Thursday, April 10, 2008

Charter fleet to lease halibut quota shares.

AP story in the Anchorage Daily News.

JUNEAU -- The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is trying a new way to fix allocation disputes between the charter and commercial halibut fleets.
Charter boat operators are wary of relying on commercial fishermen, who would have to choose to lease their quotas to charters, he said. When prices are good, there might be no quota to lease because fishermen would use it themselves, Bierman said.
But commercial fishermen argue that the charters shouldn't be getting fish for free that they have to pay for.
"From the commercial side, we think it's a really good thing, because (charter boats) are obviously going over their allocation," said Kathy Hansen, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Fishermen's Alliance.
Under the plan, the council would impose gradually stricter regulations on charter operators if they exceeded their limits.
The Department of Fish and Game says charter boats have exceeded soft guideline harvest limits for the last several years.
Tiered restrictions on charter boats would only be triggered if they exceeded their allocations. Less severely, charter boat employees could be forbidden from taking fish; more severely, clients could be limited to a one-fish bag limit.
After years of a two-fish bag limit, charter boats were restricted to a smaller-size second fish last year. Charter captains have said that any reduction in the two-fish bag limit would severely hurt their business, because clients come up expecting two fish.

10 comments:

Flatfish said...

Lease Quota? Here we go again. No need to allocate fairly, we can lease them commercial IFQ shares if they need more fish. What a joke!

Anonymous said...

lease quota at $5/pound wow do i want some of that action....
spirit speaks

Anonymous said...

Earl sounds pretty chipper. Gotta love new blood.
We need to get every person who comes up here instead of fishing in southeast to sign a letter that they did so because of the one fish limit. Public outcry is still a tool that can have a big trickle down effect.
We need legal arrows. We can't fight the machine alone.
The Wolf

Anonymous said...

What is a "soft" guideline harvest limit anyway?

CaptBob said...

The GHL is considered a "soft" limit by the nature of it was a guideline, no in season management actions, just a notice at the end of the season that would require NMFS to take action. We have a limit, if we go over it a notice to the agency would happen, then they would do something to us to try to stay in the limit for the next year. The NPFMC has decided to move away from this GHL and make it a hard cap or limit so we Won't go over it in the future. Thus the hard cap will make rules more firm and if the Council decides we can then lease commercial quota so we can keep fishing. The leasing will be an individual business decision.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm,

Say you could lease it for 3 dollars a pound ( no expenses to the owner and easy money)
Average fish 15 pounds = 45 dollars per client to allow for a two fish bag limit....6 people x 45 = 270 dollar fee attached to each days fishing to allow for the extra fish......I guess we will see if this is feasable.....350 dollar halibut charters here we come!

Anonymous said...

that would be almost feasible ,
you forgot to multiply the 270# by 2 = $540 provided we still have
a (2 fish limit)

Anonymous said...

the first fish is free. (I assume)
Now the problem. Which is the "one
fish limit", and which is the "leased" fish.
It doesn't matter because you will never find a commercial IFQ holder
that would lease to you in the first place.
All you have to do is tell your client the second fish is an extra 50 bucks if they can find 15 lbs. of leaseable IFQ to bring with them. Simple.

mark said...

Fair allocation went out the window as soon as commercial IFQ happened. Some of those guys bought in and it's going to be unfair to them or unfair to us one. There is no other way than ownership of the rights to fish since commercial IFQ.
The "tragedy of the commons" is killing us and our industry will be as screwed up, convoluted and non productive as the Kenai river.
Thanks for being so elloquent and convincing Greg Sutter and Bob Penny! Thanks for staying with it long enough to see your dirty works accomplished Rasmus! Last, but not least, I'd like to thank the little people - every entity from the Homer Chamber and City council to businesses like Inua Gift Shop and Brad Faulkner's - the list goes on and the memories of what have done for us will stay a lifetime! (at least leasing is a step towards IFQ)

mark said...

one l. Insert "you"