NOAA has posted its draft enforcement priorities for 2013.
Alaska priorities are on pages 4-5. Among "high priority" items:
• Observer assault, harassment or interference violations
• Felony and major civil cases involving significant damage to the resource or the integrity of management schemes
• Commercialization of sport-caught or subsistence halibut
• Maritime Boundary Line incursions by foreign fishing or transport vessels
Agree? Disagree?
Click here to learn how you can submit comments to NOAA's Office of Law Enforcement.
I especially like "Oberver assault,...Felony and major civil cases....or the integrity of management schemes." Tighten up the law and clean up the fishery.
ReplyDeleteWay to go "Bad boys", I am supporting these "hight priority" items in your draft 100%+++++!
Way to go NOAA. Stricter laws are needed in order to protect the King Salmon from extinction.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there was the observer we caught rummaging through one of our crewmen's dresser drawers. He wasn't assaulted, but deserved to be.
ReplyDeleteScrutinize the oppposition to these proposed changes very closely otherwise we'll face another 5+ years of the same old, same old.
ReplyDeleteWe cannot allow the government to stand blindly by while a big fishery destroy's a lifestyle in Western Alaska.
I had an observer on my C/P stay in her bunk for 10 straight days.
ReplyDeleteShe never sampled anything.
I contacted everyone at NMFS.
No one did anything. They just moved her on to another boat.
That's the old way of NMFS - "No one did anything.". Maybe stricter oversight by the federal government will make the Observer Program work as intended. The people expect this.
ReplyDeleteIts about time they take a closer look at the rampant commercialization of sport caught halibut.
ReplyDeleteFelony....and the "integrity of management schemes"
ReplyDeleteThat's a mouthful and so is the Western Alaska CDQ program!
It's about time NOAA makes Alaska a "high priority" item in the federally managed fisheries especially off the coast of Western Alaska; Bering Sea specifically where pollock is king and the real Kings are heading toward the "Endangered" list. Once that happens, all salmon fishing, both commercial and subsistence will cease until the King Salmon stocks rebound.
ReplyDeleteThousands of poor people in Western Alaska and the country of Canada are expecting positive changes in the management of an important resource (King Salmon) for two countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Unethical "management schemes" stick out like a sore thumb in Western Alaska. The perpetrators are banking on the ignorance and illiteracy of the people, who for thousands of years have depended on the King Salmon for survival.
What is happening is a crime against humanity. NOAA is doing the right thing.