Friday, May 21, 2010

Taking Time Out from Selling Out to BP, Obama & Begich Sell Out to BF - Big Fish

Dennis Zaki and I have Sen. Mark Begich on tape, promising to not let Yukon River fishermen continue to have their livelihoods stolen from them by foreign-owned trawlers, raking up massive amounts of by-catch, including hundreds of thousands of Chinook salmon bound for the Yukon and other rivers, from the Bering Sea.

Not only did Sen. Begich lie to Dennis and me then - February 2009, he has not yet addressed Wednesday's announcement by NOAA's North Pacific Fisheries Council that they will allow a 60,000 fish per year Chinook bycatch, which will be an increase from the current average bycatch. But we can relax, because NOAA/NMFS is calling this increase a "decrease," so everything will just work out, see.

And, they will trust industry to police itself. That's working out so well right now in the Gulf of Mexico, isn't it, NOAA?

Here's a joint release from peoples devastated by this decision:


* Association of Village Council Presidents*
* Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association*
* Kawerak, Inc. *
* Tanana Chiefs Conference*
* Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Assoc.*

Contact: Mike Smith, Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC), (907)378‐2687
Myron Naneng, Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP), (907)952‐5021
Loretta Bullard, Kawerak, Inc., (907)304‐4059
Karen Gillis, Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association (BSFA), (907)279‐6519
Becca Robbins Gisclair, Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Assoc. (360)303‐1866
Bering Sea Pollock Fishery Gets Priority Over Alaska’s Salmon Fisheries

New Chinook Salmon Bycatch Management System Preserves Status Quo, Won’t Reduce Bycatch

Today Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke approved a plan proposed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (the Council) to manage Chinook salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. The plan, called Amendment 91, allows the pollock fishery to catch up to 47,591 Chinook salmon in any year, and up to 60,000 Chinook salmon in any two out of seven years without penalty if they participate in an industry run “incentive plan.”

Groups throughout Western Alaska endorsed a lower cap including AVCP, the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), TCC, Kawerak, the Western and Eastern Interior Regional Subsistence Advisory Councils (RACs), the Federal Subsistence Board, the Alaska Board of Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of State and the Yukon River Panel.

“Amendment 91 completely ignores the unanimous recommendations from across Western Alaska for a cap of around 30,000 Chinook salmon,” said Myron Naneng, President of the Association of Village Council Presidents, “Western Alaskan tribes as well as those responsible for managing our fisheries in‐river spoke loudly and clearly, but our requests fell on deaf ears to both the Council and the Secretary of Commerce.”

The Bering Sea pollock fishery catches Chinook salmon as bycatch while fishing for pollock. These are the same salmon whose return we await each year, including those from the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, Bristol Bay and Norton Sound, as well as Cook Inlet and the Pacific Northwest. These salmon cannot be retained by the pollock fishery and therefore must either be thrown back into the water—dead after hours in the nets—or saved for donation to food banks.

In 2007, the pollock fishery caught over 120,000 Chinook salmon as bycatch, in contrast to the 10‐year average (1997‐2006) of 43,328. According to recent estimates over 50% of the Chinook salmon caught as bycatch are bound for Western Alaska.

Low returns of Chinook salmon throughout Western Alaska have caused severe economic distress in recent years as subsistence harvests are restricted and small commercial fisheries are eliminated. The Yukon River Chinook salmon fishery was declared a fishery disaster for the 2008 and 2009 seasons by the Secretary of Commerce. “It is beyond unjust that the pollock fishery will be allowed to continue catching Chinook salmon virtually without limits offshore while in‐ river families sit on the banks watching their food and income swim by. This conservation burden should not be borne by rural residents, commercial and sport fishers alone,” said Becca Robbins Gisclair, Policy Director for the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association.

The 60,000 upper limit approved in Amendment 91 has only been exceeded three times in the past eighteen years, and essentially preserves the status quo. Even the 47,591 cap in essence preserves the long‐term average bycatch. “Amendment 91 does little more than preserve the pollock fishery’s current bycatch numbers. The Council and National Marine Fisheries Service missed an opportunity here and disregarded their obligation to actually reduce bycatch. All that has been accomplished is to put the current numbers in regulation,” said Karen Gillis, Executive Director of the Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association.

Amendment 91 relies on a system of industry run incentive plans to reduce bycatch below the stated cap levels. However, the plans operate outside of Council/agency control with no guarantees of bycatch reduction. The plans have changed already from what was presented to the Council when they voted to approve Amendment 91 last April. “By relying on industry incentive plans as the primary means of bycatch reduction, the Council and NMFS have once again allowed industry to self regulate. We’ve seen how well this has worked for the banking and oil industries. [emphasis added]

Its irresponsible to leave the management of our precious salmon resources to an industry that just a few years ago, when regulatory measures were relaxed, caught over 120,000 Chinook salmon in one year,” said Loretta Bullard, President of Kawerak.

A coalition of Western Alaska groups had asked the Secretary to reject Amendment 91 because it did not meet NMFS’s legal requirements to reduce bycatch, nor the needs of subsistence users, nor the United States’ obligations under the Yukon River Salmon Agreement, and international treaty with Canada. “In approving Amendment 91, the Obama Administration has chosen to prioritize the economic interests of the pollock fishery over the needs of salmon users throughout the state. In doing so they’ve ignored an overwhelming message from Alaska’s tribal governments that the bycatch reduction measures of Amendment 91 will not provide our people and Chinook salmon populations with the protection they need and deserve. This is a very sad day for our Chinook salmon and the people who depend on them,” said Jerry Isaac, President of Tanana Chiefs Conference.

8 comments:

AKjah said...

Good god. What i have read today has just turned my stomach three times plus. Our government and the corporations that feed the dickheads in it, are hell bent on destroying all that is our land and earth. When the oceans are dead we are all dead.

Anonymous said...

Hyperbole rules; Phil, do yourself (and your readers) a favor -- check the science and relax. The decline in Yukon kings is the result of a variety of factors, only one of which is bycatch in the Bering Sea. The Secretary of Commerce has a direct responsibility to approve regulations proposed bty the Council (a majority of whom are appointed by Alaska's governor), while Begich should not intervene to pollute the process with politics (as Stevens did).

Anonymous said...

Phil-
I am waiting , with friends, for a response from Senator Begich's office regarding the $5M Yukon Disaster relief passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee and awaiting approval by full Congress.
The disconnect between disaster declaration/assistance and accepted management policy for the trawl industry under the MSFCMA is built into the law itself.
I don't hold much hope that Senator Begich will go to work to change that nor that he will address it openly.
Someday , somewhere, someone needs to address the neo-liberal underpinnings of the MSFCMA and what it is doing to the nation's fisheries.
This acceptance of amendment 91 by the Secretary of Commerce was expected, as it is the norm -though a fair amount of hope was held that more weight would be given to the Department of State's non-voting member's objections in light of the Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada.
Expected doesn't mean accepted, however and it's time for Alaskans to pay attention to a few things...

Our Commissioner of Fish and Game is an automatic add to the voting membership of the Council.
Five of the voting members are Alaskan. They are not appointed by the Governor of Alaska. The Governor nominates a minimum of 3 candidates for each vacancy to the Secretary and members are appointed from the nominee lists. The federal 'vetting' of nominee lists is supposed reduce the chances of pure and simple political appointments... though it often doesn't shake out that way...


http://stellersealions.noaa.gov/foia/documents/palin_sf.pdf

I think people need to pay a lot more attention to who we elect as Governor . We tend toward single issue stances and don't ask candidates enough questions about the many, many issues they will have to deal with... including the philosophy they will bring to making choices for commissioners , etc...

alaskapi

Anonymous said...

Once again, Phil's irresponsible and false framing of this issue does no one any favors.

Instead of providing clear informative reporting on the issue and representing the reality, Phil opts for his false framing once again.

Where was Phil when the Obama administration created the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force ?

Obama is working to make better policy, and working to fix what the Obama administration recognizes is a broken management system.

Where was Phil when Obama, through his appointment to Interior, Ken Salazar announced a new and thorough review of the way the federal government manages subsistence hunting and fishing in Alaska.

While meeting with Kim Elton, Salazar's aide to Alaska, AFN and tribal leaders said they couldn't have asked for more, indicating they were pleased that the new administration recognized their concerns and were working to make the changes necessary to correct the errors compounded by previous administration's action or inaction.

Instead of giving clear and informative information about what reality consists of, Phil once again irresponsibly attempts to misdirect and deceive his readers about the issue and who might be better focused on in order to understand who makes current policy decisions and how that might be improved.

Trying to blame Obama or Begich every time Phil has a case of gas doesn't inform or assist anyone in being able to make informed decisions or to take responsible action.

Best advice, if you want to understand the issues and inform yourself so that you might help find solutions to the many problems facing us, ignore Phil's irresponsible yatter and false framings and find a knowledgeable responsible source for a reality based view.

A reality based view is rarely to be found here.

Phil's false framing and irresponsible narrative won't give you any assistance in getting anything done.

Working from within a reality based view will get things done.

If all you want to do is listen to idiotic false framing and dutifully express your dismay at your own insufficient comprehension of reality, you're close to acting just like the ditto-heads who listen to the yattering unreality of talk radio.

You wonder that people base their opinions on false narratives and lies ? Why wonder, a number of you readers here climb aboard that false framing and embrace the unreality you find here.

Evidently Phil is incapable of learning, what's your excuse ?

..

Anonymous said...

Once again, Phil's irresponsible and false framing of this issue does no one any favors.

Instead of providing clear informative reporting on the issue and representing the reality, Phil opts for his false framing once again.

Where was Phil when the Obama administration created the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force ?

Obama is working to make better policy, and working to fix what the Obama administration recognizes is a broken management system.

Where was Phil when Obama, through his appointment to Interior, Ken Salazar announced a new and thorough review of the way the federal government manages subsistence hunting and fishing in Alaska.

While meeting with Kim Elton, Salazar's aide to Alaska, AFN and tribal leaders said they couldn't have asked for more, indicating they were pleased that the new administration recognized their concerns and were working to make the changes necessary to correct the errors compounded by previous administration's action or inaction.

Instead of giving clear and informative information about what reality consists of, Phil once again irresponsibly attempts to misdirect and deceive his readers about the issue and who might be better focused on in order to understand who makes current policy decisions and how that might be improved.

Trying to blame Obama or Begich every time Phil has a case of gas doesn't inform or assist anyone in being able to make informed decisions or to take responsible action.

Best advice, if you want to understand the issues and inform yourself so that you might help find solutions to the many problems facing us, ignore Phil's irresponsible yatter and false framings and find a knowledgeable responsible source for a reality based view.

A reality based view is rarely to be found here.

Phil's false framing and irresponsible narrative won't give you any assistance in getting anything done.

Working from within a reality based view will get things done.

If all you want to do is listen to idiotic false framing and dutifully express your dismay at your own insufficient comprehension of reality, you're close to acting just like the ditto-heads who listen to the yattering unreality of talk radio.

You wonder that people base their opinions on false narratives and lies ? Why wonder, a number of you readers here climb aboard that false framing and embrace the unreality you find here.

Evidently Phil is incapable of learning, what's your excuse ?

..

Anonymous said...

The 'framing' is off, Amendment 91 is not a free pass for the pollock industry, they fought it at every turn.

If they don't participate in the reductions Amendment 91 seeks, caps will be lowered in the future. And by 'participate in Amendment 91', that means if they don't reduce their bycatch.

As to it giving industry a pass and having no recourse, that's just incorrect. Increased data collection and increased observer monitoring required by Amendment 91 will mean that all salmon will be counted and the improved data collection will assist in future management decisions.

Simply put, Amendment 91 is a step in the right direction and not at all the hand out to the pollock fishery as it's represented to be in this posting.

If you would like to become pro-active in regards to this issue, representing the facts would be a good place to start. Printing misconceptions and half-truths isn't any way to find solutions.

Anonymous said...

Obviously written by a highly paid lobbyist/ attorney paid for by the big processors

Anonymous said...

not at all, contrary to being supportive of the pollock fishery, I've simply done more research on the issue and know that Phil's portrayal is concocted, incomplete and inaccurate.

If you educated yourself, you wouldn't come across as so simple-minded, but it seems, like far too many people these days, you're more comfortable with being simple-minded instead of actually becoming acquainted with reality.

Good luck with that...

,,