A new season of "Deadliest Catch" premiered last week while another long-running crab drama is still in reruns.
The cast of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has changed in the six years since the Bering Sea crab fishery was rationalized, but the plot remains the same as industry continues to write the script when it comes to addressing inequalities in crew pay caused by high lease rates under the program.
Since April 2006, the council has expressed concerns about the negative impacts on crew jobs, wages and Alaska's coastal communities after the rapid consolidation of the fleet under rationalization and the exorbitant lease rates now charged by absentee harvest shareholders also known as "mailbox fishermen."
In episode after episode, however, the council has chosen deference to the wishes of crab vessel owners, shareholders and processers defending and preserving their lucrative take of the Alaska crab harvest.
Council member Duncan Fields wrote in an email that the council record should not be interpreted as inaction and that multiple ideas regarding crew pay considered over the years have proved "difficult or impossible for the council to implement."
Read the complete story from The Alaska Journal of Commerce.