Monday, April 9, 2007

why I'm a little upset with Ben Stein...

As many of you know I will soon be taking my place at a new and exciting point along the chain of food. After waiting tables, working in a country club kitchen and mongering cheese I am going to Alaska for a bit of adventure as a hunter/gatherer of seafood. Commercially I will be catching halibut with my dad but he is also running halibut and salmon charters. Or so we thought...

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council recently approved a moratorium on issuing halibut fishing charter permits. Luckily this won't likely go into effect until 2009. Now I've been fishing for halibut in Alaska for many years and it certainly isn't like it use to be. When my family first started visiting, the fishing was fast and furious. As soon as you dropped your hook down you had another 40-50 pounder nibbling in the icy depths below. Last Summer we often waited all day long to catch our limit for the day, mostly 20-30 pounds each. Whether this is a function of overfishing or simply bad luck one might never know.

Ultimately the charter business must have a much smaller effect on the finite number of halibut in the ocean than the commercial business does. Large commercial boats pick up not only vast quantities of halibut but also the largest ones...that is to say the large, egg bearing females who are responsible for replenishing the supply. In addition they pull up all sorts of
other sea life inadvertantly.

enter Ben Stein...

Some of you may have seen the recent advertisements with the former White House speech writer hawking wild Alaskan seafood. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute chose him to, "
deliver its sustainable message and promote the benefits of wild Alaska seafood." "Grab a fork, there's a lot more out there," he tells the viewer.

So apparently there is a whole lot of seafood in Alaska but not enough to allow all of the guides to run charters. Despite their relatively small take, they are penalized while the commercial fisherman are allowed to continue to reap the benefits of the sea. Not only that but the moratorium would most effect guides who ran less than 15 trips the previous year...so basically it is being made more difficult for the people taking the smallest amount of fish from the ocean to do so. The sport fisherman can take two halibut a day...some commercial operations take almost 200.

The public is given the impression that there is a seemingly endless supply of Alaskan fish while others are telling the fisherman that there simply isn't enough to go around. Very discouraging for a man trying to build a business and make a living in the great north.

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