The Alaska Legislature today released a bunch of bills prefiled ahead of the 2013 session, which opens Jan. 15.
Deckboss looked them over and found only one of real relevance to the commercial fishing world.
House Bill 18 — An Act providing priority to personal use fisheries when fishing restrictions are implemented to achieve a management goal. Sponsor: Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak.
Of course there should be a priority for personal use fishing over "sport" fishing. Sport fishing, by definition, is playing with your food, or even worse, torturing wild creatures for your own pleasure at their pain then releasing them to suffer or die without utilizing them for food and income.
ReplyDeleteIn times of shortage, harvest to sell and eat must take priority over "sport" and is an area where the legislature can act. The priority between commercial and personal use is best determined through the BOF process as each fishery, each community, each watershed is unique.
Representative Stoltze is implementing a new priority over the State and Federal governments priority for subsistence uses.The shear magnitude of an urban subsistence fishery could overwhelm the resource do to the number of participants. Immediate concerns is the enforceabilty, resource and habitat protection. Who will bore the costs? It could very well shut down an entire seafood industry in specific places of the State. What priority would current subsistence users be left with? If you are up river or harvest fish before the personal use fishery, what kind of limited and consistent opportunity to harvest abundant resources in a historical manner will be left?
ReplyDeleteHere it is for those of you who didn't click on the link.
ReplyDeleteSince I have been involved in fisheries politics since about 1957 I think I have an eye for a skunk. This looks black with a white stripe and stinks all the way from Juneau to where I sit in Alaska. Most of you reading this site will know that almost every fishery is limited in some fashion to meet management goals.
Ordinarily I would just ignore this as just another piece of extremist *&^%$#@. But with this Governor and gerrymandered super extremist majorities in both branches of the legislature I am taking very little for granted.
HOUSE BILL NO. 18
IN THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
TWENTY-EIGHTH LEGISLATURE - FIRST SESSION
BY REPRESENTATIVE STOLTZE
Introduced: 1/7/13
Referred: Prefiled
A BILL
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED
1 "An Act providing priority to personal use fisheries when fishing restrictions are
2 implemented to achieve a management goal."
3 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:
4 * Section 1. AS 16.05.251 is amended by adding a new subsection to read:
5 (j) Except as provided in AS 16.05.258, when the harvest of a stock or species
6 is limited to achieve a management goal, the Board of Fisheries shall place restrictions
7 on all other fisheries before restricting personal use fisheries. In this subsection,
8 "management goal" means the escapement or estimated population size of the
9 exploited stock that provides the greatest potential for sustained yield as established by
10 the board.
http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/PDFdocuments/catch_shares/Crab/CrabOwnerParticipation213.pdf
ReplyDeleteI too "have an eye for a skunk" and there is a lot of stinkards involved in the destiny of our fisheries especially the King Salmon. Stinkards don't see the whole picture, only that part that leads directly to their own pockets or inflated egos.
ReplyDelete