December 25, 2013 — The time is well past for contemplating why the U.S. government would stick it to Alaska halibut fishermen least able to defend themselves, but that doesn't make the question moot.
Too long it has been ignored, and in that regard I am forced to contemplate the long-ago comments of an acquaintance highly placed in the hierarchy of the bureaucracy dictating the management of fisheries in the north Pacific Ocean.
For reasons about to become obvious, this person will remain nameless. Suffice to say, however, that it was a member of a federal bureaucracy that is supposed to protect the interests of all Americans with the emphasis on "all."
Here I cannot help but think of the classic exchange of lines between Pfc. Louden Downey and Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson in the movie "A Few Good Men:"
Downey: "What did we do wrong? We did nothing wrong!"
Dawson: "Yeah we did. We were supposed to fight for people who couldn't fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willy."
This is what government officials of all stripes are supposed to do. Fight for Willy. Fight for the people who can't really fight for themselves, fight for equal treatment for the people on the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder — not for the ones on the highest rung.
And the folks on the lowest rung in what has become a long-running battle over Alaska halibut are Joe Sixpack and Susie Bagofdonuts, the bartender or barista who might go halibut fishing but once a year or once every two years or, for those visiting the north from Outside, maybe once in a lifetime.
The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have over the course of the past several years conspired to price these people out of the halibut fishery.
Hell, they've priced me out of the fishery. Halibut charters for next summer, judging from online booking prices, will start at $250 and go up. Given the sub-20-pound size of the average halibut these days, I couldn't justify paying $250 for a charter if the limit was two fish per day.
But it looks like the limit is likely to go to a fish and a half per day in Cook Inlet — i.e., one halibut of any size and one halibut of starry-flounder-size or smaller. So you get a 20-pounder and a 10-pounder, which figures out to maybe 15 pounds of halibut after the fileting is done.
Do the math. We're in the range of $17 per pound for that halibut. I'm not paying $17 per pound for any fish. End of story.
So how did we get to this point?
The answer to that is easy. We got here because the big, fat, oversized federal bureaucracy that is supposed to look out for the interests of everyone, and most especially the interests of the least powerful among us, didn't.
Read the full opinion piece from Alaska Dispatch