of Alaska rockfish fishery. The program will replace a similar management regime that’s governed the Kodiak-based fishery on a pilot basis since 2007. Target species include Pacific Ocean perch and northern, dusky, yellowtail, and widow rockfish.

Compared to Gulf cod or pollock, rockfish is a relatively small fishery in terms of ex-vessel value. But it has loomed large as some-thing of a litmus test for how liberally Alaska is willing to “rationalize” its fisher-ies. Significantly, the council dropped an option to award some catch shares to proces-sors. The rockfish fishery involves 53 trawl vessels divided into eight harvest cooperatives.

� � � �Juneau watch: Gov. Sean

Parnell in late June signed into law two bills of high importance to the fishing industry, and he approved a big capital project for Kodiak.

Parnell signed Senate Bill 163 revising the Fishermen’s Fund, a kind of state insurance program for commercial fishermen who are injured or fall ill on the job. The new law increases the claim allowance from $2,500 to $10,000. The Fishermen’s Fund is what’s known as a “payer of last resort.” That means, for example, that the fund can pay for care in the case of an injured fisherman who is underin-sured. The prime sponsor of SB 163 was Sen. Joe Paskvan, D-Fairbanks.

The governor also signed House Bill 344 to extend the salmon product development tax credit by four years, through 2015. This tax break has been around since 2003. It was among steps the state took to help the depressed salmon industry better compete with fish farmers. The goal is to encourage processors to add value to the salm-on. Equipment for filleting fish, removing pinbones, and packing salmon in convenient pop-top cans are examples of investments eligible for the tax credit.

The new law adds ice machines to the list of qualified investments. Processors already have earned several million dollars in credits, the Department of Revenue says. The prime sponsor of HB 344 was Haines Republican Rep. Bill Thomas, himself a commercial fisherman.

Final ly, a $20 mil l ion appropriat ion legis lators included in the 2011 capital budget for a new Department of Fish and Game research facility on Kodiak’s Near Island

survived the governor ’s veto pen. The project long has been one of Kodiak’s fondest legislative priorities. The goal is to upgrade Fish and Game’s existing building, constructed in 1973, with a new home featur-ing research capability.

� � � �Charter boat stings: As competition intensifies for

declining halibut stocks, commercial longliners no doubt have been pleased to see a recent crackdown on violations in the charter boat fleet. Undercover wildlife troopers in summer 2009 went on charter boats operating out of Elfin Cove and Anchor Point, and the investigations yielded convictions this spring. In the biggest case, Joe Kulavik of Vancouver, Wash., pleaded guilty on behalf of his company to sport-fish guide violations. The company, Elfin Cove Eagle Charters Alaska, was fined $150,000 with $90,000 suspended and was placed on probation for three years. The state agreed to return four seized boats as part of the plea agreement.

Four Elfin Cove guides and two deckhands also drew fines and probation after pleading guilty to violations such as catching an overlimit of halibut, using too much gear,

falsifying logbook entries, using rockfish as bait, fishing illegally for lingcod, and wast-ing sharks by killing them and throwing them overboard.

In a separate case, Jeffrey Glosser of Anchorage was fined $10,000 with $5,000 sus-pended after pleading guilty to guiding violations aboard the Anchor Point charter boat Big But. Glosser allowed three clients to keep fish over the daily bag limit of two halibut per person, troopers said.

� � � �Canned salmon trends:

The May edition of the Seafood Market Bul le-tin, funded by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, had some interesting notes

on Alaska’s canned salmon production. Despite consistently big sockeye harvests, canned sockeye output has declined substan-tially since 2004. The 949,000 cases produced in 2009 was down 34 percent compared to 2004, even though the sockeye harvest was roughly the same those two seasons. As for pink salmon, inven-tory was light coming into this year, and with a small statewide harvest of 69 million pinks expected, wholesale prices might stay at the current 20-year high.

Pacific Fishing columnist Wesley Loy has covered fisheries in the North Pacific for more than a decade. See his blog at www.deckboss.blogspot.com.

Ed Hisaw sent this photo of Brayden Hisaw taken on Bristol Bay in June 2009.

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Jarod Pate of Kake holds a 24-pound Stikine king aboard F/V Shelo in June 2009. James VandeBunte Stikine photo

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Jarod Pate of Kake holds a 24 pound Stikine


ALASKA WATCH‘Alaska’ sells, while Pacifi c cod and fl atfi sh sell well

by Laine Welch

World’s top fish: What is the most popular fish in the world? It’s codfish, and Alaska is the world’s leading producer of

Pacific cod. During the years of the collapse of Atlantic cod stocks, customers turned to Pacific cod as a substitute. Now that both stocks are on the rebound, Pacific cod is maintaining its market share.

In recent years, Atlantic cod production has been around 1 million tons, with Pacific cod production about half of that. Alaska accounts for 66 percent of Pacific cod fish production, followed by Russia at 20 percent, and Japan and South Korea account for the rest.

Currently, Atlantic cod stocks are rebuilding, and cod stocks in the Pacific are on the increase as well. Total catches this year in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska are up 16 percent to more than 500 million pounds. That’s due mostly to a big boost in the Gulf of Alaska, where codfish catches increased by nearly 44 percent.

It doesn’t look like wild cod will face competition from farmed fish anytime soon.

Major companies that had invested heavily in farmed cod projects have quit that business and are focusing on farmed salmon, reports ASMI’s “Seafood Market Bulletin.”

� � � �Flatfish: Alaska also ranks

first in the U. S. for catches of flatfish.

When it comes to flats, Alaskans don’t think much beyond halibut. But nearly 600 million pounds of a vari-ety of flounders, plus skates, are landed in Alaska every year, and fishermen could catch much more.

More than 70 percent of the catch is yellowfin and rock sole, which go primarily to Asian markets. It was valued at more than $100 million last year.

Cod, flounders, pollock, skates — all of these get lumped into the groundfish category. These fish account for more than 80 percent of Alaska’s total landings each year, and more than half the total dockside value.

� � � �Know your customers: Keeping tabs on U.S. seafood

preferences helps Alaska marketers hone their messages to buyers. That’s the goal of annu-al surveys by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

“Part of the purpose is to give us something to take to our customers to say, ‘See, this is what people think about Alaska seafood. You should put this brand on your menu, in your store,’ showing them there is demand for Alaska seafood that can add to their profitability,” said Laura Fleming, ASMI’s communica-tions director.

Here’s a sampler of the lat-est survey of 800 consumers from four U.S. regions:

“The biggest thing in our favor is that interest in wild, natural, and sustainable sea-food is strong. Seventy-five percent feel it is important to know the origin. That is important to us because we base all our marketing on our Alaska origin — the brand is Alaska.

“And 72 percent feel it is important for it to be environ-mentally friendly. People are eating more seafood at home than they were two years ago.

“And health benefits were cited as the top reason that people are consuming more seafood. Eighty-two percent said seeing the Alaska seafood logo would increase their like-lihood of purchase. Wild is in front position as a descriptor, followed by ‘ocean-caught’— and consumers did state a preference for seafood that is not farm raised. And they said they were concerned that the seafood is sustainable and from a fishery that is well managed.”

Why do people think seafood from Alaska is different?

“It’s the water,” Fleming said. “Over half the people cited clean, pure, cold water as the reason Alaska seafood is different.”

A similar ASMI survey asked Central Europeans if they were familiar with at least one seafood product from Alaska, and 93 per-cent said Alaska salmon, 70 percent said Alaska pollock, 60 percent said Alaska cod.

Pacific Fishing columnist Laine Welch covers Alaska fisheries from Kodiak.

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Postcard: Judy Francisco sent along this photo of the tender Sierra Seas as it waits for its first delivery in Uyak Bay last year.


by Wesley LoyDUTCH HARBOR REPORTTrawl survey expands, selling Unalaska, new trawler paint job

Trawl survey stretches north: Thanks to $1.2 million in new research funding related to loss of sea ice, federal fishery scientists say they’ll be able to expand this summer’s Bering Sea bottom trawl survey all the way north to the Bering Strait.

“With this expansion, all of the eastern Bering Sea shelf with-in U.S. waters will be surveyed,” says a recent write-up from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

The annual trawl survey is among the tools scientists use to determine the size of groundfish and crab stocks. Expanding the survey farther north could yield especially interesting results for species such as snow crab that favor cold water, said Mike Sigler, a marine biologist with the science center. The survey results should be out in mid-September.

� � � �Unalaska’s mil-

lion-dollar men: Dutch Harbor and the adjacent city of Unalaska perenni-ally rank at the top among U.S. ports for commercial sea-food landings by weight. This remote Aleutian outpost has worked hard to establish itself as the hub of the rich Bering Sea fisheries, and it aims to main-tain its status.

So little wonder that the Unalaska City Council on June 8 authorized contracts with its lobbyists for another year.

Brad Gilman will make $76,000 as the city’s man in Washing-ton, D.C. City records show Unalaska has paid him $1 million since 1995. In Juneau, Ray Gillespie will make $79,000 working for Unal-aska. The city has paid Gillespie about $1.4 million since 1991.

� � � �Painted with pride: The next time the big pollock factory trawl-

er Northern Hawk shows up in Dutch Harbor, people might not recognize her. That’s because the 341-foot ship went into a Victoria shipyard this summer for a paint job to match the company colors of the new owner, Coastal Villages Region Fund.

Coastal acquired the Northern Hawk in May as part of a business breakup with Seattle-based American Seafoods. Owning such a large and powerful fishing ship outright is a major milestone for Anchorage-based Coastal, which holds rights under a federal pro-gram to harvest a share of the Bering Sea fish and crab stocks for the benefit of disadvantaged Western Alaska villages.

The trawler’s new colors — white and sky blue with yellow trim — replace the white and black coat the vessel wore as part of American’s fleet. The Northern Hawk is undergoing factory

improvements and isn’t expected to fish again until the pollock A season in early 2011.

� � � �Boffo blotter: One way to get a feel for the

rougher side of Unalaska life is to read the local police blotter, composed mainly by the town’s literary law enforcement officer, Sgt. Jennifer Shockley. Here’s a half-dozen classic entries from the blotter so far this year:

JUNE 9 — An understandably perturbed caller reported an unidentified person had left a dead raven inside his car.

MARCH 9 — Officers investigated a disturbance at a processing plant, apparently precipitated by one roommate keeping a logbook

of the other room-mate’s every snore, cough, and other non-verbal bodily noise. The subject of the log became rath-er perturbed when he discovered what was being written about him, and the two puerile proces-sors subsequently engaged in a minor pushing match. No charges were filed.

MARCH 3 — EMS personnel offered medical care to a trembling, drunken man with a bloody nose and the word “LOSER” written on his head. The inebri-ate refused care.

MARCH 1 — Two processors engaged in a battle for control of a yellow bucket full of soapy water. One processor conceded the sudsy bucket after his supervisor bade him yield, but later con-fronted the victor in a dark alley and allegedly slapped him across the face. There were no witnesses to the misdeed.

FEB. 24 — Officer responded to the Alyeska Trading Co. regard-ing an intoxicated, aggressive customer. Investigation revealed that the drunken customer found the store clerk far too effeminate for his tastes and subsequently threw his Ding Dongs, for which he had suddenly lost all appetite, into the trash. The clerk stated he felt threatened by the drunken customer and requested that he be given a trespass advisement.

FEB. 9 — Two drunken bantam fishermen engaged in chest-puffing and collar-snatching threat displays inside the Cape Cheerful lounge. A wiser man took the two under his wing and escorted them from the bar before police arrived.

Pacific Fishing correspondent Wesley Loy has been filling in with the Dutch Harbor Report for the past two issues. Beginning in our September issue, Alexandra M. Gutierrez will debut with her Letter from Unalaska.

The pollock factory trawler Northern Hawk sports a new paint job. Coastal Villages Region Fund photo


B.C. UPDATE by Michel Drouin

Good prices on West Coast, no fi sh expected from SkeenaGood news on Barkley Sound: Sockeye returning to the West

Coast of Vancouver Island looked good earlier this summer.Fishermen in the first opening in early June got $2.75 a pound

for round fish and $3.10 for dressed. Landings worked out to an average of 175 fish per boat.

One fisherman I know reported getting 300, and some reported catches as high as 400 pieces.

� � � �Now, the bad news: There is likely going to be no sockeye

fishing in the Skeena River this year because of low numbers.As for the Fraser, as of this writing, no one knew.

� � � �People for protein: In the past year, the Protein for People

Project raised more than $67,000 for canned salmon and services for food bank clients throughout B.C.

The project held a salmon and tuna barbecue for donors and supporters June 17.

Spearheaded by former United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union President John Radosevic, The Protein for People Project B.C. is made up of 16 labor unions participating in an affiliate council.

People for Protein’s organizers say they hope circumstances will improve, but there are increasing numbers of individuals and families turning to the food bank for help.

The objectives of the program are simple: To raise more funds to pur-chase more food for food banks and to expand the number of community forums throughout the province.

A pilot community forum was organized in partnership with the Surrey Food Bank in 2008. This forum helps labor to identify resources and share infor-mation with food bank clients and to connect with and support unemployed workers.

� � � �Cohen Commission: The Cohen Commission of Inquiry into

the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River launched its hearings in Vancouver June 15, with two days of submissions from participants with standing.

The commission plans to conduct evidentiary hearings start-ing in September on issues that the commission is mandated to investigate.

In opening remarks from many participants, Justice Bruce Cohen heard they were distressed at the lack of funding for independent scientific representation.

There was continuing criticism of the scientific advisors on the commission as well.

Member of Parliament John Cummins, a former Fraser River gillnetter himself, con-tinued his unrelenting attack on some of the scientific advisors.

Cummins argued that, as the commission is investigating DFO’s management of the fishery, former advisors and staffers of DFO have no place on the commission.

Carl Walters, professor at the University of British Columbia, Thomas Quinn, fisheries professor at the University of Washington, ocean scientist Paul LeBlond, and scientist Brian Riddell all have previous close associations with DFO.

In addition, the panel of what Cummins called “insiders” advised Cohen on what scientific research the inquiry should be conducting and who should be doing the research.

“The work of 13 scientists who have been engaged by the inquiry to do the research will have their reports vetted behind closed doors by the scientific panel of insiders,” Cummins wrote in a press release.

“The reports of the 13 scientists will then become evidence in the hearings, but the panel’s advice to the inquiry given behind closed doors won’t.

“The Cohen Inquiry has turned into a farce with DFO insiders inves-tigating themselves.”

At the commission hearing June 16, lawyer Chris Harvey, represent-ing the United Fisher-men and Allied Workers Union and the Area G Trollers Association, had similar concerns.

“Obtain indepen-dent scientific input — independent of DFO,” Harvey said. “No one can be independent of

the entity that controls their financial destiny. Go outside B.C. for advice. Go to Alaska. Recruit the best scientists who are not in any-way tainted. Don’t use the same group that failed to predict the collapse in 2009. That would be to repeat the mistake made on the East Coast when the cod fishery collapsed. Or recommend immedi-ate funding to participants for retention of scientific advisors.”

Lawyer David Butcher, representing the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition and Southern Area E Gillnet Association, echoed concerns by Cummins and Harvey about the close relationship the commission’s scientists have had with DFO in the past.

Participants also are critical of the lack of funding for staff to scrutinize the 35,600 documents the federal government has swamped the commission with.

Pacific Fishing columnist Michel Drouin covers commercial fishing from Vancouver.

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dGreenpeace went after Costco Wholesale in Vancouver a few weeks ago, hanging a banner that claimed the big box store engaged in “Wholesale Ocean Destruction.” The banner, alas, did not last long.


The actions of a well-trained crew can make the diff erence between survival in an emergency at sea, or tragedy. The best-constructed and equipped vessel is only as good a risk as the people who own and operate it.

NPFVOA knows that knowledge and preparation are vital to survival and NPFVOA provides hands-on safety training and education to boost emergency preparedness for owners, skippers and crews.

The NPFVOA Vessel Safety Program is a non-profi t association totally dedicated to safety education and training for commercial fi shermen and other mariners. Developed in cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard in 1985, NPFVOA remains the model safety program for commercial fi shermen. Attendance in its safety classes has exceeded 37,000 and although most NPFVOA classes are held at Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle or onboard vessels, classes are portable and have been held throughout Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington and on the East Coast.

NPFVOA strives to facilitate a high level of safety awareness in the North Pacifi c fi shing fl eets. As a non-profi t, membership-based organization, NPFVOA works very closely with regulatory agencies such as the Coast Guard and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), and keeps its members apprised of issues important to the safety of

their crews and vessels.

NPFVOA VESSEL SAFETY TRAINING CLASSESNPFVOA Vessel Safety Program off ers Coast Guard-approved hands-on safety training classes for commercial fi shermen and other mariners. Training also includes non-Coast Guard approved courses that can be tailored to fi t your particular vessel and crew experience. Some examples of our 24 classes:

* Basic Fire Prevention and Control

* Emergency Drill Instructors’ Workshop

* Fishing Vessel Stability

* Hazwoper-24 hour and 8 hour

* Medical Emergencies at Sea

* Navigation: Collision Avoidance

* Onboard Emergency Drill Orientation

* OSHA Compliance Review

* Safety Equipment and Survival Procedures

* Shipboard Damage Control Training

* Shipboard Watertight Door and Hatch Training

* STCW Basic Safety Training

* STCW Medical Care Provider

BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIPNPFVOA’s membership is composed of approximately 225 vessels and 100 support businesses and individuals. NPFVOA regularly provides information to its members on subjects such as USCG requirements, OSHA compliance and standards, international safety standards, MARPOL/OPA-90 compliance, current compliance issues, drug regulations. Other benefi ts of membership include:

Discounted tuition for the USCG-approved safety training classes off ered by NPFVOA, direct mail/broadcast emails on safety-related issues of special interest, informative seminars and workshops with leading experts on current issues, NPFVOA membership mailing list to members only (upon request), quarterly newsletters, special discounts on educational safety materials, database of crew training histories, and last but not least, priority in their Spring and Fall Fundraising Golf Tournaments — a great way to network with a broad spectrum of industry members.

After 25 years of providing safety awareness and education to over 37,000 of the maritime industry, NPFVOA continues to update and develop new programs. As the commercial fi shing industry continues to evolve and the regulations become more complex, NPFVOA will continue to be on the forefront of compliance issues and safety training .

What's New...What's New...

“What's New” is a service of Pacific Fishing's Advertising Department. Contact Diane Sandvik at (206) 962-9315 for more information.

NPFVOA Vessel Safety Program: Promoting Safety in the North Pacifi c Fleet for 25 years

COMMERCIAL FISHERMEN’S FESTIVALMOVES TO TONGUE POINTFestival Director Ron Williams is enthusiastic about the new location for the Commercial Fishermen’s Festival. Now in its third year, the Festival has grown so much that more space is needed to accommodate all the activities and visitors, so when the Port of Astoria acquired this facility last Fall, it seemed a natural fi t.

“We’re excited to show the industry the facility,” says Jack Crider, Executive Director for the Port of Astoria. “We’re hoping captains and owners of commercial fi shing boats come on down and see the potential of this site to accommodate King Crab and other fi shing and marine vessels.”

The new facility off ers closer access to the water, fantastic views across the Columbia River and more room for displays, programs, and competitions. “We can do things here that weren’t possible at Pier 1,” says Williams. “With better access to the water we can add more boats, along with a demonstration of a seine boat set and new water-based competitions.”

“Industry Vendors will be able to demonstrate their equipment in ways that simply are not possible with indoor events,” added Williams. “For example, David Rowland with Klassen Engine Company will be fi ring up a generator so Greg Sangster with Integrated Marine/Wescold can use the power to operate ice-making equipment.” Rowland is also bringing an FPT Iveco Marine Engine for display.

Tongue Point is located on the east end of Astoria, Oregon, just off of Highway 30.

For more information and to see the festival schedule: (503) 470-0463

ron@commercialfi shermensfestival.com www.CommercialFishermensFestival.com

Eco-friendly bilge oil collectorFast Oil Recovery Systems (FORS) has pioneered an innovative device that proponents say could prevent millions of gallons of oil from entering the world’s oceans. The unassuming device is being hailed as the fi rst truly eco-friendly solution to one of the world’s most damaging marine pollutants.

“Bilge oil has been killing marine wildlife and polluting our oceans for far too long,” says Bob Elliott, vice-president of FORS and the visionary behind the Bilge Oil Collector. “Our goal is to stop bilge oil pollution entirely by making it more convenient and cost eff ective for boat operators to protect the environment than to damage it.”

The FORS Bilge Oil Collector removes 99.9 percent of the oil in a ship’s bilge and is the fi rst system that actually collects the oil for recycling as a valuable resource. The device can be programmed to automatically remove up to two gallons of oil a day and requires no maintenance other than periodically emptying the reservoir.

“What’s unbelievable is that no one thought of this sooner,” says Elliott. “The Bilge Oil Collector generally pays for itself in just six months, and each unit is going to keep hundreds of gallons of oil out of our oceans and landfi lls over the course of its lifetime.

“The Coast Guard continually upgrades its environmental regulations to refl ect advances in technology,” he adds. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, a few years from now, it’s illegal to throw oil-soaked pads into a landfi ll rather than recycle them.”

Contact: Bob Elliott • FAST OIL RECOVERY SYSTEMS250-616-7817

[email protected]. Box 108, Qualicum Beach, BC V9K 1S7 Canada

PACIFIC FISHING market focus


Your quality catch, teamed with expert marketing, equals better results.

Cell 206-999-8000Fax 425-335-3393Satellite Alaska Dispatch #[email protected] www.northportfisheries.com

High-Quality Long-Line

HALIBUT & BLACK COD

HYDRAULIC AND MACHINE WKS.

P.O. BOX 385ASTORIA, OR 97103

(503) 325-0630 FAX (503) 325-05341-800-425-0630

All Stainless Construction

Greaseable Seal Built into Hub to Protect Motor Shaft

Direct Drive Tapered Shaft Char-Lynn Motors

Stainless Backup Plate

Fully Adjustable Stainless Peelers

Stainless Sheaves

Stainless Hub

6 Sizes Available

LINE COILER ALSO AVAILABLE

Splice King Power Block

RECOVER 99.9%OF YOUR BILGE OIL AUTOMATICALLY.No need for messy absorbent pads!

The FORS T55 Tube DriveBilge Oil Collector cancollect 5 gallons of oilan hour. This recoveredoil can then be recycled.

Tel. 250-616-7817

Covered Railways — Fiberglass, wood and

metal professionals for all your vessel repair

and maintenance.

(907) 874-4669Wrangell, AK

PACIFIC FISHING market focus


Bellingham (Tony) Office 360-676-1606 Cell 360-739-3656

www.osbornepropellers.com

since 1935

Specialists in Marine PropellerDesign, Manufacture and Repair

1865 Spicer Road, North Vancouver, BC, V7H 2V2Bus 604-929-8407 Fax 604-929-7121

[email protected]

Professional Services

Jackson, Morgan & Hunt, PLLC

4123 California Ave SW #101

www.jmhseattle.com

LAW OFFICES OF MIKKELBORG, BROZ,

WELLS & FRYER, PLLC“Serving the Maritime

Community for 43 years.”Representing clients in all maritime actions including:• Maritime Contracts & Shipyard Disputes• Insurance Coverage & Bad Faith• Maritime Casualties & Salvage• Business Formation & Transactions

Contact: Jess G.Webster1001 Fourth Avenue

Suite 3600Seattle, Washington 98154

(206) 623-5890Fax: (206) 623-0965

[email protected]

Gibbons & Associates, P.S.

Over 25 years experience

Gibbons & Associates, P.S.

email [email protected]

Fishing Vessels Tug & Barge Dredging Floating Cranes Cargo & Misc. New Vessels Conversions Stability Analysis

Hockema & Whalen Associates

Seattle WA 98107 E-mail: [email protected] 5450 Leary Avenue NW #252 Tel: 206 365 0919

N a v a l A r c h i t e c t s • M a r i n e E n g i n e e r s

Advertise in

Call(206) 962-9315

PLACE YOUR AD HERE

FULL SERVICE SHIPYARD PROVIDING:• One stop solution for all your vessel needs

• Enclosed paint facility• Very competitive haul out rates and no lay day charges

• Specializing in large fi shing vessels• Quality workmanship • Exchange rate advantage

“Make a stop in Vancouver, BC for on time, on budget, friendly service. It may be your best catch”

Vancouver Shipyards Co. Ltd.50 Pemberton Ave., North Vancouver, BC V7P 2R2Call Randy at (604) 990-3315 Fax (604) 990-3290

Email: [email protected] www.vanship.com

F I S H HOLDSERVING THE MARINE INDUSTRY

MOBILE SERVICEOregon, Washington, Alaska & California

RIGBY MARINE NEWPORT, OR

541-265-8100

Closed Cell Foam • Fiberglass • Gel CoatFAST SERVICE

LISTINGS WANTED!!!

IFQ: ALL AREASBOATS: ALL KINDS

PERMITS: ALL TYPES

JOIN OUR LIST OFSATISFIED CUSTOMERS.

CALL TODAY.

BUYERS ARE WAITING.

www.permitmaster.com

—IFQ—

NEW LISTINGS DAILY. CALL FOR QUOTES OR CHECK OUT OUR

COMPLETE LIST ON THE WEB

CALL FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF VESSELS FOR SALEINCLUDING MANY BOAT/PERMIT PACKAGES

Toll Free: 888-588-1001

4302 Whistle Lake Rd • Anacortes, WA 98221

ONLINE @ www.permitmaster.com Email: [email protected] Fax: 360-293-4180

IFQs • VESSELS • PERMITSE X C E P T I O N A L F U L L S E R V I C E B R O K E R A G E

PARTIAL LIST/CALL IF YOU DON’T SEE IT!

— PERMITS —

THE PERMIT MASTER

HERRINGSITKA SEINE ........................ $600KPWS SEINE ...................... WANTEDCOOK INLET SEINE ...................N/AKODIAK SEINE ....................... $32KSE GILLNET ........................... $15KKODIAK GILLNET ................... $10KNORTON SOUND ..................... $2KHOONAH POUND ................... $65KCRAIG POUND ......................... 17KPWS POUND .............................N/ASALMONS.E. DRIFT ........................... $67.5KPWS DRIFT .......................... $135KCOOK INLET DRIFT ................ $29KCOOK INLET SET ................... $14KAREA M DRIFT ................. WANTEDBBAY DRIFT ......................... $120KBBAY SET ............................... $32KSE SEINE................................ $95KPWS SEINE ...................... WANTEDKODIAK SEINE ....................... $30KCHIGNIK SEINE ...................... $90KAREA M SEINE ................. WANTEDKOTZEBUE GILLNET ................ $5K

POWER TROLL ...................... $30KHAND TROLL ...................... $10.5KPUGET SOUND DRIFT ............ $22KPUGET SOUND SEINE ............ $80KSHELLFISHSE DUNGY 300 POT ..................N/ASE DUNGY 225 POT ............... $40KSE DUNGY 150 POT ............... $24KSE DUNGY 75 POT ................. $14KSE POT SHRIMP .................... $16KSE TANNER ............................ $65KSE RED .................................. $85KSE RED/TANNER .................... $85KSE RED/BRN .................... WANTEDKODIAK TANNER.................... $29KPUGET S CRAB ................ WANTEDDIVESE GEODUCK ......................... $80KSE CUCUMBER ...................... $11KMISC.CAL LOBSTER ........................ $60KCAL SPOT PRAWN ............... $250KCAL SQUID ...................... $6K/TONCAL SQUID LITE BOAT ........... $70KCAL SWORDFISH GILLNET .... $20K

EXCEPTIONAL “FULL” SERVICEBROKERAGE SAMPLES

2,700# “C” SE BCOD @ $20ANY# “B/C” WY BCOD @ WANTED

ANY# “A/B/C” CG BCOD @ WANTEDANY# “B/C” WG BCOD @ WANTED

4,000# “A” AI BCOD BLKD @ $34,000# “A” AI BCOD BLKD @ LEASE

ANY# “B” BS BCOD BLKD @ WANTED2,000# “D” 2C HAL BLKD @ $19 FISHED

ANY# “C” 2C HAL @ WANTEDANY# “B/C” 3A HAL @ WANTEDANY# “B” 3B HAL @ WANTED

3,500# “D“ 4A HAL BLKD @ $11ANY# “B/C” 4B HAL @ WANTED

25,000# “B” 4C HAL UNBLKD @ $15

P1670M – 88 X 24.5 STEEL TUNA LONGLINER, 12V149 GMC MAIN, BOWTHRUSTER, DECK CRANE, 2 HOLDS WITH PLATES AND BLAST TO 20 BELOW, BACK UP SYSTEMS AND LOADED W/SPARES. REDUNDANT ELECTRONICS. VERY WELL MAINTAINED THROUGHOUT. COMPLETE LONGLINE SYSTEM WITH 3,000 HOOKS. TURN-KEY OPERATION INCLUDES HAWAII LONGLINE PERMIT. ASKING $750K.

P1761M – 32' ROBERTS, 6BT CUMMINS MAIN, SLUSH TANKS W/BRAILERS, HEAD WITH SHOWER. TONS OF RECENT WORK. ALL NEW DECKS FROM HOUSE AFT. NEW INSULATED FISH HOLD, NEW HYD HOSES, REBUILT HYD VALVES, NEW CONTROLS, NEW PACER, NEW GPS. ASKING $45K.

P1792M – 42' DELTA, 8V71 GMC MAIN, TWIN DISC GEAR, POWER TAKE OFF FRONT AND BACK FOR DECK GEAR AND RSW, TWIN PICKING BOOMS W/WINCHES, MAIN BOOM W/TOPPING AND VANGING. HYD DRIVEN RSW AND 6KW GEN SET. ASKING $165K.

P1782M – 64' POWER SCOW, TWIN 6-71 GMC, 12KW AUX, 4 CYLINDER ISUZU FOR DIRECT DRIVE RSW (RSW NOT OPERATIONAL), PACKS 50K IN DECK TANK, COMPLETE ELECTRONICS. ALL IN GOOD CONDITION. PERFECT LITTLE TENDER OR CONVERT TO ALMOST ANY USE. $35K.

P1791M – 34' 43 X 14.6 DONELLE LOBSTER BOAT BUILT IN 1998, C SERIES CUMMINS 350HP MAIN, 14KW ISUZU AUX, RSW, 14" HYDRO-SLAVE HAULER, FURUNO RADAR, SIMRAD COLOR PLOTTER, FURUNO SOUNDER, COMNAV PILOT. COMPLETE TURN-KEY OPERA-TION INCLUDES 500 POTS AND CALIFORNIA SPOT PRAWN LICENSE. ASKING $700K.

P1795M – 28 X 11 BUFFALO CRABBER, LOW TIME ON D4 VOLVO AND DUOPROP I/O, GIVES EASY 20 KNOT CRUISE OR 30 TOPS. CRAB BLOCK ON ALUMINUM ARTICULAT-ING DAVIT. JABSCO WASHDOWN/BILGE PUMP. WELL SET UP BOAT IN EXCELLENT CONDITION. PERFECT FOR PUGET SOUND OR SE AK. ASKING $95K.

PACIFIC FISHING classifieds

P1713M – 34' COMBO RIGGED FOR CRAB AND GILLNET, ECONOMICAL 6-354 PERKINS, DAVIT AND BLOCK, FURUNO SOUNDER, ECHOTEC PLOTTER, COMNAV PILOT. GREAT BOAT FOR THE SOUND AT A GREAT PRICE. MUST SELL, REDUCED TO $10.5K.

P1772M – ALL AMERICAN BOW/STERN-PICKER, TWIN 400HP CUMMINS, PITTS CLUTCHES DRIVING 291 HAMILTONS, 7.5 TON IMS RSW, COMPLETE ELECTRONICS. AVAILABLE AFTER 2010 SEASON. ASKING $200K.



Need greatCREW?

Use AlaskaCrewFinder.comto help fi ll your open posi-tions: • FREE Job Postings! • FREE Resume Searches! • FREE Company Profi le!

Absolutely no cost for employers

We specialize in all posi-tions including: • Deckhands & Processors • Mates & Captains • Engineers • Cooks • Etc.

Go to:AlaskaCrewFinder.com

FOR SALE45 ft. glass Sunnfjord longliner/troller: 6552 lb. 2C-C Halibut quota, Choice beachfront cabin/property in Port Alexander, Alaska. Boat (only): $130,000. Contact (907) 738-8294.

F/V Nancy Ellen is available to catch Halibut Quota in areas 3B, 4A and 4B. Interested parties please call Byron or Paula at (907) 359-3655 or (907) 246-8510. Or email: [email protected].

ALASKA FISHINGINDUSTRY JOBS

Use AlaskaJobFinder.com to help you land your next position – deckhands, engineers, mates, captains, processors, cooks,

management, etc.

Try it FREE at: www.AlaskaJobFinder.com/trial

58' Delta. F/V Cape Reliant is ready to fish your ifq’s in 2008. Safe and reliable. Flexible schedule/terms. Call (907) 518-1652 or (907) 772-3737 or dispatch: 0703 or Sat. phone: (866) 621-8890.


58 ft Delta, New L.P. paint, New U.H.M.W. guards and cap rails, new tail shaft, new inter-mediate shaft, new bearings, new John Deere aux., rebuilt refrigeration, A.M. Aluminum 8” boom w/slider, 28” Marco powerblock with tire and swivel, new Valvoil hydraulic valves, two new picking booms, new #8, two #4’s, and vanging pullmaster winches, new air boot p.t.o., newer electronics. Asking $800,000; contact Tom at (310)505-8194.

F/V SARSEN - 53' ketch rigged motor sailer. Price $210,000 cash or trade. Boat built 1994 Port Townsend, Skookum mold, Blue Water boat. Engine 6-71 Detroit, 36-inch prop, FG construction. Fish hold: 28,000 lbs., frozen 25 minus. 2,000+ gal. fuel, sails perfect condition, Northern Lights gen. 121/2 kW, all electronics, top brands, VHF, radar, weather fax, low-freq. radio, autopilot, GPS. Worked tuna three years, bottom painted and checked every season. Selling due to other business, no time to fi sh. Phone Capt. Mark Pratt, (pager) (206) 595-3146 or F.W. Pratt, (406) 671-5080. Boat in Ilwaco, WA.

(206)789-5101(800)683-0297

Come see us at www.dockstreetbrokers.com.

HALIBUT IFQ2C-D-B: 2,500 lbs ......asking $21.003B-B-B: 12,500 lbs ....asking $23.003B-C-B: 5,000 lbs ......asking $19.004A-B-U: 20,000 lbs ....asking $16.004A-B-B: 6,800 lbs ......asking $13.004A-C-U: 17,000 lbs ....asking $15.004A-C-B: 3,500 lbs ......asking $12.004B-B-U: 10,000 lbs ....asking $12.004B-B-B: 7,000 lbs ......asking $10.004D-B-B: 6,000 lbs ......asking $12.004D-B-B: 2,500 lbs ......asking $10.00

SABLEFISH IFQAI-B-U: 20,000 lbs ........asking $3.00CG-C-U: 10,000 lbs ........asking $23.00WG-C-B: 7,500 lbs .......asking $13.00WG-C-B: 4,000 lbs .......asking $12.00WG-C-B: 12,000 lbs .......asking $13.00

Dock Street Brokers

PL10-001 33’x11.5’ aluminum jet sport fisher built by Sea Master in 2002. Twin Yanmar 315hp mains with 490 hours. Hamilton 245 jets. Sleeps 5. Asking $235,000.

CR10-005 93’x30.8’ crabber/tender/research vessel built in 1974 by Marine Power & Equip-ment, sponsoned in 1991. Detroit V16-149 rated at 940 hp. (2) G.M Model 50 232 kw new 1999. GM 4-71 75 kw. 30 ton deck mounted RSW system. Full tendering pack-age. Possible lease of approxi-mately 270,000# of opilio crab. Asking $850,000.

TR10-008 36’x12’x4’ fiberglass troller built in 1987. Economical Mitsubishi main rated at 160 hp. 10,000 lbs fish hold capacity. 12” combination crab, longline block, trolling gurdies and all miscella-neous gear. Asking $115,000.

LL10-004 58’x26’ steel longline catcher/processor built by Hansen in 1969. Sponsoned in 2008. Mustad auto baiting system. Plate freezers with 2,600# per freezing cycle capacity. Packs 120,000# in two freezer holds. Asking $1,800,000.

SE8-014 52’ fiberglass seine/crab/longline vessel built by Hansen in 1990. Rare opportunity for a top of the line, fully loaded seiner. Asking $725,000.

NEWKaplan style prop, 59.5" diameter by 60" pitch. 4" standard taper with 70% DAR: RH. For sale at $8,000. Contact: Steve Drage, (503) 338-6190.



Boats/Permits/IFQs

FisherySpecies Asking Price* Offer*

Prices in AUGUST vary in accordance with market conditions.* in thousands+ denotes an increase from last month. N/A denotes No Activity.– denotes a decrease from last month.

By Mike Painter and the Permit Master

State Value*

Alaska Entry Permit Prices(as of 8-1-10)

Gillnet: Bay permits ended up in the $115k - $120k range as fi shing started. Emergency transfers averaged around $15k for this season. SE permits were still trading in the low $60s as the season got rolling. PWS permits were available @ $135k, but the action was quieting down. Cook Inlet permits were still moving at the end of June with prices pushing close to $30k. Area M permits ended up around $120k by fi shing time.

Seine: SE permits were in the $90s, but off ers were only coming up to the high $80s. PWS permits were available at around $100k plus. Kodiak permits were holding at around $30k. Area M permits were available @ $70k, up slightly from the month before.

Troll: Power Troll permits were still available around $30k, but interest was dwindling at the end of June. Hand troll permits were up slightly at $10k plus. Washington permits were still wanted and a few Oregon permits were trading.

Crab/Shrimp: Puget Sound crab permits were scarce and buyers are lining up. Want to sell? Name your price. Interest in coast permits was down, with activity not expected to pick up for another couple months.

SALMON S SE DRIFT 62- 62 55.5 S PWS DRIFT 135 130- 113.5 S COOK INLET DRIFT 29+ 29+ 26.8 S AREA M DRIFT 120 115 106.3 S BRISTOL BAY DRIFT 117.5+ 110 93.4 S SE SEINE 95 87 74.3 S PWS SEINE 110 100 85.3 S COOK INLET SEINE 28+ 17 16.9 S KODIAK SEINE 30 29.5 26.4 S CHIGNIK SEINE 73.5- 70 73.3 S AREA M SEINE 70+ 60 59.7 S COOK INLET SET 14 12- 13 S AREA M SET NET 50 45 50.6 S BRISTOL SET NET 32 30 28.4 S LOWER YUKON 8.5 N/A 9.1 S POWER TROLL 30- 30 29.1 S HAND TROLL 10.5+ 10 9.8 HERRING H SE GILLNET 15- 14- 14.9 H KODIAK GILLNET 5 4 4 H SITKA SEINE 600 500 290 H PWS SEINE N/A 30 10.3 H COOK INLET SEINE 25 15 9.3 H KODIAK SEINE 24- 20 21.3 H SE POUND SOUTH 17 16 18.8 H SE POUND NORTH 58- 55- 62.5 H PWS POUND 4 3 2.9 SHELLFISH S SE DUNGY 75 POT 14+ 10 15.3 S SE DUNGY 150 POT 24 N/A 28.6 S SE DUNGY 225 POT 40 37 40.8 S SE DUNGY 300 POT 70 60 67 S SE POT SHRIMP 17+ 16+ 15.3 S KODIAK TANNER <60 29 25 24.8 S PUGET SOUND DUNGY 75+ 75+ N/A S WASHINGTON DUNGY 1,500-2,750/FT 1,000-2,500/FT N/A S OREGON DUNGY 1,000-2,500/FT - 800-2,250/FT- N/A S CALIFORNIA DUNGY 400-1,500/FT+ 300-1,000/FT N/A SE ALASKA DIVE SE AK Dive URCHIN 5 N/A 3.5 SE AK Dive CUCUMBER 11 10- 10.7 SE AK Dive GEODUCK 77 75 77

800.372.0112farm-credit.com/fisheries

We Finance

Spend yourtime looking

for fish.Not

financing.

BOX score


PACIFIC FISHING classifiedsBoats/Permits/IFQs

Halibut & Sablefish IFQ PricesRecent market activity in halibut and sablefish quota shares

SpeciesRegulatory

AreaVessel

Category*Poundage (thousands)

Status(blocked/

unblocked)

Ask(per pound)Low High

Offer(per pound)Low High

NOTE: Halibut prices reflect net weight, sablefish round weight. Pricing for leased shares is expressed as a percentage of gross proceeds. ** Too few to characterize.

*Vessel Categories: A = freezer boats B = over 60’ C = 35’-60’ D = < 35’

By Mike Painter and the Permit Master

The IFQ market remains painfully slow for both halibut and blackcod. No changes are expected in the short term. As higher ex-vessel prices continue to stabilize, the higher quota share prices will be a little more justifi ed. Buyers should keep an eye out for any deals that may come up in the fall on fi shed quota.

H 2C D 1-10 B 21.00-25.00 20.00-24.00

H 2C C/B 1-3 B 22.00-25.00 21.00-24.50

H 2C C/B 4-10 B 24.00-26.00 24.00-25.00

H 2C C/B ANY U 25.00-26.00 24.00-24.50

H 2C A B/U N/A 25.00

H 3A D B/U 19.00-24.00 18.00-23.00

H 3A C/B 1-5 B 20.00-24.00 19.00-22.00

H 3A C/B 5-10 B 24.00-26.00 23.00-25.00

H 3A C/B >10 B 25.00-26.00 24.00-25.00

H 3A C/B >10 U 26.00-29.00 24.00-26.00

H 3A A B/U 28.00 26.00

H 3B D B 18.00-23.00 16.00-19.00

H 3B C/B 1-10 B 17.00-20.00 17.00-18.50

H 3B C/B >10 B 20.00-23.00 17.00-19.00

H 3B C/B >10 U 20.00-23.00 18.00-19.00

H 3B A B/U N/A 22.00

H 4A D B/U 10.00-14.00 9.00-10.00

H 4A C/B 1-10 B 11.00-12.00 10.00-11.00

H 4A C/B >10 B 12.00-14.00 10.00-12.00

H 4A C/B >10 U 14.00-18.00 13.00-15.00

H 4B/C/D C/B 1-10 B 9.50-13.00 7.00-8.50

H 4B/C/D C/B >10 B/U 11.00-15.00 9.00-11.00

S SE C/B 1-10 B 19.00-22.00 19.00-21.00

S SE C/B >10 U 22.00-23.50 22.00-23.50

S SE A B/U 24.00 23.00

S WY C/B 1-10 B 19.00-22.00 19.00-21.00

S WY C/B >10 U 22.00-23.00 21.00-22.00

S WY A B/U 23.00 23.00

S CG C/B 1-10 B 17.00-19.00 16.00-18.00

S CG C/B >10 B/U 18.00-20.00 17.00-19.00

S CG A B/U 20.00 20.00

S WG C/B 1-10 B 7.50-11.00 7.50-10.50

S WG C/B >10 B 11.00-12.00 10.00-11.00

S WG C/B/A >10 U 13.00-15.00 11.00-12.00

S AI C/B/A B/U 1.25-5.00 1.00-2.50

S BS C/B B/U 2.00-5.00 2.00-4.00

S BS A B/U 7.00-9.00 5.00

®

(206) 784-3703FAX (206) 784-88234300 11th Ave. N.W.Seattle, WA 98107

www.coastalmarineengine.com

800-992-4960 907-235-4966UPDATED LISTINGS ON THE WEB

PO BOX 505, HOMER ALASKA 99603Alaska Boats & Permits, Inc.

FULL SERVICE MARINE BROKERAGEFAX: 907-235-4965 E-MAIL: [email protected]

IFQs PERMITS VESSELS

www.alaskaboat.com



37' Fiberglass Troller/comboEconomical Isuzu Diesel, electronics, exceptionally tidy, streamlined and turnkey. Email for pictures. Located in Victoria BC – short walk from the Seattle/Port Angeles ferry. $69K/obo – [email protected] – (250) 642-3551.

FISH WITH THE VIKING!Maximize your IFQ return on

the F/V Viking Spirit• Mustad Autobaiter • Great sea boat w/shelter deck • Outstanding crew

• Can meet or beat any rates Call Pete (425) 205-0996

F/V TRADITION – 58' x 21' Tradition will fi sh your halibut and blackcod IFQs, April through September. Outstanding experienced crew with great catch record. We catch ‘em fast and always target the best grade. We shop for the hightest prices, traveling the distance when needed. VERY competitive rates. Call Blake (503) 440-1523 (please leave message).

F/V CARLYNN is available to harvest halibut in areas 2c, 3a, and 3b. Black cod in areas SE, WY, and CG. Flexible rates and scheduling good ref-erences. All #1 fish and best prices at time of delivery. Please call to plan for ’09 and beyond. Rob at (907) 321-0486 or (907) 364-3813.

Seabrooke Enterprises LLC, owners of F/V Seabrooke, are interested in LEASING CRAB QUOTA. We offer: skipper (father/son team) with over 30 years of combined experience; vessel professionally operated/managed, above average catch history, ex-ceptionally well-maintained (hauled every two years), economical to operate with all Caterpillar power, current survey on request, competitive harvest rates, desire to stay actively involved in fi sheries. If you are interested in LEASING CRAB QUOTA, please contact us: offi ce (541) 938-3542, (509) 522-5252; cell (509) 520-0911, (509) 200-9508; fax (541) 938-8164; email [email protected].

CALL THE CLAM MANFor all your clam needs. Cockles, steamers butters and horse necks. Human consump-tion or bait. Also commercial diving supplies. Call Doug’s Diving, (503) 322-2200 or (800) 355-DIVE, www.dougsdiving.com.

FOR SALEF/V O-See-O. Length: 44', weight: 13', depth: 7', engine – new 6.7 Gimmy. All geared for power trolling. Please call 1 (907) 874-2484 or email: [email protected].

FOR SALEThree Hamilon 321 jet pumps for sale. Each unit comes with two impellers (valued at 5K apiece new). Each unit has been totally gone thru and rebuilt. Spare impeller is new for each unit, impeller in the pumps are rebuilt. Each unit is in “like new” condition. Asking 20K obo for each unit. Please call (360) 961-5747 or email: [email protected]

F/V QUIK SET – 32x13, 1987 Alucraft BBay sternpicker. 3208T Cat diesel with approx. 6000 hrs. HD hydraulics, narrow drum w/auto levelwind. Packs 18000+ under hatches. Exceptional maintenance of boat-equipment by same owner for 13 years. Turn key with many recent upgrades. Owner will help commission for 2010 season. Call Brad at 253-261-5340 or 253-852-5513 wk. for pictures/specifi cs. Located Dillingham, AK. 105K

F/V POST POINT – 32 X 13.4 1990 ALFA/NW Marine Fabrication Bristol Bay Gillnetter; 3208 Cat TD5111 Gearbox; IMS RSW Bowthruster; power steering; load sense hydraulics; powered off gearbox PTO; 200 fathom piston drive reel w/autolevelwind; fl ush deck and much more. This boat is easy to maintain and fi sh located at Leader Creek Naknek Alaska. FOR SALE after 2010 Salmon Season. 360-223-3583.

LET'S FISH YOUR IFQHalibut and Black Cod. F/V Sierra Mar 58' Delta, works all seasons and all areas and walkons, leases,crewing owners and all parteners are welcome to call. This boat, operation and crew are safe, clean and reliable. Marco Auto baiter, good grub, longtime crew and all area experi-ence and best %’s with crew share, no #2’s and bycatch for Q owner make this boat a good call. Annual upgrades and maintainance done every off season. Please call for more information, sched-ualing, references and possibilities fro 2010 and beyond. Kevin Seabeck (206) 399-9267 or [email protected].

F/V ELIZABETH S (47 ft. Delta) available to harvest c class 2c, 3a halibut and SE blackcod. Competitive rates for hired skipper, medical transfers, or walk-ons. Small blocks welcome. Contact Daniel Smith at (907) 209-2215.

FOR SALE58' x 24' Jensen designed steel limit seiner, Dual refrigeration, Cat power, Packs over 150,00#s. 95% complete. Serious inquiries only. (714) 401-8239.

FOR SALETwo California purse seiners available. Ready to fish. Complete boats with market squid permits and sardine permits. Priced to sell quick at $429,000. Call Don (949) 279-9369.

FOR SALEThree California light boats available with or without permits. One boat and permit at only $79,000. One 12 ton brail or light boat permit at only $52,000. All priced to sell. Call Don (949) 279-9369.

FOR SALE: Mustad Auto Baiting System for sale. Includes Baiter, Combe, 20 magazines of gear, and all rails and hangers. Fits on a 58 foot boat. $45,000 for all OBO. Call: (907) 253-7435 or email: [email protected]

FOR SALE39' BHM 1987 New QSM11 350-450 H.P. (200hrs.) New 10Kw gen. (50 hrs.) Split Wheelhouse, Hyd., Puller, 2 Radars, GPS Plotter, Fishfi nder, Autopilot, VHF, AM-FM-CD. Ca. Lobster permit, Socal. Nearshore permit, Gillnet permit, Salmon Permit. Boat with permits $295K boat only $225K. Lobster permit-$95K. Nearshore permit-$50K. Gillnet permit-$10K. After sale of boat only. (805) 290-5370

FOR SALESalmon seine, herring seine, power skiff with nozzle, 3/8 Everson halibut tub gear, buoyline, bladders, anchors, flagpoles, gurdy. 65' boat with freezer, rigged for tuna, halibut, salmon, herring, tuna gurdys and gear all discounted 75%. (604) 241-0594. http://us.mc655.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]"/t"_blank" or email: [email protected].

FOR SALE875 Meshes X 300 F WC salmon seine from BC. Shirt line and SS rings, well maintained. $4,000. (604) 619-6090 or email [email protected].

F/V FISH TRAP – Bristol Bay Jet Boat. 2006 Banner Boatworks, twin 6108 Luggers, 330 hp, 13" Doen Jets, 7.5 ton RSW-IMS. Proven design, sleeps 6, open deck, set off the bow or stearn. $310,000. Drift permit available with sale – at market. Dan (907) 399-1884; (907) 235-6612.

FOR SALEGMC 653 engine block: rebuilt. Zero hours, $7000.00. Call: (206) 399-1699..

FOR SALECAT D375 LOCATED IN PETERSBURG. 30,000 HOURS IN FEDERAL GOVERN-MENT SERVICE, VERY WELL MAINTAINED. REPOWERING VESSEL – MAKE OFFER. (907) 772-4625.

FOR SALEMarco 26" block with power gripper and open shieve, w/o hydraulic swivel. Ten years old: $7,500 or best offer. Call: (206) 915-8345, email: 1wildfi [email protected].

SMALL BOAT TRAWL WINCHESApprox. 550 H.P., 500 fath. 5/8 wire. Starting at $19,500. Available Nov. 2010. Call: (360) 671-1354.

FOR SALE2 mid-water nets; 1 alum halibut longline reel; 1 new Hansen 30" crab hauler; 250 shrimp traps 48"; 1 Carrier 5H40 and 40hp elec. motor; one 8" and one 10" Sekich herring pumps; 2 Rapp Hydema drag winches (big motors) with 1200 fathoms 19mm (3/4") new wire. (604) 576-0511.

BOAT FOR SALELOA 95’; Beam 25’; Gross Tons 160; Net Tons 48. Built in Bayou Labatre, AL. Year 1999; Engine CAT-3412; H.P. 671; Auxiliary CAT-3056. Price: $450,000 USD. Location: Ensenada, B.C. Mexico. Recently hauled (February) new paint ,new zincs and clean! Contact Luis Castaneda at: 484 Bonito Ave., Imperial Beach, CA 91932 USA. Or email: [email protected].

FOR SALE: 60 tubs dogfish/cod gear, 70 tubs halibut gear, 20 anchors, 14 flagpoles,chute, 12 buoys, gurdy, herring seine,10" herring pump, powerskiff-6 cyl ford with nozzle, salmon seines 5.75, 8.75. ph 604-241-0594

WANTED2C unblocked halibut quota. Wil l pay $24/lb. Call Roger: (907) 789-9504 or (907) 723-4642 (cell). Email: [email protected].

FOR SALES.S. 4 Blade Prop. Skewed Kaplan style, 5" Bore R.H., 63" Dia. x 58" Pitch. $9,000. Call: (360) 671-1354. FOR SALE, LEASE, OR ME W/GEAR, (New!) 100,

90#, 38" airport pots, Rigged ready to splash, Many extras, 25 years on the ocean, 17 years crab, Coast guard licensed, Looking for quality boat, Or sell everything. Call for complete details. 541-226-7000



Harvest your A, B, or C IFQ’s on the F/V Expatriate

A fully equipped and well maintained 58’ Delta. Experienced captain and crew with a reputation for quality; best markets for your catch. Buyer references available.

Call 907-772-4856 weekdays OR mobile 602-320-9050

FOR SALETogiak Herring Seine and Skiff. $5500 OBO. Seine hung by Jack & Joe of Bellingham. 50% web hung in. Good shape. Skiff 16' fi berglass Olsen. Needs outboard motor. Phone (360) 951-6058.

EXXON PLAINTIFFS (lien agents)Has distribution of your Exxon funds taken over 6 months to receive? Join a special-ized class action to petition Exxon Qualifi ed Settlement Fund to promptly process your payments. If interested, you may fax your request to (425) 671-0053, Curt Peterson, co-plaintiff. Requests will be collectively forwarded to E.Q.S.F. If plaintiffs would like monthly updated progress reports, provide an email address.


California light boats and purse seiners for squid and sardines with permits available now. Call Don (949) 279-9369.

F/V LISA GAYLE is available to fi sh your IFQ. Flexible rates, comfortable boat. Call to schedule a convenient time to fi sh. (503) 791-2887 cell. (541) 568-4051. Great rates for large quotas!

LONGLINE CLIPSWanted to buy: Wagner 5" or similar longline clips. (509) 679-0384

FOR SALE OR TRADEIFQ-QS

18,000 lbs. Halibut Class C sharesSell or trade for:

Black cod, western gulf and/or 4B Halibut

No Brokers please.

Fax: (907) 235-5412Cell: (907) 299-4026

BOAT FOR SALE: NEW!47.5' Seiner/Longliner/Crabber Kodiak, Alaska. $272,000. Negotiable. Gear and permits for Kodiak salmon seine, herring gillnet, tan-ner crab. Hamm design hull. 8000 hours John Deere engine. 800 Wesmar sonar/TracPhone. 18 ton RSW system/ packs 40,0000 lbs salmon. 808-658-0390, 808-658-5057 [email protected]


Alaska Boats and Permits ........................ 33

Alaska Crew Finder .................................. 31

Alaska Job Finder .................................... 31

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute ........ 40

Alaskan Quota & Permits ......................... 33

Black Pearl IFQ Fisheries .......................... 33

Cascade Engine Center ............................ 16

Coastal Marine Engine, Inc. ..................... 33

Copper River Boat & Permits, LLC ............ 35

Dana F. Besecker Co ..............................2, 29

Diesel America West ................................ 28

Dock Street Brokers ................................. 31

FORS ....................................................... 28

Foss Shipyard .......................................... 28

Fremont Maritime Services, Inc. .............. 18

Gibbons & Associates, P.S. ....................... 29

Hans Johnson .......................................... 35

Highland Refrigeration............................ 19

Hockema & Whalen Associates ................ 29

Inmarsat North America .......................... 20

Jackson, Morgan & Hunt ......................... 29

Kinematics Marine, Inc. ........................... 12

Kodiak Boatyard ...................................... 15

KVH Industries ........................................ 11

Law Offi ce of Paul L. Anderson, PLLC ....... 29

LFS, Inc. ................................................... 14

Lynden Transport .................................... 39

MER Equipment ...................................... 28

Mikkelborg Law Offi ces ........................... 29

Norm Pillen ............................................. 31

Northport Fisheries ................................. 28

NPFVOA ................................................... 35

NW Farm Credit Services ......................... 32

Ocean Traps ............................................. 28

Osborne Propellers Ltd. ........................... 29

Pacifi c West Refrigeration.......................... 6

PF’s “What’s New” .................................... 27

Rena International .................................... 8

Rigby Marine ........................................... 29

Ryco Equipment ...................................... 17

Seabrooke Enterprises LLC ....................... 34

Silver Horde Fishing Supplies .................. 28

Spurs Line & Net Cutter Systems ............... 9

The Permit Master ................................... 30

Tom-Mac Shipyards ................................... 7

Vancouver Shipyards ............................... 29

Viking Spirit ............................................ 34

Warren L. Junes Ltd. ................................ 28

WESMAR- Western Marine Electronics ...... 5

Wrangell Boatshop ................................. 28

Wrangell Ports and Harbors .................... 10

ADVERTISERS INDEX ON THE DOCKSIt’s Alaska’s fault: Open-pen

salmon aquaculture isn’t the problem on B.C.’s coast.

It’s Alaska.A well-financed campaign by

Alaska’s wild salmon industry is out to discredit and eliminate the competition from the B.C. salmon farming industry.

At least that’s the conclusion inde-pendent researcher Vivian Krause has come up with, according to a story in Canada’s National Post.

The Alaska Seafood Mar-keting Institute has received funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trust — all to attack salmon aquaculture in B.C.

Krause says in her blog — “Fish Farm fuss” — that the same United States–based foundations have supplied $128 million in funding to groups battling open-pen salmon aquaculture in Brit-ish Columbia.

The National Post was started by publishing tycoon Conrad Black in 1998 as a conservative media outlet promoting unfettered busi-ness develoment in Canada.

Black was serving 78 months in U.S. federal prison for diverting funds for personal benefit from sales of publishing assets and other irregularities.

� � � �Farmed fish toxic: A French tel-

evision program — Risks on a Plate — recently concluded that most salmon on the French market do not meet toxicity safety standards.

The program said fish meat becomes potentially toxic because of the pesti-cides used to combat sea lice.

� � � �California scholarships: Central

Coast Women for Fisheries (www.womenforfish.org) has announced recipi-ents of its 2010 scholarship program.

This year, the group received a grant for $60,000 from the Central California Joint Cable/Fisheries Liaison Commit-tee. Some $20,000 of it was dispersed to 20 students.

One of the requirements is that recipients be commercial fishermen or a descendant of one. Most are kids or grandkids, and there are some wives trying to find other avenues to help sup-port their husbands.

In addition, Women for Fisher-ies invested $38,500 of the grant in an endowment fund that the group has been trying to grow for a few years. It is now $106,000.

Organizers hope that someday they

will use the interest from this fund to con-tinue scholarships for future generations.

This year the recipients are: Rebecca Reisbick, daughter of

fisherman Sanford Reisbick of the troller High Hope from Olympia, Wash.

Sandy French, wife of John French, a longtime fisherman from Morro Bay.

Josh Dagama, whose grandfather Anthony and father Eric are commercial fishermen from Morro Bay area.

Angelina McKee, daughter of Jeff McKee, a Port San Luis fisherman.

Remy Noll, granddaughter of Beverly Noll from Crescent City.

Nick and Breana Hansen, whose grandfather Jack Hansen is a retired fisherman from Morro Bay.

Ryan French, son of John French, Morro Bay.

Ashlyn Snow, whose father Don Snow

Kale Garcia of the F/V Aquila helps load a container destined for devastation you’ve probably not heard of. The North Pacific fishing industry contributed about $85,000 in gear for fishermen on Robinson Crusoe Island, a speck of land 400 miles off Chile’s coast, which was demolished by a tsunami in February. The island, originally called Juan Fernandez Island, inspired Daniel Defoe to create the tale of Robinson Crusoe in the 18th century. The 21st century relief effort was the work of crabbers, trawlers, longliners, fishing associations, gear suppliers, and maritime businesses.


Missed us?

So, if you can’t fi nd Pacifi c Fishing in your regular store, let us know.

We’ll get a copy to you as soon as possible.

Call: 425-282-0990, Ext. 222E-mail: GimmePacifi [email protected]

Some retailers can’t always meet the demand for Pacifi c Fishing.

Postcard: Evan Seager took this photo of a sunset on Yakobi Island in 2006.

has a troller that fishes Southeast AlaskaBrian and Julian Capen, sons of Tom Capen, a Port

San Luis fisherman.Jonathon Blue, son of long time Morro Bay fisherman

Bill Blue.Adam Peterman, son of Port San Luis fisherman Bruce

Peterman.Amy Dean, niece of fisherman Fred Cefalu from Mor-

ro Bay.Joseph Jenson, grandson of John Roza Sr. from Morro

Bay area.Barbara Stickel. She and her husband Tom Stickel

from Morro Bay have fished for many years.Drew and Lorrin French, sons of long time Morro

Bay fisherman Jeff French. Their mother, Lori, runs the Faces of California Fishing program, which is becoming well known.

Matt Buompensiero, son of Morro Bay fisherman Pete Buompensiero.

Eryn Pellegrini, whose father Paul Pellegrini from Eureka is a fourth generation fisherman.

� � � �Give her a hand: Alexandra Morton, who has led the fight

against open salmon net pens in British Columbia, has gone without a paycheck for quite some time. So, she’s opened an online store with her books, cards, fish prints, and more: www.alexandramorton.ca.

Help her out.� � � �

Alaska fishermen help gulf industry: The Alaska Fishing Industry Relief Mission (AFIRM) has sent a $10,600 donation to Louisiana to help the Gulf Coast fishing industry. The money will underwrite an industry effort to create a citizen advisory committee to help oversee the Gulf of Mexico oil industry.

If adopted by Congress, the Louisiana committee would be similar to those which already operate in Alaska’s Prince Wil-liam Sound and Cook Inlet, where Regional Citizens’ Advisory Committees (RCACs) were established after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Those committees monitor terminal and tanker opera-tions, conduct research, and provide advice to ensure industry operations are in accordance with environmentally sound practices.

“We believe the RCAC systems in Alaska have been instru-mental in keeping marine oil operations as safe as possible,” said Mark Vinsel, executive director of the United Fishermen of Alaska.

� � � �Kvichak sending skimmers to gulf: Kvichak Marine Indus-

tries of Seattle was building about 30 rapid response oil skim-mers, fitted with Marco Pollution Control CL-1 Filterbelt oil recovery modules, for companies responding to the gulf spill.

The 30-foot rapid-response, shallow-water vessel is ideally suited for use on oil spills in waterways, bays, and harbors. The all-aluminum skimmer has an 8-foot beam and a draft of 2.5 feet and is easily trailerable. Powered by twin 70 hp outboards, the skimmer is capable of a response speed of more than 17 knots.

� � � �Pacific Seafood honored for safety: Island Seafoods of

Kodiak, a subsidiary of Pacific Seafood, has earned approved

status for the Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Pro-gram (SHARP).

SHARP is a federal recognition program administered by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Devel-opment’s Standards and Safety Division. Organizations that achieve SHARP status are likely to experience fewer workplace accidents and reduced workers’ compensation insurance costs.



ON THE DOCKS continued from page 37

Pacifi c Fishing has the attention of the North Pacifi c fl eet.Pacifi c Fishing has the attention of the North Pacifi c fl eet.Share it with us this fall. Enjoy the visibility Share it with us this fall. Enjoy the visibility andand the savings! the savings!

NOVEMBER:Fish Expo: Your customers

are in the buying mood when they read this issue

DECEMBER:Logistics: Packing/transport of product and supplies in the North Pacific

Advertise in October or December and receive your

November ad for half price! The space reservation

deadline for October is 8/16. Ads are due on 8/19.

Your ads are noticed becausethe industry reads every page!

Call (206) 962-9315 to reserve your space today!THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE FOR FISHERMEN

OCTOBER:Power: What 2012 will bring in auxiliaries, reduction gear, and mains

Want to reach shermen?

� � � �New members on regional councils: The Commerce Department

has announced the appointment of 19 new and returning members to the eight regional fishery management councils.

The councils, established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, prepare fishery management plans for marine fish stocks in their regions.

Council members represent diverse constituents includ-ing commercial and recreational fisheries, environmental interests, and academia. Each year, the secretary of commerce selects approximately one-third of the total of 72 appointed members to the eight regional councils. Nineteen are being named or reappointed for the next term, which begins on Aug. 11.

PACIFIC COUNCIL: The Pacific Council includes members from the states of California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The appointees for 2010 fill an obligatory seat for Idaho and one at-large seat.

Obligatory seatHerbert “Herb” A. Pollard II (Idaho) At-large seatDanny “Dan” L. Wolford (California)

NORTH PACIFIC COUNCIL: The North Pacific Council includes members from the states of Alaska and Washington. The appointees for 2010 fill two obligatory seats for Alaska.

Obligatory seats: Duncan S. Fields (Alaska) Samuel “Sam” R. Cotton (Alaska)

Postcard: Aimee Castle shot this photo of Brian Castle pulling a gillnet in Clarence Strait in the summer of 2009.

The first wholesale value of Alaska salmon reached $1,069,400,000, and the price paid

to fishermen reached a 13-year high, boosting state and local economies and the private sector.

$0

$200

$400

$600

$800

$1,000

Valu

e ($

mill

ions

)

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Alaska Salmon Value Growth:Ex-Vessel and First Wholesale

Ex-Vessel First Wholesale Value, selected products

Source: ADF&G, AK Dept. of Revenue Selected products: fresh and frozen H&G, fresh and frozen

fillet, salmon roe, canned salmon

$1,200

2008

$0

$400

$800

$1,200

$1,600

$2,000

Valu

e ($

mill

ions

)

2003 2004 2005 2006 2008

Source: ADF&G, NMFS, SMIS estimatesCombined value of salmon, pollock, P-cod, sablefish & halibut,

shellfish, other groundfish

2007

2007-2008Increase 14.4%

Alaska Ex-Vessel Value,Key Commercial Species

Photo: © Steve Lee

Check out the industry e-newsletter Newsbrief on the Seafood Industry portion of the ASMI website, www.alaskaseafood.org. Subscribe to Newsbrief and Seafood Market Information Service. Check out

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute on Facebook, where you’ll find a link to a new 60-second video on You Tube about Alaska bears, whales and fishermen.

Photo: © Steve Lee

1980-201030

th A

nniversary

Pacific Fishing August 2010

Documents

Transcript of Pacific Fishing August 2010