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“The anti-trawling campaign in Alaska is substantially funded and amplified by Outside NGOs…to shape how Alaskans think about their own resources,” writes Trombley. Omits that the big pollock trawl companies in Alaska are Outsiders who take home 82% of the value of all AK pollock.
Community Development Quotas are frequently used as an argument for keeping the current system in place. CDQ income is not a replacement for subsistence, nor does its current structure provide an economically or ecologically sustainable industry in rural communities.
Whitbeck refers to “myopic Native groups that aren’t part of CDQ,” “scalp(s) on the wall,” and “chum in the water” as he goes on the attack against Alaskan anti-trawl voices. CVRF’s motto is “Pollock Provides.”
“The assessment team did not receive any stakeholder comments or requests for meetings” during the audit process, the MSC report said.
A chum cap and a fishing corridor — two takes on the NPFMC’s action to reduce salmon bycatch by pollock trawlers.
The dispute is over whether recent studies of the value of the nation’s largest commercial fishery by volume are too narrow, and that credit the primarily Seattle-based pollock fleet as an “Alaska first fishery.”
NPFMC set to take final action on trawl chum bycatch; Report claims trawl-funded study overstates local pollock benefits and downplays ecosystem and cultural costs.
Nearly all comments to NOAA urged a limit on chum salmon that can be taken as Bycatch by trawlers. Now the NPFMC is taking comments through Jan. 30.
Trawl top-heavy NPFMC and CDQ groups already have dug in their heels against a chum bycatch cap for the Bering Sea. Alaskans’ voices matter more than ever!
“There is not yet any justification to reduce pollock harvests to conserve depressed runs of salmon in Western Alaska,” said NPFMC member and trawl representative Anne Vanderhoeven.