March 28, 2023 — A mid widespread consternation about the incidental numbers of halibut, crab, salmon and other species that trawlers haul up in the Bering Sea, state and federal management regimes have come under increasing fire.
To some, inaction by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose trawl bycatch caps on salmon and crab demands an overhaul of the 11-member panel that votes on management strategies submitted to the Department of Commerce.
One side of the argument has long held that the NPFMC has been corrupt since its inception as part of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (MSFCMA ).
“That whole thing has stunk to high heaven from its beginning,” says Donald Mitchell, an Anchorage attorney and author of numerous books on Alaska Native issues. “There are people in the context who should be in jail.”
David Bayes, a charter boat operator out of Homer and the Facebook administrator of STOP Trawling Now, says that it wasn’t the original plan of the council’s founders to stack the panels with members whose conflicts of interest could undermine other facets of fishery management. But he adds that it evolved quickly as various sectors in the industry scrambled for representation and votes in key fisheries issues.
“If one looks back at the verbiage and intent when the regional councils were formed through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, one sees that lawmakers at the time had the forward thinking to realize that in order for dynamic and ever-changing fisheries to be regulated, they would need to be regulated by the fishermen themselves.”
Bayes adds that conflict of interest was acceptable at the time the councils were founded, “because that was the only way to have fishermen regulating fishermen.”
But competition for representation among Alaska, Washington and Oregon, and conflicts among gear types quickly changed who was placed in the seats and left the fishermen behind.
“They’re bringing the heaviest hitters they can find, which are often government officials, CEO’s, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-political staff, etcetera,” says Bayes.
Others critical of the council conflicts prescribe replacing members who hold particular economic interests in the fisheries, with members steeped in the objective guise of science and resource conservation. Ratifying the council composition of its members at the federal level, however, could entail stripping the Magnuson-Stevens law down to its bare bones and rebuilding it again.
Not that somebody isn’t trying.
Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, who also chairs the House of Representatives Natural Resource Committee, petitioned through a bill in Congress to add two more voting members to the panel. They would represent smaller local fisheries and villages dependent upon subsistence fishing. The bill failed in Congress, however, and efforts to rejuvenate it or another like it may die a sudden death due to the partisan climate.
“Every time Magnuson-Stevens has been reauthorized it has been a bipartisan effort,” says Peltola, “and I’m hopeful it will be again this time around.