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Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
About me
- Deckboss
- I'm a journalist covering Alaska's commercial fishing industry. My real name is Wesley Loy. Reach me at wloy61@gmail.com.
Blog archive
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2011
(329)
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December
(17)
- 'Hook, Line & Sisters'
- A fine salmon season for Norton Sound
- Counsel, I have a few questions...
- One Bristol Bay processor swallows another
- Icicle energizes its 'calculated risk' at Adak
- Council provides 'policy guidance' on halibut
- It took a while, but Chignik has a new harbor
- Where does fish stand in governor's budget?
- State announces dazzling Sitka herring forecast
- Blotter
- An update on the Carlson case
- Council bumps up Gulf of Alaska pollock quota
- Council trims Bering Sea pollock quota
- Stikine River king salmon bounce back
- Want to save on fuel costs?
- The season for lucrative council business
- More on halibut
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December
(17)
7 comments:
Prime example of government waste.
Sarah, here's an idea if you want to do some good. Line us up some grants for replacing our outdated carbon belching engines. The rest is common sense info that you don't need to spend time and money relaying.
Also, have your grants provide "free" First Aid certification for licensed skippers and crewmen.
Keep that "free" Safety Drill Instructor certification rolling.
There are things that are real and helpful, and then there are those that are merely waste.
I totally agree with grants to further safety/survival classes as it helps everyone involved...even those who don't take the class but are alive because someone else did!
As for the engines...ehh. I don't need a green initiative to subsidize what should have been an engine replacement paid for by the profitability of my business.
Granted, (pun intended) I don't mean a new funding source, I was thinking of Saltonstall-Kennedy dollars or some other existing funded source. There are plenty of funds floating around out there, it's just that they only want to deal with large scale operations whereas we are not.
I thought that it would be an avenue that the Sea Grant could do us some genuine beneficial service by "packaging" a deal. We deserve benefits from those importation taxes just as much as the big boys. Good business sense, that's all.
ride a bike
I would love to see all power driven vessels excluded from fishing in Bristol Bay....They should only be allowed to fish with sail power, just like in the old days!...The volume of fish and profits would be distributed more fairly thru equal labor...Could you imagine what the Egegik North Line would look like?....Still use GPS for accuracy and hydraulics for deck gear and refrigeration, etc....How much greener could you get? Same for setnets too....slow the fishery down....quality would go up further.....
No more web in the wheel, and you could pack more fish by removing all that weight of a diesel and all it's components, add another couple of fish tanks, remove the exhaust stack create more deck space, still use electric bow thrusters, maybe a couple on the stern(Port and Starboard)to maneuver while hauling gear...Has anybody ever thought of going electric turbine power?...Solar? Sail-Turbine power?....Just think....No more costs of paying for fuel!....I think I'll get my chalkboard out....
Boy, now there's an idea. Limiting the efficiency of the fleet. Oh, that's right, they've been attempting that ever since the canners pushed the territory to outlaw powerboats, and then the 32' length limit. Well, I guess a bunch of guys dying on deadman sands overturned that power issue. Now we just need to overturn that outdated length limit that keeps our quality control down in the dumps. But... "We must keep equal!" you say. What is so equal about a 32' x 18' boat with 1000hp or more vs. a 9' wide Rawson w/200hp? Do the math. You have a boat that has roughly 5 times the volume and 5 times the horsepower. 5 TIMES!
Equality left the barn about 30 years ago, time to wake up and smell the coffee boys. This whole length limit thing is a farce. It only serves to stack our fish deeper and lower the quality.
If Fish and Game stood behind there MANDATE to maximize value and assure an orderly fishery, they would repeal this ancient cannery fleet driven regulation.
In closing, I have thought romantically of the attraction to go back to the good old days of sail; quiet, clean, 6 days a week, setnetters only being widows and orphans setting nets at low tide. I'm guessing that doesn't have a lot of support, or reality. Probably shoud have limited the engine horsepower to 2-300hp. That would've kept things more equal than the length limit. Hindsight.
And to the dude that wants to ride a bike... power to ya' bud, but we're kind of busy feeding the World.
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