The House Special Committee on Fisheries will hold a hearing at 10 this morning on House Bill 18, which would give "personal use" or dipnet fisheries priority over all other fisheries except subsistence.
The bill sponsor is state Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak.
You can listen to the hearing by teleconference.
Here's a Matanuska-Susitna Borough resolution favoring HB 18.
And here are a bunch of letters from commercial fishermen opposed to the bill.
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20 comments:
I listened to the teleconference and after how many years Bill Stoltze still doesn’t get it. Bill and his constituents in Eagle River are all wrapped around the fact that a gillnetter or a seiner can pull one or more of their fish out of their fish holds and eat it, freeze it, smoke it, can it, send it to a family member/friend or keep it instead of selling it to the evil processor. There was no talk of personal use fisheries having to possibly give up fishing to share in conservation of the resource. Somehow Alaskans are being short changed because I (an Alaskan) can choose to not sell my commercial catch and put it in my freezer. This is not about giving PU a priority in a time of a shortage. It’s about looking my freezer instead of your own.
Bill Stoltze's Bill is truly simple and and missleading. His Bill no. 18 is poorley written and was poorly introduced at the hearing today.His introductory comments were not the truth and appeared to be grandstanding for a few folks back home. What does he mean by the phrase "Board of Fisheries shall place restrictions on all other fisheries beforerestricting personal use fisheries"? Really,' all other fisheries', even when these other fisheries are unrelated and may even be aquatic plants, clams and crabs when the issue may involve salmon. What happens to Sockeye, pinks, kings and chums if coho are the focus of the discussion? His legislation say 'all other fisheries' must be restricted why? How does his legislation work in the real world?
How much and to what extent is the BOF to restrict other fisheries??
Not all fisheries are escapement based then what?
This legislation only demonstrates his ability to understand complex issues.
Maybe the PU guys have a point about our home pack. We argue that commercial fisheries are important because we provide harvesting, processing, shipping, restaurant jobs etc., and we provide salmon to people who otherwise could not get it.
However, when we take a fish out of our catch and use it ourselves or give it to friends, that benefit does not accrue to society and we essentially become part of the personal use crowd. Would it kill us to compromise a bit and agree to the limits the PU guys pretend to abide by?
Stoltze has once again removed all doubt about his understanding of the fisheries.
If I own a guiding business, and I take my friends out without charging them, what's the big deal?
If I own a gas station, and pump a tank full into my pickup truck, am I cheating everybody else out of their fair share?
If I take a fish out of my hold, and eat it instead of selling it, how is anybody getting cheated?
The personal use limits in place are more than enough to support a family, perhaps in combination with a couple of sportfishing trips throughout the year.
Let's get real here, Stoltze is proposing this law to regulate all fisheries in the State, but he really only means to change them for the Kenai River (and perhaps Chitina/Copper) which are close to the major population center in Anchorage. Is that an appropriate way to set policy for a State the size of Alaska?
Setting policy based on the wishes of a few in the "major population center in Anchorage" is not Just by a long shot.
Personal Use: An outdated, unrestrained, abuse of a resource. Either you are a subsistence, sport, or commercial user. As the population booms in Alaska, the time approaches that "Personal Use" must be curtailed.
Why are commercial fishermen so fearful of Alaskan only resident fisheries that feed families for the year?
These are public resources - do you really think that fish to eat by Alaskan families is not a good use of the resource?
The majority of households that use the personal use fisheries across the state and yes on the Kenai are low to middle income families - and in this economy every bit of food harvested by Alaskan families goes a long way to support them throughout the year.
More than 95 percent of salmon in the state are harvested in commercial fisheries. Is sharing the remaining amount - less than five percent - with the rest use so difficult or do you really need every last one to survive?
The kenai limit is 25 per year plus 10 per household member = 45 fish for a family of four
90 fillets is like eating salmon from the same fishery twice per week.
How much more do you think you deserve from one fishery?
You might as well call this an urban priority, because that's what it is.
Bottom line is that if Mat Su legislators want more fish for their constituents, there are existing channels to work through--you don't need to set a statewide law that would affect thousands of watersheds to get your desired result for the two you're really trying to change.
Not to mention it would likely be unconstitutional. How can you manage for Maximum sustainable yield by setting priority for an in-river fishery?
It would be nice if the Legislature would butt out of these allocation issues, and let the Board of Fisheries deliberate them. This is the system Alaska has set up, and Stoltze's bill is just an end-run around the Board.
Yeah, like the Seaton bill for barbless hooks isn't an allocation issue either which the board should deal with...
Sorry to BUTT IN, 2:26? You should actually take a 8thy grade Alaska Civics Class. For the clueless, as explained over, and over, and over again.
Or did the federal question, on these same issues miss your news release too, at that U.S. Courthouse in Washington D.C.?
"butt out of these allocation issues" 2:26?
The legislature created the eight-member Alaska Board of Fish and Game, which was split into two seven-member boards (one for fisheries and one for wildlife) in 1975.
The purpose of these boards is for conservation and development of fisheries and wildlife resources [AS 16.05.221 (a) and (b)].
II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
"....In violation of the authorizing statute?"
We will uphold a regulation so long as it is consistent with and reasonably necessary to implement the statutes authorizing its adoption. As we explained in Grunert I, our
review of agency regulations involves the following analyses:
[W]e consider first whether the board
exceeded its statutory mandate in
promulgating the regulation, either by
pursuing impermissible objectives or by
employing means outside its powers.
Determining the extent of an agencys
authority involves the interpretation of
statutory language, a function uniquely
within the competence of the courts and a
question to which we apply our independent
judgment. Second, we consider whether the
regulation is reasonable and not arbitrary.
Where highly specialized agency expertise is
involved, we will not substitute our own
judgment for the boards. Our role is to
ensure only that the agency has taken a hard
look at the salient problems and has
genuinely engaged in reasoned decision
making. And third, we consider whether the
regulation conflicts with any other state
statutes or constitutional provisions.[24]
B. We Review the Validity of the Emergency Regulation Under the Public Interest Exception to the Mootness Doctrine.
55 salmon for a family of 5!
That is hardly just "personal" use.
That is on a subsistence level.
I comm fish and have never kept more than a third of that for personal use. When you are in an "urban" style area (Mat-Su/Kenai) there are these things called jobs and grocery stores.
You trade your time/work for money, then you take that money and go buy food. Anyone else hear of this modern day concept?
I thought we could shoot as many buffalo as we wanted and we would never run out. We better move to Alaska, I hear they have unlimited salmon up there, and free money.
55 is an upper limit for a family of four, but many ALASKANS only harvest what they know they will consume. Eating healthy fish twice a week sounds about right to me. Commercial fishermen complaining about people who like to eat their product. Way to grow your market!
Wanton Waste
In The Bering Sea
And
People Cry
For 55 Salmon
For a Family of
5
Wanton Waste
In The Bering Sea
WWBS
Personal use freeloaders/wasters are not a market. Never will be.
Have you heard, there's a whole big round world out there with lots of people with lots of discretionary income to pay more than some local yokel.
When nearly 100,000 alaskans benefit from just the Kenai personal use fishery, it seems to me to achieve the constitutional mandate of managing the fish resource for the maximum benefit of Alaska residents.Those Alaskans are able to put fish on their table and in their freezers at minimum cost. And it serves as a huge economic engine for the cities of Kenai and Soldotna. Huge! And it serves the recreational needs for nearly 36,000 families. No wonder that there is a bill to prioritize the fishery. What, maybe a couple thousand commercial fishermen harvest commercially and sell to business that move the vast majority of the product to markets outside of alaska. Ever price Alaska fish in alaska groceries. Very expensive compared to the cost of making a vacation out of dip netting and still get to fill your freezer. the commercial benefits pale by comparison to the benefits of the dip net fishery to alaska residents. It's just greed. The east side set net fishers and the drift fishers just cannot stand it when they can't kill em all. They could care less about the thousands and thousands of Alaskans that get to put fish up at low cost. Shame on them!
If the goal is reallocation of the Kenai River, then they should call it what it is---a legislative reallocation from the commercial fishery to the 'personal use' participants (most of which come from Anchorage and Mat-Su).
This bill re-defines everything for every watershed across the State--most of which have no issues whatsoever.
As far as fisheries management is concerned it establishes a terrible precedent because it sets the first priority at the in-river fishery--how can fisheries biologists manage for maximum sustainable yield when the fish have are already upriver to satisfy the dipnetters? How can you prevent overescapement when priority is given to dipnet fishermen, which is not a reliable way to prevent over-escapement?
The legislators should leave allocation to the board of fish---remember, those are the folks that the politicians tasked with managing these issues in the first place.
The state just finished their new Ship Creek hatchery in Anchorage. This facility is huge and does not produce very much fish. They could raise bunch of Kings, Reds and Coho’s for the PU’s. Heck they could load them in totes and they could come by and fill their coolers. How effective is that?
I can hardly wait until it is a million greedy "Alaskans" demanding their PU fish.
Greed? Yeah mr. 6:08. Your greed. You don't care about the health of the run, just that you can fill your freezer with cheap fish. Dumb, dumber, and dumbest.
Fish & Game posted 4 new videos at their site that show beginners how to dip net. It'll probably create another wave of personal use/subsistence dip netters fighting the commercial fleet for their catch. http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=PersonalUsebyAreaInteriorChitina.video
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