June 13, 2018 — National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s office of law enforcement officials presented a report about sexual harassment of observers to a meeting of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council in Kodiak.
The report shared preliminary data from an ongoing survey and although the sample size is small, just 21 women and 31 men responded from the 2016 cohort and 21 females and 26 males from the 2017 cohort, the survey reveals stark differences between the experiences of female and male observers.
Jaclyn Smith, a special agent for the NOAA office of law enforcement in Anchorage, presented some of the data compiled through an anonymous survey sent out to observers deployed in Alaska in 2016 and 2017.
About 400 observers are employed in Alaska in any given year.
“There were 20 questions that were asked about either safety or harassment. I phrased it in ways that didn’t come up with conclusions,” Smith said. “I didn’t ask them if they were sexually harassed rather I asked them if they ever received unwanted, unwelcome comments of a sexual nature or I asked them if they ever feared for their physical safety.”
North Pacific Groundfish and Halibut Fisheries observers are expected to accurately record sampling data, write reports, make observations of violations and report suspected violations.