Judgement rendered: finfish farming banned.

• Author: Holmes, Krys
• Position: Includes related article

Judgement Rendered

IT'S THE RANGE WARS ALL OVER again. The cowboys and their free-spirited brand of high plains economics are pitted against the fenced-farm sodbusters who would carve the frontier into parcels. Only this time the battle isn't taking place on the wide sea of wheatgrass and yucca that makes up the Great Plains. It's the high prairies of the North Pacific we're talking about, the bays and estuaries along Alaska's 47,000 miles of shoreline, plus a few freshwater lakes thrown in for good measure.

For the past two years, Alaska's lee waters and legislature have been the fighting ground for the fish farming debate. Alaskans have been trying to decide if it should be legal to raise fish in pen farms in Alaska. In the recent legislative session, one group of 200 or so fish farm supporters and a few legislators supported the idea. Most of Alaska's commercial fishermen, and a few more legislators, didn't. This time, the sea cowboys won.

Finfish farming was permanently banned in Alaska this year. Culture of mussels, oysters and other shellfish was not included in the ban. A compromise that would have allowed for freshwater farming of non-salmon species in inland tank farms was taken hostage by a Senate committee. It died without getting any air. But the legislature said it may consider allowing freshwater farming in the future.

It may seem cavalier to speak of an issue that would indelibly affect Alaska's fisheries in terms of sodbusters and sea cowboys. But many of the concerns that surround the fish farming issue in Alaska probably also should have been considered when the prairies a hundred years ago were fenced off and wild buffalo were replaced with domesticated Angus. Among questions asked:

How would fish farming affect the habitat for wild stocks? How would the corralling and concentration of great numbers of fish contribute to estuary pollution? What about disease control? And a more nebulous question: Does Alaska, provider of 40 percent of the nation's wild Pacific salmon, want to become known for pen-raised, antibiotic-fed fish?

"When you start putting money into finfish farming, even in upland tanks, you start to lose control over the biology of a region," says Ken Castner, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska (UFA). "If we didn't have so much to lose, everybody's attitude would be very different. But we do have the largest salmon runs in the world here."

UFA has been one of the strongest opponents to fish farming in Alaska. The group is concerned about damaging the wild stocks of Alaska, and doesn't want to see the state turn its most important fishery into a biological boondoggle.

Says Castner, "UFA believes that some of the biggest mistakes ever made by mankind have been fairly reckless transferral of species from one habitat to another in the belief that it was going to help economically. There's just no going back on some of these biological mistakes. And if that's protectionist, we have a real good reason to be protectionist. We have $2 billion invested in the salmon industry in this state."

UFA and other opponents of fish farming don't want to see Atlantic salmon or other non-local species imported to Alaska for farming. They fear what would happen if fish escaped from tanks or net pens and interacted with the wild species. But there are objections to farming Pacific salmon, too, because of the possibility of disease among fish who spend their lives crowded into pens where diseases can spread quickly.

Rodger Painter, executive director of the Alaska Mariculture Association, says his group has conceded defeat for salmon farming in Alaska. "For all practical purposes, the issue...