The North Pacific Fishery Management Council met Sept. 29 through Oct. 7 in Anchorage, wrestling predominantly with halibut and crab issues.

Kodiak city councilman Terry Haines, who represented the community while advocating for crab crew issues, said the meeting was slightly disappointing in its scope.

“It was disappointing for any of us who came for anything but the charter halibut issue, because nobody got to do much work on anything but the charter halibut,” Haines said.

First up on the council’s agenda was halibut. At issue was the question of whether increasing harvests by recreational fishermen should be allowed to take quota from commercial users.

Haines said the council set a cap on the amount of halibut that can be taken by charter vessels and instituted a standard of “triggers” which would limit or increase the amount of fish taken per day by charter boats according to stock levels.

“I think we’re pretty satisfied with the result,” Haines said. “That was really a hard thing for the council to make a decision on. It’s something that former councils have struggled with for so long. I think it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a little bit of a nod toward the fact that the commercial fishing industry is a little more prominent here in Alaska than we see in the lower 48. I’d like to see how it ends up being implemented in the end.”

Next up at the NPFMC meeting was crab rationalization.

The advisory panel rejected three proposals designed to address crew issues and redesignate owner quota shares as crew quota shares. One of the proposals was sponsored by Haines, who described the panel’s rejection of the proposal as “ratus quo.”

“The majority of the (advisory panel) officially signed off on the Crab Ratz Program, saying ‘the crab program is achieving most of its objectives and that many of the major changes identified in the Council’s April Motion would de-stabilize the harvesting, processing, and community sectors and are not necessarily based on the findings of the Council’s 18 month and 3 year reviews,’” Haines wrote in his blog, theroguewave.blogspot.com.

“The folks for whom rationalization is going well for now don’t want to see it changed,” he said. “They’re already somewhat financially entrenched, and that’s understandable.”

Haines said the true danger of the program, “and to every fisherman, banker and processor with a stake in it, is in not fixing it.”

He said the problem with the crab rationalization program from its very beginnings is with data gathering or lack thereof.

“They should have been gathering this socio-economic data before implementing crab rationalization,” Haines said. “You need to be able to modify the program as you get information back.”

Haines said the council essentially put further discussion of crab issues off until its next meeting in December.

“The council can do whatever it wants,” Haines said. “Whether you’re a banker or me or someone here in Kodiak or someone who has a lot of money invested in crab quota now … they can do anything they want. They’re really not bound by anyone.”

Mirror writer Erik Wander can be reached via e-mail at ewander@kodiakdailymirror.com.