The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association National Marine Fisheries Service held a series of public informational meetings in Seattle and Southeast Alaska to discuss capacity reduction of the Southeast Alaska purse seine salmon fishery.
A capacity reduction plan has been approved to determine the industry’s willingness to repay a fishing capacity reduction loan to purchase the permits identified in the reduction plan.
Marine Fisheries held meetings in Seattle, Petersburg, Ketchikan and Sitka to discuss reduction with purse seiners from March 5 to 7.
Marine Fisheries originally recommended 271 permits for Southeast purse seiners, fisherman Robert Thorstenson said. The number was set at 419 in 1974.
Thorstenson said he believes the number should be closer to the recommended 271.
It should be called “re-limited entry,” Thorstenson. “We really should have gotten the numbers out of there,” Thorstenson said.
A pilot buy-back program purchased 35 permits $2.88 million in 2008, Thorstenson said. The current round of cuts would reduce the total further to 315 permits.
Fishermen are paying for this round.
“This part is our own money,” Thorstenson said.
Approximately 200 permits are currently being fished, according to Department of Commerce regulations.
The fishing capacity reduction program was put in place to “prevent or end overfishing, rebuild stocks of fish, or achieve measurable or significant improvements in the conservation and management of the fishery,” according to the NMFS website. The program buys vessels and permits to meet its goal of maximum sustained reduction in fishing capacity.
• Contact reporter Russell Stigall at 523-2276 or at russell.stigall@juneauempire.com.
Comments (4)
Add commentCFEC has not set an optimal number
bobby t and his wife, not to mention his brother, have been out accumulating permits to take advantage of the buyback. Rob Zuanich's wife has also bought up cheap a couple of SE seine permits to sell in the buyback and she has never fished a day in her life. The SRA has already had their plan rejected once by NMFS, it is a requirement in the federal law that CFEC set an optimal number and they have not. This entire federal law is part of the shady deal that Ben Stevens and Trevor McCabe put through when Daddy was still a US Senator and Ben managed to walk due to the bunglings of the US DOJ.
This is poorly sourced and written article, the seiners have NOT decided yet if they are going to vote to tax themselves 3% to fund this buyback.
What did these permits cost?
What did the original owners of these permits have to pay for them? That is all that they should be worth today.
All that this amounts to is a method for some permit holders to keep the price of their permit at a artificial level while easing the natural downward stress on the market price for their fish that competition brings.
competition?
"...natural downward stress on the market price for their fish that competition brings" ? Clearly, you don't understand the dynamics of fish prices. It has very little to do with the number of harvesters. Overall supply, the price of substitutes, foreign exchange rates, and competition among buyers are the drivers of "the market price for their fish".
permits
Why do they need to reduce the number of permits fishing to 271? That sounds like an increase to me, as the article states that there are approximately 200 permits fishing now. Hmmm.