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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.
Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
15 comments:
Maybe the contents of the Harvester Island swear jar will go towards the Duncan's legal defense?
It'll be an interesting case to watch…
The State would be wise to dismiss this. Duncan is a very sharp guy with a good legal background and he is as far from a criminal as anyone I know.
Wasting our tax dollars on a pointless legal argument for a victimless crime.
You must not have seen the video of the setnetter hacking porpoises out of his net?
The Fields are good people. They haven't made money from this fishery in a long time.
The Fields are good people. The reality is that Uyak Bay hasn’t made money in 20 years. But setnetting on Kodiak is as much a lifestyle as it is a business and lifestyles cost money. Sometimes they’re rewarding, sometimes they’re not. Ask Pete, Leon, Mark, Leigh, Jane, or any number of people who have lived it.
Was this a victimless crime? Yes. But any lawyer knows that isn’t a defense. And putting 1 million pinks on Duncan’s permit and zero on Wanda’s? That’s not exactly sophisticated, it’s just lazy.
The State is going to try to make an example out of the Field's family. It’s hard to win a fight against someone who buys ink by the barrel, a phrase often used by people who sue journalism outlets for libel) applies to the Fields.
Whether you like Duncan or not (or whether you think his years of regulatory experience create a higher burden for his behavior), the reality is that fisheries law enforcement (both federal and state) has become a farce, driven by egos and an anti-commercial bias that touches all gear types. Fisheries need robust and meaningful enforcement but nobody wins when law enforcement is reinterpreting regulations, without notice, to find ways to punish fishermen and companies.
Luckily, Kodiak seiners never do anything illegal, or outside the ADF&G regs. And tendermen, they adhere to regs certainly.
This is a distraction from the real issue in Kodiak...destructive trawling around the island with incomplete observing. Enforcement needs to focus on the real problems in the GOA.
Longline fleet discards 12 million pounds of undersized halibut with 6% coverage. We need to increase it across the board. Pollock is the only fishery with 100%.
Charter boats are commercial enterprises. They need to have observers too. Enforcement finds lodges breaking the laws every year.
Let's do a study and find out how many halibut the charter industry sorts through to get a legal-sized, slot limit, halibut.
But I heard from Bob Candopoulos that charter was the cleanest fishery in the world!
Dude, your tangential rambling is impressive. But I’m not sure what you’re saying. At all.
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