Juneau Empire Story Archive

My Turn: Halibut conservation should be spread across the range

MIKE SAUNDERS

Twenty-seven percent slashed off my area 2-C Halibut quota is more than a bitter pill to swallow for my small long-lining operation. On top of the 20 percent slashed last year, my quota has basically been cut in half in two years. Another cut like this and my small quota will for all intents and purposes be gone. It won't pay the fuel to run from Haines to Glacier Bay or Cross Sound.

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All this because the International Pacific Halibut Commission after all these years has figured out that adult halibut migrate. Imagine that. So we'll experiment with the coast-wide assessment model and make the guys that fish in the areas the fish migrate to in the spring and summer (area 2 B and C) suffer a draconian cut to their livelihoods, while ignoring the fact that those same fish migrated from the eastern inside areas (2-C for example) Out, to those outside areas, (3-A, B, and area 4) in the fall and winter.

The Halibut Commission assumption that migration is a one-way street not only defies scientific logic, but as any halibut longliner with any experience will tell you, it's nonsense.

Last year they didn't cut 3-A in any significant way, and we 2-C fishermen were docked 20 percent. Now they get a small 7 percent reduction while we are saddled with 27 percent less quota. So you can see that it adds up to 40 percent more suffering for us than for the bigger boats out in (3-A)

It's no secret that halibut migrate from outside waters to inside waters in the spring and summer. Some years it's in May and others in June, occasionally earlier. We inside fishers have to wait for them to swim past the millions of hooks of the big boats that fish the outside waters, until they come into where we fish in 2-C. It has always been so. Then we get our shot at the "travelers." You can always tell them from the local fish because of the red scratches on their bellies from their epic migration across hundreds of miles of ocean bottom. These fish have always been part of our catch and the 2-C biomass in the fall they'll turn around and go back out where they came from. With the extended season from the beginning of March to end of November, the big boats in the outside fishery get two shots at them.

This move by the halibut commission is not conservation. It's reallocation. You could cut the 2-C quota to zero and those fish will all still get caught by the 3-A fleet off Cape Spencer. If we are going to conserve we have to do it fairly and equally across the entire range of these fish. Including out in the Gulf and out west. The brunt of conservation should not be put on the inside fleet. It will just ruin us and not save the resource.

• Mike Saunders is a Haines resident.

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