Excessive chinook and chum salmon bycatch by the pollock fleet will devastate Bering Sea coastal communities dependent on every last salmon for necessary food and income to maintain power and heat.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council failed to put a hard cap on fleets or stop fishing entirely when they’ve caught a certain number of salmon. The Magnuson-Stevens Act defends conservation, sustainability and habitat. National Standard No. 9 of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 states, “Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable minimize bycatch, and to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize its mortality.” Shall!

When will major seafood industry players abide by the law and minimize bycatch instead of devising political schemes to get around it?

At the NPFMC meeting last June, Dutch Harbor municipal leaders implied their loss of economic stability from closing down the pollock season was more important than Native rights to subsistence fish and keeping their families warm and fed. I was repulsed by their comments. Not only should the pollock fleet face shutdown for lawbreaking, huge fines should be in place for each chinook caught. Penalties could then be distributed to communities in need.

The 2005 Rockfish Pilot Program awarded excessive bycatch allowances to 52 vessel owners in the Gulf of Alaska, despite National Standard No. 9. What stinks about Sen. Ted Stevens repeatedly giving a few companies the exclusive rights to Alaska’s fish products is that it restrains trade. Who can afford to sue the government for Ted’s antitrust impropriety?

The Kodiak Daily Mirror might ask the Alaska Groundfish Databank how much they spent lobbying Uncle Ted and Rep. Don Young to push the RPP into law!

Rewarding more bycatch, this time for salmon, which major processors are lobbying the NPFMC for, places corporate entities against Native villages. One has millions of dollars to gain while the other has an existence and lifestyle to lose.

Please write to our congressional representatives, the NPFMC, fisheries periodicals and newspapers. Which is more important: for-profit corporations or indigenous peoples’ lives and families?