Protecting Alaska fisheries ... or not: understanding the regulatory decision-making process.

• Author: Vick, Gale K.
• Position: FISHERIES

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Are the fisheries and oceans off the coast of Alaska, from tidewater to the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) being managed in ways that best serve both the preservation of the resource and the multiple-user groups that lay claim to those resources?

On a relative scale to other world fisheries, probably yes, but sometimes it just depends on whom you talk to. In July 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives Resource Committee held a hearing in Kodiak. Committee chair Rep. Wayne Gilchrest had this to say: "I want to tell the people of Alaska that they can be proud of their fishermen, their fishery management council and their scientists. In my view, Alaska is the model for the rest of the country in how to manage a fishery." But at the same hearing, congressmen heard from many area residents who felt that regulator> decisions were creating more problems than they solve. Polarized views have hardly changed in the intervening years.

FISHERIES HISTORY

Financially, the combined fisheries of Alaska (commercial, sports, community, subsistence/personal use) have an annual value in the billions of dollars. Emotionally, fish are Alaskans single-most important resource. The impetus to become a state was largely driven by territorial concern over federal fisheries management running Alaska's marine resources into oblivion. In 1949, 10 years before becoming a state, the Territorial Legislature created a Department of Fisheries. In 1955, delegates from around Alaska worked diligently to frame a new constitution that would become a model for inclusion of key provisions to preserve Alaska fisheries, reserving fish as a common property resource and providing tot principles of sustained yield management.

In 1959, Alaska became the 49th state, anxious to implement their principles. But it was still a long haul to shake the stranglehold of Outside-controlled fishing companies, as well as to provide a regulatory framework to rid the North Pacific of the devastating impact of foreign trawler fleets. In 1976, Congress implemented the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) establishing the EEZ. Managers for Alaska state waters (0-3 miles) and federal waters (3-200 miles) then began working together to create a more seamless management.

PROGRAM DISSENT

Alaska 50th year of statehood, 2009, had many people feeling Alaska was going backward in its protection of marine resources for Alaskans, in both state and federal waters. One of the questions Alaskans most...