Presented by · FALL 2014 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS 1 FEATURES 24 HOOK-AND-LINE SHIFTS The development of the gear used by Santa Barbara fishermen can be traced back to the Chumash Indians

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FALL 2014 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS 1

FEATURES24 HOOK-AND-LINE SHIFTSThe development of the gear used by Santa Barbara fishermen can be traced back to the Chumash Indians.

26 SLOW YOUR ROLLSponsoning and lengthening the 48-foot Viking eases the ride of the vessel and allows it to safely work multiple fisheries.

30 SALMON SPREADBrothers Chris and Charlie Ess fish together for the first time in years while gillnetting for sockeyes in Cook Inlet.

COLUMNS

14 COMFORT ZONEMake a fire-prevention plan.

16 ON THE HORIZONCrew contracts protect all.

18 ON THE HOMEFRONTHow fishing affects holidays.

20 YOUNGBLOODSKeeping advocacy alive.

21 THE LONG HAULFeeding fish to the hungry.

22MAKING THE RULESTackling issues old and new.

FALL 2014

Cover: Charlie Ess, Matt Stillman and Chris Ess pick sockeyes on the Chipmunk in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.

Cheryl Ess photo

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DEPARTMENTS

2 PILOTHOUSE LOG

4 INDUSTRY WAYPOINTS

6 TIDINGS

7 CALENDAR

8 SEASON FORECASTS

10 OUR FISHERY

ALSO34 AD INDEX

36 IN FOCUS

26

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2 NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / FALL 2014

PILOTHOUSE LOG

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North Pacifc Focus, Fall 2014, Vol. 1, No. 2, is published quarterly by Diversifed Business Communications, 121 Free St., P.O. Box 7438, Portland, ME 04112-7438. READERS: All editorial

correspondence should be mailed to: National Fisherman, P.O. Box 7438, Portland, ME 04112-7438.

FORTUNE AND FATEWhere fshery

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The fshery has yet to recover in the sound. Freelance

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffHeather Wiedenhoft explores the problems the fshery

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fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffPacifc Marine Expo. I look forward to hearing from you.

f almon may be the most celebrated commercial fshery

in Alaska, but the start of the most bountiful fshery is

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffis up from last year, but the fshery faces other challenges.

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffshery, which kicked of in October with an unexpectedly

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fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffnever far from many fshermen’s minds. Our North Pacifc

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffThe camaraderie on fshing boats often leads to fondness and

fghting akin to kin. In Charlie’s case, the bond between

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ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffthe case for extending your fshing family by joining an

organization. Fishing associations are often fshermen’s only

hope for defending their fshery when it comes to a confict.

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffbattle that threatens to take this fshery management decision

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JESSICA HATHAWAYEditor in chief

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INDUSTRY WAYPOINTS

• During its annual banquet, UFA inducted five new members into the association’s Hall of Fame.

State Sen. Fred Dyson (R, D-F), who has served in the Alaska House and Sen-ate since 1997, is known for keeping an open-door policy, the association says. Dyson has always used his vast experi-ence in fishe ies and other careers to address the concerns of coastal Alaska’s families and communities.

Four industry champions crossed the bar in 2014 and were inducted posthu-mously into the Hall of Fame.

Bob Tkacz, described as “a tenacious, fearless, doggedly persistent reporter, seeker of fact and truth,” was honored for his beat on Capitol Hill, which re-sulted in the informative quasi-fishe ies publication “Laws of the Sea.”

Albert W. Ball Sr., a Bristol Bay com-mercial fishe man for 82 seasons, worked until he was 98. Missing only one season, Ball had one of the longest commercial fishing ca eers in Alaska.

Jim Kallander made significant co -tributions to the seafood industry while building a loyal and committed family of friends, UFA says. Kallander fisheda range of fishe ies from Hawaii to the Bering Sea.

Keith Jeffe ts founded Northwest Marine Technologies in 1974 on Shaw Island, Wash., and was instrumental in introducing the coded wire tag to Alaska fishe ies.

• Ballard Hardware and Supply, a family-owned company in Seattle, has changed its name to Ballard Industrial. Since 1952, it has provided marine, manufacturing, construction and industrial clients with an expanded range of industrial supplies, services and solutions. “For many years now, we have operated as an industrial supply and services company. We’ve known that ‘Hardware’ in our name has hindered the perception of our business, particularly as we are expanding into new markets,” says Ballard Industrial’s Greg Hartje. Hartje and Doug Freyberg, sons of company founders Lyle Hartje and Jim Freyberg, are Ballard Industrial’s managing partners. The company launched a new website (www.ballardindustrial.com) in November, and its e-commerce portion is being developed and progressively introduced to provide customers with easier access to Ballard’s catalog of products and services.

• Bodo, Norway-based deck machinery manufacturer Rapp Marine, with a service

and sales office in Seatt , has opened a factory in Gruza, Serbia. The new $8.68 million facility has 9,100 square meters of production area. “Our goal is that the fac-tory in Gruza, Serbia, will be one of the most modern and efficient winch andeck machinery factories in the world,” says Helge Vatnehol, Rapp Marine’s

CEO. Rapp Marine, which has been in business for more than a century, says the investment in the new facility is key to sustaining its competi-tiveness.

• The Seattle-based Purse Seine Vessel Owners Association, has joined the nationwide fishing industry advocacy group Seafood Harvesters of America. “PSVOA is pleased to join the harvesters as a united voice of account-ability for sustaining American-caught seafood for tens of millions of consumers across the country,” says Bob Kehoe, the association’s executive director. Kehoe mentioned Alaska Sen. Mark Begich’s promise “to extend an existing moratori-um on incidental discharge requirements expiring on Dec. 18.” Though Begich recently was defeated in his re-election bid, Kehoe pledges to continue working toward that goal. “Working together with the harvesters, our priority is to extend this moratorium and save thousands of commercial fishe men from a ‘fish cli ’ of burdensome red tape and costly fines forthe normal operations of their boats.”

Bob Kehoe

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The United Fishermen of Alaska honored its 2013 and 2014 Fisherman of the Year award winners and its Person of the Year in Fisheries Politics during its 40th anniversary celebration banquet in late September.

This year’s Fisherman of the Year honorees are Jim and Rhonda Hubbard, owners of the Kruzof, an innovative small, direct-marketing freezer-longline vessel that produces onboard top-quality halibut, blackcod and rockfish p oducts caught throughout Alaska. The Hubbards have also been advocates for the development of fair and reasonable fishingindustry regulations.

Also honored were UFA’s 2013 Fisherman of the Year recipi-ents. Fishing industry veteran Jim Butler is the volunteer president of resources for All Alaskans, an organization that works to oppose the misuse of ballot initiatives to improperly allocate or restrict Alaska’s vast natural resources, particularly the proposed initiative to ban setnet fishing. U A also

recognized Bruce Schactler, whom the organization calls a tireless advocate for Alaska seafood in the global marketplace. Schactler has worked on issues like country of origin labeling, Trade Adjustment Assistance for depressed salmon markets and efforts to establish a national seafood marketing coalition.

UFA also named state Rep. Alan Austerman (R, D-35) its Person of the Year in Fisheries Politics. Austerman, who has been a crab, halibut, salmon and shrimp fisherman, was also a state senator. He left office in 2003 to become policy adviser to then-Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski. Additionally, he passed legislation that has benefited the state’s fishing industry, UFA says, and he has been a strong supporter of innovation in the processing sector.

Marine conservation isn’t new to Alaska Seafood.

In fact, a precautionary approach to setting harvest

levels has been in place for decades. Look at the

BSAI Catch Limits chart and see how the numbers tell the story. Each year

scientists conduct surveys of the available biomass and use this data

to calculate conservative catch limits – Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC).

Then, fisheries managers go a step further and set harvest quotas –

Total Allowable Catch (TAC) – that never exceeds the sustainable ABC.

And, with the FAO-Based Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM)

Certification, you have even more assurance that conserving our oceans

is anything but trendy to us. Learn more at www.alaskaseafood.org

1981-2012

Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands (BSAI)

Groundfish Catch Limits

Alaska didn’t jump on t e

SUSTAINABILITY trend.

WE STARTED IT.


NEWS FROM THE WEST COAST & ALASKA

Bristol Bay

Kodiak

Fraser River

Klamath

TIDINGS Norton Sound

novations, sends fish as far as 250 feet through a flexible tube at speeds of up to 22 mph before dropping them into the water.

The system uses vacuum technol-ogy to transport fish. The salmon travel through a soft thermoplastomer tube. A mister creates a layer of water vapor to move the fish along. The tube won’t crack if it’s cold, and it has no seams for bacteria to cling to.

“Transporting fish over dams is the goal,” Bryan says. “There are 80,000 dams in the United States, and less than 10 percent have any sort of fish pas-sage because it’s cost- or engineering-prohibitive.”

Fish safely exit the Salmon Cannon’s soft, flexible tube

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Pebble Mine battle brings flurry of autumn activity

Alaska’s and Washington state’s Con-gressional representatives added their support for the name change in a letter to the FDA.

“This administration should act to counter Russia’s recent actions to harm Alaska’s seafood industry,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), refer-ring to Russia’s ban of seafood imports from the United States and other coun-tries, “and the FDA should take action promptly to make it easier for consum-ers to tell good Alaska pollock from in-ferior Russian product.”

Salmon Cannon offers a fish passage alternativ

What began as a system to trans-port fruit may provide a new way

to safely deliver migrating West Coast salmon around dams and other obstacles.

The Salmon Cannon, developed by Bellevue, Wash.-based Whooshh In-

F all brought Alaskans a mixed bag of news regarding the proposed

Pebble Mine.In September, the Pebble Limited

Partnership filed a new la -suit asserting that the Envi-ronmental Protection Agen-cy had colluded with anti-mining forces to develop a strategy to stop the project, a violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Organization seeks name change for Alaska pollock

What’s in a name? Plenty, says the Genuine Alaska Pollock Produc-

ers. The organization is asking the fed-eral Food and Drug Administration to change the fish’s trade name from “Alaska pollock” to just plain “pollock.”

The reason? The marketing organiza-tion says pollock from Russia can still be

called Alaska pol-lock. Consumers seeking Alaska-caught fish may u n k n o w i n g l y be buying pol-lock from Russia, where sustain-ability standards are less stringent than those Alaska harvesters fishunder.

if legislators deem the activity would harm the bay’s wild salmon resource.

“This victory, however, should not be seen as an opportunity to rest,” says Kath-erine Carscallen, a salmon fishe man and the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Devel-opment Association’s sustainability direc-tor. “The EPA protections we have been seeking are the only true way to give our industry certainty upfront that Bristol Bay’s salmon runs will be protected.” K

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Alaska pollock’s name may change.

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Better news came in November when Alaska voters approved a ballot measure giving the state Legislature the power to prohibit mining projects in Bristol Bay

Bristol Bay harvester Katherine Carscallen picks salmon from the gillnet of

her boat the Sea Hawk.


percent jump to 505.6 million pounds. Pacific salmon landings increased by

more than 433.3 million pounds — a 68 percent increase — to 1.1 bil-lion pounds. The value of the salmon catch also rose by 55 percent to more than $267.5 million. Alaska accounted for almost 95 percent of the Pacific salmon total.

Report says illegal Russian crab hurts Alaska industry

Illegal Russian crab is a serious issue for Alaska’s $910 million crab industry,

which competes directly with the Rus-sian product, says a World Wildlife Fund report released in October.

The report takes aim at Russia’s il-legal, unregulated and unreported crab catch, which it says is floodingglobal markets and artificially lowering prices paid to harvesters.

The Seattle-based Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers urged Congress at the end of October to pass legislation that would implement a program to combat IUU

DECEMBERDec. 6Lighted Boat Parade and Tree LightingMorro Bay, CA(805) 772-4467www.morrobay.org

Dec. 8-17North Pacific Fishery Management Council MeetingHilton AnchorageWest 3rd Ave.Anchorage, AK(907) 271-2809www.npfmc.org

Dec. 12Harbor Lights FestivalSt. Paul HarborKodiak, AK(907) 486-0384info@kodiakmaritimemuseum.orgwww.kodiakmaritimemuseum.org

To list your event in North PacificFocus, contact Linc Bedrosian at [email protected] or (207) 842-5622.

Alaska’s crab industry supports federal legislation that would curb illegal Russian fishing

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fishing. The crab group’s executive di-rector, Mark Gleason, testified in Febru-ary at a Senate hearing about the effectthe influx of Russian product has had on Alaska crab economics.

Gleason cited NOAA data indicating that illegal Russian crab has cost U.S. fishermen $560 million since 2000. “As long as illegal Russian crab is affordedunfettered access to the world market,” Gleason testified, “the playing field will not be level.”

Alaska, West Coast states post volume, value increases

Alaska and West Coast fisheries en-joyed a stronger year in 2013 than

they did in 2012, according to the an-nual Fisheries of the United States report NMFS released in October.

Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California all enjoyed volume and val-ue increases in 2013. Their combined landings rose from 6.42 billion pounds worth $2.37 billion in 2012 to 7.06 bil-lion pounds worth $2.7 billion.

According to the report, Alaska pol-lock landings hit 3 billion pounds, 648.6 million pounds higher than the five-year average from 2008-12. Pacific cod landings dipped by 5 percent, but whiting landings enjoyed a nearly 46

Pacific salmon landings g ew by 433.3 million pounds in 2013, according to NMFS’ annual report on U.S. fisheries

Dec. 17-21Christmas Boat ParadeNewport Beach, CA(949) 729-4400www.christmasboatparade.com

JANUARY

Jan. 21-27Alaska Board of Fisheries MeetingNolan Center286 Campbell DriveWrangell, AK(907) 874-3699www.adfg.alaska.gov

Jan. 26-30International Pacific HalibutCommission Annual MeetingVancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel1128 W. Hastings St.Vancouver, British Columbia(604) 684-1128www.iphc.int/home.html

FEBRUARYFeb. 2-11North Pacific FisheryManagement Council MeetingRenaissance Hotel515 Madison St.Seattle, WA(206) 583-0300www.npfmc.org

Feb. 23-March 3Alaska Board of Fisheries MeetingHarrigan Centennial Hall330 Harbor DriveSitka, AK(907) 747-3225www.adfg.alaska.gov


SEASON FORECASTS

BY CHARLIE ESS

ALASKA FISHERIES

Outlook: ALASKA

PACIFIC COD HALIBUTKING CRAB

POLLOCK

King crab

SOCKEYE SALMONBLACK COD

King crab surveys launch larger Bering Sea TAC; Russian certification, bycatch challenge pollock fleet

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As of October, IFQ holders had harvested 15.08 million pounds, which was 95 per-cent of the 15.95 million pound quota.

Blackcod fishe men were treated to healthy ex-vessel prices, despite a weak-ening yen, thanks to increased sales and demand in domestic markets. Small fishweighing 1 and 2 pounds started at $3.55 per pound, and the prices jumped sharply to $5.05 for fish in the 2-and-3-pound range. The 3-to-4-pound fish mean-while, brought $5.45 with 4-5s fetching $5.95 and 5-7s getting $6.75. Fish run-ning 7 pounds and up brought dockside offe s of $7.85 per pound.

According to Bob Alverson, manager of FVOA, the blackcod abundance ap-pears to be holding steady, with slight in-creases found in surveys along the West Coast. TACs for the 2015 halibut and blackcod seasons were expected to be an-nounced in January. (The results of 2014 longline surveys for halibut stock assess-ments had been scheduled for release at the IPHC meetings in Seattle, during the fi st week in December.)

A bumper crop of Bristol Bay sock-eyes surprised Alaska’s salmon fishe men in 2014. The extra fish meant more vol-ume for folks with gillnet operations in the bay, but harvest areas elsewhere in the state saw ex-vessel prices drop in response to the extra fish

The Bristol Bay sockeye harvest had been forecast at 16.9 million sockeyes, but the fleet landed nearly 32 million. Cook Inlet saw dockside offe s of $2.40 per pound, but prices dropped to less than $2 per pound as the bay’s volume came in. Prices in Bristol Bay, meanwhile, hovered at just over a dollar a pound.

Charlie Ess is NPF’s North Pacific bureau chief.

King crab pots splashed Oct. 15 with an unex-

pected 9.9 million pound total allowable catch. The Bering Sea fleet fished on an 8.6 million pound TAC last season, which was up from 7.85 million pounds in the 2012-13 season.

The surveys that spurred the increase baffle biologists, who in recent years have seen fewer crab. The slight TAC in-crease is based on poundage in the total biomass. As the older crabs mature and gain body weight, the TAC increases.

This year’s survey produced more crab than biologists had seen in previous years.

“That’s the puzzler,” says Heather Fitch, area management biologist for groundfish and shellfish with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Dutch Harbor. “Water temperatures were quite a bit warmer than recent years, which is the only notable diffe ence. The survey showed definite increases to Bering Sea red king crab.”

Ex-vessel prices will continue to re-spond to volumes of unreported illegal crab harvested in Russia funneling its way into markets in Japan and elsewhere.

The 2014 pollock TAC for the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, meanwhile, had been set at 1.37 million metric tons, down slightly from 1.39 million met-ric tons. The 2015 TAC stands at 1.45 million metric tons. The 2015 pollock A season kicks off on Jan. 1. Roe taken during the A season goes primarily to Ja-pan and South Korea. In 2013, around 6.5 million kilos made their way from the United States to Japan, but South

Korea took 7.4 million kilos. As of August 2014, Japan claimed

more than 11 million kilos of roe, while South Ko-rea had taken around 8.8 million kilos.

Though the resource is healthy, the industry faces two threats on the

marketing front: MSC certification of the Russian

pollock fishe y, which could put additional volumes of product

into ecoconscious markets throughout Europe, and bycatches of king salmon. In 2014, trawlers caught 14,066 incidental chinooks, up from 9,818 in 2013.

On Jan. 1, the fleet will begin launch-ing pots for Pacific cod and working on TACs of 258,199 metric tons in the Ber-ing Sea and 6,487 in the Aleutian Islands. That’s up slightly from the respective 245,897 and 6,997 metric tons 2014. The Gulf of Alaska TAC, meanwhile, declined slightly from last year’s 64,738 metric tons to a 2015 quota of 61,519 metric tons.

Ex-vessel prices, meanwhile, have fall-en from around 40 cents a pound in 2012 to 30 cents in 2013 and rebounded slight-ly to around 35 cents per pound in 2014.

The 2014 IFQ seasons for halibut and blackcod wound down in November. Prices held strong, with halibut from 10 to 20 pounds fetching $7.45 per pound and fish weighing from 20 to 40 pounds bringing $7.70, according data from the Fishing Vessel Owners Association in Se-attle. Prices for the larger fish from 40 to 60 pounds, meanwhile, brought long-liners $7.95 with fish 60 pounds and up running at $8.05 per pound.

Retail prices varied from $17 to $25 per pound in response to sharp reduc-tions in TACs in Areas 3A, 3B and 4A.

SEASON FORECASTS


BY SUSAN CHAMBERS

Outlook: WEST COAST

WASHINGTONOREGONCALIFORNIAFISHERIES

DUNGENESSCRAB

Dungeness opener a prelude to main seasons; opportunity knocks for petrale, spiny lobster

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60 percent of the total petrale quota had been caught; by the first week of Octo-ber this year, about 70 percent had been caught.

Southern California fishermen will continue to deliver spiny lobster to the docks at prices that will likely rise, thanks to increasing sales to China.

According to the California Depart-ment of Fish and Wildlife, the median ex-vessel price ranged from $6.75 to $8 per pound in the early 2000s. But by the 2010-11 season, market de-mand pushed the price up to $18.50 per pound in some cases.

By 2014, during the first three months of the year, the price rose to an average of $22 per pound. The lobster fishery is considered sustainable, with about 150 permits actively fished.

Susan Chambers is a freelance fisheries writer based in Coos Bay, Ore.

I t’s no secret that Dungeness crab dominates the West Coast fisheries

during the winter months, but there’s also some opportunity for a greater petrale harvest and for consistent spiny lob-ster landings in Southern California.

Many fishermen and processors will use the central California crab season to gauge just how well main Dungeness crab seasons will be in northern California, Oregon and Wash-ington. While the central California season opens in mid-November, the primary seasons can open on Dec. 1, according to regulations, but they’re sometimes delayed while tests are con-ducted to determine whether the crabs are ready for market.

The 2013-14 season, which ended in August, was one of the best on record in terms of value. Per-pound prices to fishermen were upward of $9 a pound in some instances, particularly to buy-ers who shipped the crab live to China. Standard processors generally paid a high of $5 to $6 a pound as the season wore on and crab became scarce.

Fishermen were getting a lot of crabs in their pots at the end of the season in August, says Hallmark Fisheries Production Manager Scott Adams, but many were just shy of legal size. That may bode well for the 2014-15 season, he says.

“Yeah, I think there will be some crab around,” he says. “There’s a lot of feed in the ocean.”

Before the West Coast catch-shares program, many trawlers would tar-get petrale when it schooled up in the winter. The price typically dropped to

around $1 a pound. According to Pacific Fisheries In-

formation Network data, the average price for petrale in 2013 was $1.25 a

pound. So far this year, the price has been lower, averaging $1.10 a

pound.Adams says more trawl-

ers will still pursue pe-trale this winter, but it will be primarily the bigger boats, bringing in 45,000 pounds or

more of petrale per trip over just a couple months.

“They have big quotas and there’s lots of fish,” he says.

Many of the smaller boats have been delivering small loads, fewer than 10,000 pounds, consistently during the summer, when the petrale move onto the continental shelf. At that time, pe-trale are mixed with more rockfish. By the first week of October in 2013, about

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OUR FISHERY

Prince William Sound, Alaska

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Heather Wiedenhoft is a research scientist at Wash-ington State University and has worked on herring and hatchery-wild salmon programs for the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, Alaska.

SOUND SCIENCE25 years after the Valdez oil spill, biologists in Prince William Sound are studying the slow herring recovery

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munities, as well as being commercially harvested for food (including for their roe, a delicacy in Japan) and for bait for more than 100 years at the time of the spill. In addition to their commer-

In the early hours of March 24, 1989, a large tanker went aground on Bligh

Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into this thriving ecosystem. The historically im-portant herring and roe fisheries were among many commercial species under threat in the sound.

Pacific herring has been a critical sub-sistence fishery for Alaskan coastal com-

Researchers Stan Bosarge (left) and Brad Reynolds set a gillnet to catch predators of juvenile herring.



QUICK LOOK at

BEFORE AND AFTER THE VALDEZ SPILL

1987-88 (LAST YEAR BEFORE SPILL) ADULT HERRING BIOMASS 124,043 metric tons of fish worth $12.24 millio

1988-89 (YEAR OF SPILL) ADULT HERRING BIOMASS 111,000-121,000 metric tons

1993 ADULT HERRING BIOMASS 30,000 metric tons

Prince William Sound Herring

cial value, herring provide a key link between primary producers and larger animals in the food web. While a viable herring fishery still exists in some areas of Alaska, in Prince William Sound the population has never fully recovered in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Recent data, however, hint at the possibility for change.

The sound’s herring population is classified as an “injured resource” that is “not recovering.” Prior to the spill, herring populations were increasing in the sound, with record harvests (up to 121,000 metric tons) in the late 1980s. After the spill, the population became depressed, and collapsed to only 30,000

metric tons in 1993; since then it has fluctuated between 10,800 and 32,500 metric tons. Not surprisingly, the her-ring fishery in the sound has been closed for 15 of the 21 years since the spill.

There are many theories about why the herring in this area have never re-covered — from concern over grow-ing whale populations, growing salm-on populations and outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic septicemia causing hem-orrhaging in fish. Equally complex is the question of how to best address the situation, with studies looking into the feasibility of a herring aquaculture program in Alaska. The idea is con-

“It all comes down

to recruitment.” — Scott Pegau,

Prince William Sound Science Center

troversial, and Doug Hay, an expert in herring biology and ecology, says that “while technically possible, a program like that could fail on any number of biological levels.”

What has been done is the funding of two main research projects, the Prince William Sound Herring Survey Program (2009-2013) and the Herring Research and Monitoring Program (2012-ongo-ing) conducted through the Prince Wil-liam Sound Science Center. Ultimately, the two projects point to a problem with recruitment of juvenile herring. As Project Manager Scott Pegau points out, even small adult populations, like

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SPAWNING BIOMASS FIVE YEARS BEFORE SPILL

1984 424.2 million fis1985 150.2 million fis1986 133.1 million fis 1987 1.07 billion fis1988 85.4 billion fis

SPAWNING BIOMASS IN RECENT YEARS

2009 39.5 million fis2010 80.7 million fis2011 59.9 million fis 2012 125.5 million fis2013 2.1 million fis

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game estimates about 80 million fishfor a stable population, but the fishery has been closed since 1998

Source: Alaska Department of Fish & Game

in Sitka Sound, can produce many off-spring and large recruitment numbers, enough for a robust fishery in years to come. The fishery for herring this year in Sitka Sound alone targeted 16 thou-sand tons of herring with an average

worth to fishermen of nearly $6 million. While Prince William Sound has ade-quate adult numbers to stimulate future populations, not enough of the larval and juvenile fish survive to adulthood to provide a high enough overall biomass

for the fishery. “It all comes down to recruitment,” says Pegau, and lists fac-tors like predation, food availability and currents causing larval drift as potentially limiting the juvenile herring population

OUR FISHERY


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in the sound. The conclusion comes from years of

data collected from the science center and employing a variety of techniques to study herring, including aerial sur-

Research scientist Scott Pegau of the Prince William Sound Science Center castnets for juvenile herring in Simpson Bay during a March 2011 research cruise.

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veys, acoustic surveys, trawl sampling and seasonal tracking of adult herring. Researchers now have a better under-standing of not only the numbers of adult herring in the Sound, but also their health, fat supplies, and where they travel to feed and spawn.

It’s because of this ongoing research that a glimmer of hope has surfaced about future herring populations: re-searchers at the science center saw a favorable year for recruitment in 2012 (often called a magical year), when many species seemed to flourish. It was

a record year for young pink salmon and pollock, and the herring studied that year were also healthy, eating well and in large numbers. Problem is we won’t know just how success-ful a year 2012 was until those her-ring return to spawn in 2015.

So there may be signs of better days to come. 2015 could be the year of new beginnings, as well as a po-tential turn-around for the devastated herring population in Prince Wil-liam Sound, a truly magical year.

Researchers deploy an ROV in Prince William Sound to detect juvenile herring under surface ice.

Technician Jennifer Todd samples for herring disease during a March 2010 research trip.

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COMFORT ZONE

The problem is that any boat — not just fishing boats — is “a floating igni-tion source. There are tons of ignition sources onboard, especially when deal-ing with machinery spaces and engine rooms,” says Randy Hyde, firefightininstructor at Fremont Maritime Servic-es, a marine safety and survival training company in Seattle.

He categorizes the causes of fires.One is “housekeeping,” properly stor-

ing flammable liquid containers, avoid-ing spontaneous combustion by taking care of oily rags, not having oily bilge water in the engine room. Poor main-tenance is another category, the lack of

Unfortunately more things can go wrong on a fishing boat than

can go right. You plug her, get a good price at the dock, nobody was hurt on the trip and everybody agrees to come back. That’s about as good as it gets.

The flip side of the ledger includes collisions, gear entanglement, man overboard, flooding, engine failure, be-ing hit by a rogue wave, prop entangle-ment, instability and fires.

Many of those have been addressed by fishing safety groups attempting to reduce the number of fatal and non-fatal disasters, though not as much has been done for fires. A fire aboard a fis -ing boat can result in minor injuries and damage to the boat or quickly become a horror show with frightening conse-quences.

The National Institute for Occupa-tional Safety and Health’s 2010 study of commercial fishing fatalities from 2000 to 2009 found that on the West Coast fires were responsible for 16 percent of the incidents leading to non-fatal inju-ries. On the East Coast fires led to two fatal vessel disasters and two in Alaska.

Good Samaritan boats aid the Galaxy crew after an explosion and fi e on the freezer longliner in the Bering Sea.

Fire! Can you deal with it?

BY MICHAEL CROWLEY

Michael Crowley is the Boats & Gear editor for North Pacific Focus

USC

G

The most well-known incident is the freezer-longliner Galaxy that sank in the Bering Sea in 2002, killing three people.

In the journal Marine Policy’s Decem-ber 2014 issue is the article “Primary prevention of fishing vessel disasters: Evaluation of a United States Coast Guard policy intervention.”

Looking at 17 freezer trawlers for the period 2003 to 2012, the authors of the report found that fires resulted in 27 casual-ties or 13 per-cent of the total injuries. The figures weren’t much differentfor freezer long-liners with firesresponsible for 21 casualties or 12 percent, with injuries ranging from minor to serious.

Make no mis-take about it, there are plenty of opportunities for a fire on a fishing boat. A leaking fuel line on the Galaxy was the initial cause of the fire.Once exposed to a blast of fresh air, the fuel exploded into flames and engulfed much of the vessel within minutes.

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COMFORT ZONE

which can result in ruptured fuel lines.Cigarettes fall into another one of

Hyde’s categories. “We are basically throwing that category into company policy,” he says. “Where you can and cannot smoke, and the discarding of cigarette butts properly.

“Realistically one of the major causes of fires in the maritime industry, and it’s a big deal in the Coast Guard’s mindset,” says Hyde, “is a lack of due vigilance. That means the boat’s opera-tors have a lack of situational awareness, a sense of urgency. They are poorly trained and poorly equipped.”

Hyde always asks companies that come to Freemont Maritime for train-ing, “Do you feel your company has a comprehensive fire prevention plan in place?” Those who raise their hand, he

asks, “Do you feel it can be better?” Ninety percent agree it could be better.

In the case of the Galaxy, among the Coast Guard’s recommendations were better fire-safety training, especially

for non-English-speaking crew, and that engine room fire detection and monitoring equipment have alarms and monitors in the wheelhouse. There was also a recommendation for handheld radios for the captain, engineer and first

mate, thus avoiding running up and down stairs to coordinate firefightinactivities.

Along with having a fire prevention plan, it’s necessary to maintain essential firefightin equipment: main and aux-iliary fire pumps, portable extinguishers and fixed fire-suppression systems

Plus you need to have fire hoses and nozzles, as well as self-contained breathing apparatus, and though not all boats are required to have them, fir -fighting outfits are always a good idea.

Though it seems obvious, Hyde em-phasizes that once a fire is detected, “it’s critical to sound an alarm so everybody onboard is aware a fire is happening.” After that you want to “isolate the fire,seal it off or attack it with some type of portable extinguisher.”

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ON THE HORIZON

Crew contracts: as critical as your permit

By MARK SCHEER

Mark Scheer is an attorney with Young deNormandie, P.C., in Seattle and has been involved in the fishing industry in Alaska and on the West Coast for nearly 30 years.

The 2014 fishing season is in the books, and for most, planning for

the 2015 fishing season is under way. While you are working on your gear, refitting or repairing your vessel and planning where and when you will fish the next year, you should consider contracts for your next crew as part of your preparation.

The topic of crew contracts came up a short while ago while I was talking at lunch with several fishermen. Re-markably, a number of them admitted either that they did not require a writ-ten agreement or that the agreements they had were very limited.

Surprised as I was, it struck me that this was not the first time the issue had come up in my career. Each time, I have tried to explain that having com-prehensive crew contracts is not only required by law but is a good mecha-nism to control risk and potential li-

and how crew payments are made (di-rect deposit or by check).

The contract also should set forth what happens in the event there are later price adjustments. It should grant authorization to deduct cer-tain expenses and state the grounds for the crew member’s termination. The agreed maintenance rate, con-sent to drug testing, policies about the

use of drugs and alcohol, who pays if the crew member violates fishing regulations, allocation of repatriation expenses, medical history and pre-

ability by providing definiteness to the crew-member/owner relationship.

First, what does a good crew con-tract look like? The law requires, at a minimum, that before leaving on a voyage, the owner, charterer, manag-ing operator (captain) or authorized representative and the crew member sign a written agreement that includes the term of the agreement (i.e., start and ending date or the applicable sea-son, such as the Bristol Bay salmon season) and the terms of the wage or share agreement (for example, 8 per-cent of the net proceeds from the sale of fish landed during the term).

Beyond the basic legal require-ments, the agreement can and should include other terms. It should explain the calculations for determining the net proceeds on which the crew share is based, including what is deducted from the gross stock, when payments to the crew member are to be made

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scription drug disclosures, any bonus structure and expectations regarding pre-season and post-season boat and gear work are issues that should be spelled out, too.

If you do not have a written crew agreement, there are many remedies available to a crew member who dis-putes the payment amount, is not paid or is terminated. The crew member may be entitled to be paid the high-est rate of wages paid to any crew member at the port of engagement — which could be much higher than what you had actually agreed to pay.

If the owner fails to provide an ac-counting as to how the share is cal-culated, the vessel is liable for the “highest value alleged for the shares.” Additionally, depending on the cir-cumstances and which state’s laws apply, the crew member may also be entitled to penalties, such as daily pen-alty wages or even double damages, plus interest and attorney fees. More-over, the crew member may put a lien against your vessel for the principal amount of the wage claim, have the U.S. Marshal seize the vessel and have the court sell your vessel to satisfy the lien claim.

Comprehensive written crew con-tracts are just good business. Crew contracts set out the terms of the re-lationship so everyone is on the same page. They also reduce the number of

disputes and provide a backstop to the crew member and the owner if there is a dispute, because each can look to the contract for guidance. Further, writ-ten contracts limit the owner’s expo-sure to potential claims.

With a written contract, a crew member must bring claims within six months or be barred. Also, in the event of a claim for an injury while in the service of the vessel, the medical disclosure can be useful evidence in defending the claim, and an agreed-upon, reasonable maintenance amount can control the cost to the owner.

Indeed, a limited and defined term in an agreement can also control the unearned wage portion of an injury claim, as earned wages would only be due through the end of the contract term.

In sum, it is well worth the time, effort and cost to draft a comprehen-sive crew agreement. Once you have a good, basic crew contract, it is eas-ily adapted to each season and fishery. Use a written agreement every time. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Beyond the basics, a good contract should explain the way crew shares are calculated, what is deducted, and when and how crew payments are made.

Jer

ry F

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ON THE HOMEFRONT

Dreaming of the perfect crab season and Christmas

BY LORI FRENCH

In a perfect world, the crab price is set, and it’s good. The weather is

good, the fishing is good, all the gear is set and fishing well, there are no mechanical problems, and Christmas comes as the most joyful time of year. Sure, yeah, OK.

After enduring the stress of seeing the guys off (the Old Man of the Sea, brother-in-law and our oldest son), this Super Glamorous Fish Wife sets her eyes toward the holidays while waiting for a phone call from the boat to enlighten me about how the crab season is starting out. In our house, as in many other crab family houses, the Dungeness crab season is our bread and butter. In my 30 years as a Super Glamorous Fish Wife I’ve never seen

birthday. I usually get a phone call, but not always. I’ve never known a crab fisherman to get off the boat and go birthday shopping for his wife, have you? If you do know of one, please have him teach my husband that fine art.

The day after my birthday, the Christmas holiday season officially begins. Every now and then, when our boys were little, the Old Man of the Sea was home to help cut the tree and set it up in the stand (read: strike). More often than not, the boys and I would cut the tree and put it in the stand.

On these o c c a s i o n s , the boys took it upon themselves to imitate their father and cuss like the best construct ion worker around while putting up the tree. The first time it happened, I reprimanded them for using bad language. “But Mom,” they said, “Dad told us to act like the men of the house.” Now it’s become a tradition.

According to my officia information

a perfect crab opener, but hey it could happen, right?

I’ve become used to the fact that they will miss birthdays, holidays and parties. Just because I’m used to doing the holidays and making plans by myself doesn’t mean my side of the family is. Every year I get the same question, “Is the Old Man of the Sea going to be here?” And every year I give the same answer, “It depends...” Someday, when we have the perfect crab season I’ll be able to give them an answer.

It’s a given that they won’t be home for Thanksgiving and if they are home they shouldn’t be (read: strike). Following Thanksgiving we have my

Lori French is the founder of Faces of California Fishing in Morro Bay.

ON THE HOMEFRONT

“I’m one of the

lucky wives. My Old Man

of the Sea does come

home for Christmas.”

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ON THE HOMEFRONT

gathering system, Facebook, I’m not the only one who does all the

shopping, planning, decking the halls, wrapping, food planning, food prep and goody making for the crab buyers, harbor patrol and other folks who help the Super Glamorous Fish Wife out over the course of the year. Nor am I the only one who has dreams of the “perfect Christmas or Hanukkah” with the family gathered around in one happy scene. There are Super Glamorous Fish Wives who even put the lights up on the house. I am not one of them. Not because I wouldn’t do it, but because we live on a ranch and the cows really never cared if lights were up or not. Ladies, we are all in this together. We are the STRONG home front and we rock!

In the perfect crab season, there is always money to pull off this festive time of year. In the real world, well, Christmas can be skimpy or in January or February. Again, according to Facebook, I am not alone.

Some years I have my act together and shop early and stash. Some years, I manage to actually tell the Old Man of the Sea what we are giving his mom and the boys. Other years, when the presents are opened he puts on a great act of acting like he helped and knows

Lor

i Fr

en

ch

Above: The French family fishermen enjoya Christmas morning nap. Left: Santa brings the author a dust mop.

what the gift is. It’s always a crapshoot. As for the Old Man of the Sea’s

presents to me, here are some of the most infamous ones. I get a gift about every five years or so.

• A TV antenna so I could watch Monday Night Football

• A live Dungeness in a brown paper

bag with the accompanying message, “Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas”

• A tool box

Basically, if he gets home on Christmas Eve he shops the local hardware store.

There are three things I can count on for Christmas. One, he will be home for Christmas Day. Two, he will bring an ice chest of live crab in right when I am in the throes of cooking Christmas dinner and tell me “these need to be cooked now.” And three, he will be an absolute zombie because they’ve been pushing it really hard, and he will smile when we drive three hours to visit my side of the family, when all he really wants to do is be in his own bed.

I’m one of the lucky wives. My Old Man of the Sea does come home for Christmas. To those ladies who pull off the holidays all by yourselves or wait until he gets home, I wish you the best and I’m passing you a special tiara because you deserve it.

can be hostile.

Hazards abound.

Disaster and

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YOUNGBLOODS

2014 marked United Fishermen of Alaska’s 40th year of working to

protect Alaska’s fisheries and the seafood industry. To celebrate, we hosted an anniversary banquet, awards ceremony and silent auction coinciding with our fall board meeting at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, the ASMI All-Hands meeting and Great Alaska Sea-food Cook Off.

The anniversary banquet was an op-portunity to bring together decision makers, fishermen and folks from state and federal government to help cele-brate seafood in Alaska. Like every other region in the country, Alaska fishermenare facing challenges from all sides.

One of the highlights of the event was a brief overview of UFA’s history, presented by past UFA Executive Di-rector Mark Vinsel. Since incorporat-ing in 1974, UFA has built a solid repu-tation of dealing with the tough issues facing the seafood industry in Alaska. UFA first dealt with the Limited Entry Act and the formation of the Commer-cial Fisheries Entry Commission. Also in the 1970s was the creation of finan -ing bodies — such as the Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank and the Division of Investments — the founda-tion for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which established the 200-mile limit for U.S. waters.

In the 1980s, UFA dealt with the complicated issues surrounding the For-est Resources Practices Act and worked toward protection of salmon resources. The 1990s resulted in UFA’s participa-tion in the defeat of the FISH Initiative, which sought to reallocate fish by ballot. The 2000s brought the salmon price cri-sis and the Joint Legislative Salmon In-dustry Task Force. UFA also developed a marketing plan, including National

that helped educate decision makers about the importance of the seafood industry in Alaska. Like all fishermen,Alaska’s harvesters are rarely seen trum-peting their impacts on the economy, let alone the fact that they are the av-enue by which the majority of the pub-lic accesses the resource. One of UFA’s most successful endeavors is our Com-mercial Fishing Fact Sheets that pro-mote the value of the seafood industry in Alaskan communities and statewide. These fact sheets work to highlight the revenue and jobs that the industry brings into the state and into our com-munities. We encourage members of the seafood industry to present them to their local city council, chambers of commerce, and to sit down with their legislators to discuss the importance of the seafood industry, which is Alaska’s top private sector employer.

UFA has had an amazing 40 years. If we learn to work together to help pro-mote our own industry, hopefully we can have another 40 more. However, we cannot do it alone — we need the next generation of fishermen to join the organizations that help protect your fishing business. Organizations like UFA help to coordinate the mes-sages and speak with a collective voice. The power of one organization speak-ing for more than 63,000 individuals in the seafood industry is immeasurable. Without a collective voice, the seafood industry will begin to see significant re-ductions in the budgets for agencies that affect your fishing business. By joining organizations like UFA, you can help prevent the reallocation of fishing re-sources, which reduces the access of the general public to one of the most nu-tritious protein sources on the planet. Even if you don’t agree 100 percent of the time with the direction taken by a fishing organization, the benefitsof joining far outweigh the drawbacks. Protect your business and your liveli-hood by joining an association or re-newing your dues today.

UFA is the statewide commercial fishing trade association, representing 36 commercial fishing organizations partic-ipating in fisheries throughout the state and its offshore federal waters and over 475 individuals and businesses. For more information or to join United Fisher-men of Alaska, visit www.ufafish.org.

United for 40 yearsJulianne Curry is the executive director of the United Fishermen of Alaska in Juneau.

BY JULIANNE CURRY

Seafood Marketing, access to USDA programs, the inclusion of salmon in global and domestic Food Aid pro-grams, USDA country of origin labeling (COOL) and wild and farmed seafood labeling, and the USDA Trade Adjust-ment Assistance.

UFA is currently fighting one of the latest attempts to restrict the public’s access to fishing resources is the Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance’s pro-posed initiative to ban salmon setnets in urban areas of Alaska, mainly in Cook Inlet. The alliance was founded by longtime guided sport fishing advocate Bob Penney. In order to highlight the importance of locally available seafood, our guests at the anniversary banquet enjoyed sockeye salmon from Snug Harbor Seafoods and 10th and M Sea-foods, two Cook Inlet-based seafood companies who help bring the resource to the public.

The banquet also included addresses by Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, Anchor-age Mayor Dan Sullivan, and Alaska Sen. Mark Begich (with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Alaska Congress-man Don Young providing video ad-dresses). In addition to the high-profile speakers, we were pleased to have UFA Hall of Fame member and fisheries politics legend Clem Tillion to help us with the UFA Fisherman of the Year award, Person of the Year in fisheries politics award, and induct new mem-bers into the UFA Hall of Fame. It was an honor to recognize a number of in-dividuals for their service to the seafood industry in Alaska.

UFA was honored to host an event

UFA

Clem Tillion helps to induct UFA Hall of

Fame members.


The simple point of this gruesome turn is that good people do terrible things to each other, and to the environ-ment, when they’re desperate for food. They don’t fret about green footprints when death is running close and next year is a far-off dream — often a bad one.

America has come a long way in 400 years. Most of our pantries and freezers are packed with bounty. Yet, there are so many sharing this planet now — 7 bil-lion and counting — that the pace of global food production and distribution is still behind the population curve. The FAO estimates more than 800 million people remain chronically undernour-ished — nearly twice the earth’s popula-tion in 1621.

What can we do? Energize the global fishing industry to continue rebuilding fish stocks and continue investing in technologies that harvest target species efficiently and maximize their utiliza-tion for human consumption. Convert more of what we now consider “fish waste” into supplements, sustainable feeds and fertilizers to grow the food supply further.

In the North Pacific we have doubled or tripled recoveries from each pollock we harvest. That’s the same as doubling or tripling the number of fish in the ocean. Great news for us here, but let’s find the will and the way to scale up, scale down and share these technologies glob-ally. We know how to do this. We know it’s only part of the solution. But it’s our part, isn’t it?

THE LONG HAUL

Decades ago, when my son Hans was 10, we traveled back roads

to shooting competitions to see what we could hit with muzzle-loading plains rifles, commonly used to bring home the bacon prior to the Civil War. They shot pretty well out to 100 yards, though 50 was maximum for a ragged one-hole group.

We camped in the “primitive” area, sleeping in a teepee elaborately painted by our red-haired Plains Indian compan-ion, Dan Liddell. He loaned us coonskin caps, scalps lifted from masked garbage-can raiders on Vashon Island, and home-tanned deerskin jerkins to help us look the part and avoid the ire of the true believers — haughty historical nitpick-ers who’d size up our eyeglasses, leather boots and even the zippers on our pants to point out we were out of costume and character and didn’t belong anywhere near the primitive camp.

One afternoon there was a “trail walk” competition where we stopped at vari-ous stations to shoot lollipops drilled into tree limbs, fire lead balls into bent sewer pipes to ring a frying-pan gong, throw knives at trees, toss rocks at tin cans and tumble tomahawks at tree rounds cut from giant pines. Putt-putt golf with real guns, knives and hatchets — a delight-ful diversion for black-powder buffs who could maintain their aim and sense of humor. The highlight for us was ringing the frying-pan gong and snapping the smooth maple handle of Dan’s favorite ’hawk. Oops.

Primitive life was no game in early America. Tools were treasures, and food was hard to kill, much less drag home and store without spoiling. Nobody worried about dietary salt unless they didn’t have any. Thankfully, there were relatively few mouths to feed.

Looking at estimates from the United

Nations Food and Agricultural Organi-zation, global population was only about 500 million when the Pilgrims sat down to that first Thanksgiving turkey with the real Native Americans in 1621. If you believe the romantic myths, game was plentiful and codfish so abundant you could walk on their backs out to Georges Bank. But recently we’ve un-covered grizzly evidence that the Pil-grims were no strangers to hunger. So desperate was the famine of 1609, some resorted to cannibalism.

The food thingFor 22 years John van Amerongen commented on commercial fisheries as editor of Alaska Fisherman’s Journal. Currently engaged with matters of seafood sustainability, he shares this personal perspective.

Joh

n v

an

am

er

on

ge

n

We have doubled

or tripled recoveries from

each pollock we harvest.

BY JOHN VAN AMERONGEN

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The North Pacific Fishery Man-agement Council has never been

shy about making the rules. With more than 100 plan amendments to each of our primary groundfish management plans in the Gulf of Alaska and the Ber-ing Sea/Aleutian Islands, and hundreds of additional regulatory amendments, it can sometimes be difficul for fishe men to keep up with the changes.

Blessed with an incredibly productive

Solutions for issues new and old

By CHRIS OLIVER

Chris Oliver has been a staff member of the North Pacific FisheryManagement Council for 25 years, serving as executive director since 2002.

Jer

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MAKING THE RULES

ecosystem, strong scientific support from NMFS and other agencies, and arguably the most sustainable fisher-ies in the world, it might be tempting at times for this council to operate on cruise control, do just enough to make sure the wheels don’t fall off the pro-verbial tracks; however, recognizing challenges early on and applying a pro-active approach to the details of fisher-ies management is a key part of what makes the fisheries off Alaska among the best managed in the world.

While much remains the same — we still harvest nearly 3 million metric tons of groundfish per year in the North Pa-cifi , and provide more than half of the nation’s seafood production, yet on aver-age across all species we leave more than 80 percent of the biomass in the water each year — we never run short of new issues, developing solutions to new chal-

lenges, or developing new solutions to old challenges. We simply do not know exactly how our fishe ies will be affectedby major sea change events like climate

change or ocean acidification yet our management system must arm itself with as much information as possible, and be flexi le and poised for timely response when necessary.

To that end the North Pacific council is an active participant in the scientificresearch necessary to be adaptive manag-ers, through its participation in forums like the North Pacific Research Board; its partnerships with NMFS and state agency research and stock assessment; development of its own research pri-orities guided by a world-class Science and Statistical Committee; and striving to better implement an ecosystem based management approach through its very active Ecosystem Committee. The coun-cil also looks for innovations in manage-ment, or lessons we can learn, from areas outside the North Pacifi .

And while all of that may sound well and good, the 800-pound gorilla in the room (though at times it seems like an

Alaska fisheries p ovide more than half of the nation’s seafood from bountiful waters, yet there are always management challenges.

Purse Seine • New Construction Repairs & Design Custom Stuck Corklines & Riblines • Net Monitoring & Testing


MAKING THE RULES

8,000-pound gorilla) remains bycatch in our groundfish fishe ies, particularly bycatch of prohibited species like hali-but and salmon. This issue has dominated the council agenda the past few years and will likely do so for at least the next few.

While we have successfully imple-mented chinook salmon bycatch caps in both the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska groundfish fishe -ies, and the groundfish industry itself has responded with innovative “co-management” approaches (I say success-fully because, for example, the chinook bycatch level in the Bering Sea pollock fishe y has remained below 15,000 fishfor three years running), there is tremen-dous pressure to ensure that bycatch lev-els of salmon remain at low levels, and the council is in the process of consid-ering several additional regulatory mea-sures later this fall, including a signifi-cantly lower bycatch cap in years of low chinook abundance.

Regarding halibut, the council recent-ly lowered the bycatch cap for halibut for all gear types in the Gulf of Alaska, and will be considering similar or even greater reductions in the halibut pro-hibited species caps for the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishe ies when it meets in early 2015. The council is also consid-ering a meeting with the International Pacific Halibut Commission in the near future to discuss an overall total hali-but mortality accounting approach ap-plicable to both directed removals and bycatch.

A major focus of the council in the coming year or two will be its Gulf of Alaska trawl bycatch management initiative. Currently being designed around a fishery cooperative structure,

“The 800-pound gorilla

in the room (though at

times it seems like an

8,000-pound gorilla)

remains bycatch in our

groundfish fisherie ”

the intent is to give fishermen the tools to maximize groundfish catch while continuing to minimize halibut and salmon bycatch. This program will also come with significantly increased ob-server coverage levels.

In the midst of all of our regional focus, our nation’s landmark fishe -ies legislation, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, is undergoing reauthorization. Our council has commented extensively this past year on draft bills from both the House and Senate subcommittees, and

our message has been clear — while we are not opposed to changes, particularly changes that allow councils greater flex -bility to address rebuilding schedules and other issues, we believe the current act is working quite well and major changes are not necessary.

Finally, the federal fishe ies rulemak-ing process can be extremely cumber-some. The good news? It’s also probably the most transparent, participatory regu-latory process in existence. Your voices do get heard; you are all a part of it.


GEAR SHIFTS

Tim

ATh

en

s

By Michael Crowley

Chumash ancestors developed the gear Santa Barbara fishermen use today

M ost commercial fishermen would probably say that the circle hook is a fairly modern

idea. Well, that’s not quite the case, as Mick Kronman details in his book “From Hooks to Harpoons: the Story of Santa Barbara Channel Fisheries.”

Kronman, the Santa Barbara, Ca-lif., harbor operations master and a former National Fisherman Pacific bu-reau chief, examines the area’s fisher-ies through the evolution of five gear types fishermen have used over the past 3,000 years. Hook-and-line gear is among the types he explores.

The Chumash tribes settled around what is now Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands thousands of

years ago. They forged hooks from cactus spines, bones, shells and, later, iron. Kronman says the hook of choice was the circle hook, usually made with the shells of clams, mussels or,

HOOK & LINE FISHING, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

more often, red abalone. Some circle hooks were barbless, while others had a barbed point.

Long before our time, Native Ameri-cans had figured out that the circle

hook’s radical bend helped keep a fish on the hook. The shoulder of an aba-lone shell was broken off, formed into an approximate triangle and perforated with a chert drill. It was then smoothed on a stone slab, and the point was sepa-rated from the shank. Thousands of circle hooks have been recovered from Chumash sites, Kronman says.

“I found the entire thing

stacked top to bottom

with sash weights.

I slowly closed the door,

subconsciously nervous

that another fisherman

might have seen

the booty.”— Santa Barbara fisherman 1970s

Into the 1930s, Santa Barbara fishermen caught ockcod with

handlines. Today, the fishery has evolved to longlining.


GEAR SHIFTS

Continued on page 34

mussels or sand fleas or left unbaited; sometimes the hooks carried only a piece of colored cloth.

The Chumash either cast the lines from the shore or trolled with them behind a canoe.

From the Chumash to modern

times, hook-and-line gear design evolved only modestly, while materi-als changed drastically. Still, at the end of the 1800s and into the 1900s, Santa Barbara hook-and-line fishermen fol-lowed the Chumash example, hauling their gear by hand.

A hook-and-line rockfish fishery had been established by 1895. And though trawl nets proved more effi-

cient for taking many spe-cies that hook-and-line fishermen sought, hook fishermen were able to earn a living by going af-ter rockfish. However, working a handline was a tough way to fish; har-vesters hauled in a single line holding up to 200 hooks and weighted with

rocks taken from creeks and beaches. Former Santa Barbara fish-

erman Red Allen told Kronman what fishing for rockcod was like in the 1930s “when a swell lifted the boat and brought the line tight, we’d stop,” said Allen, who recalled hand-lining rockfish on a 36-footer with his fa-ther, Vince Kulgis, in 1935. “When the boat came down and provided some slack, we’d pull a few feet of line. We kept that up until the fish came aboard.”

By then a 140-pound-test mainline might have two hundred 7/0 J-hooks — each baited with a sardine — on short, light-cotton leaders. That didn’t make for easy hauling. To keep from losing the gear on a “hang,” a length of sacrificial older line was tied in at the bottom; it would break before the mainline would.

In 1938, 160,000 pounds of rock-fish were landed in the Santa Barbara region, and most of it was hook-and-line caught.

Eventually, fishermen gave up pulling fishing lines in by hand and switched to mechanical power. Driv-

Hooks were attached to lines twisted from wild hemp or surf grass that was often coated with tar and weighted with a stone. It might take a week to build and tar a line with 6-inch-long, leader-like extensions. The hooks would then be baited with clams,

One of the variables over the years was the weight used to keep a rockcodder’s line on the bottom. Some fishermen employed

sacks of rocks, but the ideal sinker was the sash weight that allowed windows to be raised and lowered.

Fishermen searched junkyards and wrecking yards all over Los Angeles for the prized sash weights. A local fisherman described howhe felt in the 1970s upon finding a stash of window weights: “Thisjunkyard lady told me to look in a shed, where I found the entire thing stacked top to bottom with sash weights. I slowly closed the door, subconsciously nervous that another fisherman might have seen thebooty.”

He paid the junkyard lady 2 cents a pound for the whole lot, which kept him in sinkers for 10 years.

Eventually sash weights became nearly impossible to find, andfishermen had to buy ebar to hold down their line.

Whether they used sash weights or rebar, they hooked plenty of rockfish. — M.C.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA STYLE

Weight Management

Natives used circle hooks

thousands of years

ago, though Santa Barbara

fishermendidn’t realize

their value until the

1970s.


BOATBUILDING

Randy Pincombe was tired, tired of rolling, always rolling. “My back is tired of it,” he’ll tell you. And he knows the culprit; it’s his 48-foot Viking with its 1960s troller design. “It cuts in so hard at the stern and with that

BIGGER IS BETTER

Fashion Blacksmith specializes in

boat expansion

Ted L

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double chine, it just made it roll hard.”A man doesn’t want to take that kind of beating forever,

so this past summer, Pincombe tied the Viking up to Fashion Blacksmith’s dock to be sponsoned and lengthened.

It was the second time the Viking has visited the Crescent

Fashion Blacksmith specializes in

boat expansion

By Michael Crowley


BOATBUILDING

City, Calif., boatyard. The first time was in 1968, when the Viking was just the second boat built at Fashion Blacksmith. And built by a couple of guys who hadn’t been in the business of build-ing boats for very long. Dale and Roger Long had a sheet metal fabrication shop when the tidal wave of 1964 washed away much of the local fleet.

A local fisherman who had lost his boat asked the Longs if they could build him a steel boat. “They didn’t know stink about building fishing boats,” says Ted Long, Dale’s son and owner of Fashion Blacksmith. “They went to the library in San Francisco, got a couple of books on boatbuilding and started reading.”

They launched the first boat in 1967 and the Viking a year later. She was built for local fisherman Leo Wilson and de-signed by Ed Monk, a naval architect who was the go-to guy for many fishe -men at that time. Pincombe bought the boat from Wilson in 1991. Except for expanding the wheelhouse in 2003, not a lot has been done to the Viking over the years. “We cut the flying bridge off and stepped the house up with alumi-num for better visibility,” explains Pin-combe.

Fashion Blacksmith does a lot of sponsoning work. “It’s what we do day in and day out,” says Long. A lot of the work arrives at Crescent looking like the Viking — a troller design that’s now doing a lot more than trolling for salmon or albacore.

“So many boats are fishing in fishe -ies and conditions they never really were intended for,” Long says. When they were built they didn’t need a large back deck to carry gear and they didn’t need a lot of fish hold space. “Most were pack-ing salmon or tuna. It was a high-value fishery with minimal weight.” Plus you didn’t necessarily have to go out if the weather was cruddy.

But now the boat also goes shrimping and Dungeness crabbing. “If everyone

else is carrying a whole load of pots and fishing where you want to, you kind of need to do that, too,” Long says. “It’s still a derby fishery — first out, firstcatch. Everyone is going crazy, and the weather may be marginal. I think that’s one of the drivers of the jobs we do.”

Pincombe and the Viking go crabbing and shrimping in California, and chase salmon, albacore and shrimp in Oregon. Lengthening the boat out to 53 feet and increasing its beam from 15 feet to 22

“So many boats are

fishing in fisheries an

conditions they never

really were intended for.”— Ted Long,

FASHION BLACKSMITH

The new sponsoning and lengthen-ing sections are matched up to the Viking’s original 48-foot hull.


BOATBUILDING

on an incline and not a flat level.” The new stern is faired into the chine lines and sponsons, but not dropped so far it is dragging water when the boat is loaded. “Then you’ve gone too far,” says Long. Better to have it level or slightly inclined when the boat is loaded.

That gets more boat in the water to provide more buoyancy. The buoyancy

feet 6 inches will make for a safer boat, while at the same time increasing the number of pots that can be carried on deck and the amount of fish and crabs that can go in the hold.

The stern on the Viking and other boats of its type, from the late 1960s to the early ’80s, whether it was “a Monk design or a copycat Monk design,” Long

says, had a short back deck and raked up considerably. “They felt, probably basing it on earlier wood boats, that you need that to go through the water fast.”

At Fashion Blacksmith’s that type of stern is the first thing to go. Fashion Blacksmith works with a naval archi-

tect to rebuild boats it works on, but then, as Long says, “We put our own stamp on them.” That includes remov-ing the stern, generally just aft of the lazarette bulkhead, while leaving the rudderpost in place.

“We cut the entire stern off,” says Long, “and cut it way down. It’s dropped almost 2 feet to a point where it’s still

The Viking at 53' x 22' 6" is ready to go back into the water.

Randy Pincombe (left), the boat’s owner, and Fashion Blacksmith’s Ted Long before the Viking’s bulbous bow.

Ted L

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BOATBUILDING

The bulb, along with the lengthened out and wider stern gives Pincombe the ability to more effectively trim the Vi-king. The bulb can be pumped out or flooded and behind the lazarette is a new 1,200-gallon water tank. Outside the water tank and into the sponson area on each side of the stern is a 1,000-gallon fuel tank.

Those tanks and the bulb can be filled for trimming the Viking as needed for different fisheries. “We found that to be

comes in handy when carrying a deck load of pots or mounting double-rigged shrimp gear. With his wider boat, Pin-combe intends to do just that when shrimping, switching from a single rig to double rig. He says, “We’ll be towing two 70-foot shrimp nets instead of one.”

Despite the fact that earlier design-ers felt a narrow hull with a stern raked considerably up would be the best de-sign for speed and efficiency Long says the alterations Fashion Blacksmith does to the stern by widening it and immers-ing it more in the water “doesn’t make the boat any slower, and when the boat is in a light-ship condition, it is faster be-cause there’s less wetted surface.

While the stern was extended 4 feet, the bow was pushed out 18 inches. “We wanted to make the bow more tapered, streamlined with a pleasing entry, not just a barrel-shaped rounded bow,” says Long.

Stretching out the bow has another advantage for when a bulbous bow is added to the stem — Long notes that 90 percent of the lengthening and sponson-

ing jobs they do include a bulb. Pulling the stem out allows the bow and anchor roller to get further out over the bulb, which is painted inside for potable water.

Long adds that the boat will also go through the water easier and compares that easy entrance on the boats Fashion Blacksmith lengthens to the bow on a modern limit seiner. “The great big 58' x 26' and 58' x 27' seiners can pack a ton but they’ve almost approached the point of going too wide. The ride on the boats can be real stiff and sharp. I think a sharper entry is still important.”

pretty good for these guys when they went from crabbing to shrimping,” says Long, “and needed to change the boat’s trim.”

Sponsoning not only created addi-tional space in the stern for extra fuel tanks, the two fuel tanks were cut out of the engine room and new tanks built in the sponsons. The old tanks held 600 gallons each. The new tanks hold 730 gallons. “We went from 1,200 gallons

“We cut the entire stern

off. It’s dropped almost

two feet to a point where

it’s still on an incline and

not a flat level ”— Ted Long,

FASHION BLACKSMITH

Continued on page 35

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CREW LIFE

Morning. Cell phone alarms are going off in the dimness of the fo’c’sle. We emerge from our

berths to the ancient Perkins 6-cylinder diesel as it sputters to life. In so many ways we are like that little engine as we pull on our Xtratufs and sweatpants to embrace the day ahead.

The engine quiets as oil works its way to the rocker arms at its top end. Blood begins flowing to my extremities. My dreams dissipate and I grasp the real-ity of grabbing buoys and picking fresh sockeye salmon from the 150-fathom net in the day ahead.

The delineation of one day at sea to the next turns delightfully permeable as the earth yaws on either side of the Alaskan solstice. It is nearing the middle of July, the apex of the salmon season, and I’m on the Chipmunk, a 32-foot aluminum drift gillnetter that hails out of Homer.

My younger brother, Chris, leased the boat for the Cook Inlet salmon drift-gillnet season. I’m one of two deckhands. Matt Stillman and I cast off the lines and idle out of the harbor at 3 a.m., graced by the presence of my wife, Cheryl, who is along to take pic-tures to chronicle this day chasing salm-on, for better or for worse.

This particular summer represents a grand reunion of sorts: Chris and I grew up together in pursuit of fish. We were raised in northern Minnesota and spent memorable days lugging canoes overland to remote lakes in pursuit of northern pike and panfish. Fishing to-gether this summer in Cook Inlet has


Charlie Ess, NPF’s North Pacificbureau chief, jumped aboard the Chipmunk with his brother, Chris, for a season of drift gillnetting Cook Inlet sockeye salmon.

The Chipmunk’s bridge and deck provide storage for food, rain gear and other equipment. Charlie (left) acts as a level wind, while Matt Stillman runs hydraulics to haul in the net.

been nothing short of a manifestation of our youth.

We left Minnesota, yearning for an intensity that our piscene pursuits with fly rods couldn’t fulfill. We quick-ly found it in Alaska’s commercial fisheries, where the fate of our salmon

or herring seasons determined wheth-er we’d be buying a new vehicle, fix-ing our teeth and buying real estate or, in poor years, finding filler work dur-ing the winter.

As it turned out, we only fished her-ring, salmon and halibut together for

one year, in 1979. A year later, an at-tractive young woman hired me to help her run a salmon setnet operation out on the windswept beaches of the Aleu-tians near False Pass. Cheryl and I hit it off immediately, fell in love, got married and fished 15 glo ious years out west.

&OF SIBLINGS

CREW LIFE

Brothers revisit the past by gillnetting on Cook InletBy Charlie Ess

Charlie Ess (left), Chris Ess (on bridge)

and Matt Stillman (right) idle the

Chipmunk over to the fuel dock.

Pho

tos

by

Ch

ery

l e

ss

& SALMON


The Chipmunk heads out of Homer and Kachemak Bay.

The crew of the Chipmunk picks sockeyes out of a set.

Skipper Chris Ess watches for jumpers in anticipation of making his next set while the crew hauls in the net (below).

Charlie retrieves a buoy at the end of the net in preparation to wind the net on the reel.

Charlie Ess fills the Chipmunk’s portside tank with diesel.

Chris (right) jumps into the well deck to help brother Charlie and Matt Stillman pick fish

Charlie holds up a well-iced and bled sockeye salmon.

CREW LIFE

CREW LIFE


for nearly an hour, then set again. This time we catch only five fish. We run north and set again, pick up a few and repeat the running and setting process no fewer than five more times for a total of 77 fish by the 7 p.m. closure.

Though it’s not the 1,000-fish day we were hoping for at this juncture of the season, there is something else here that warrants measure: a man and his wife, his brother and friend, a boat, the open water, another day of life fishingon the sea.

Charlie Ess is the North Pacific bureauchief for North Pacific Focus

Fish prices tanked in the mid-1990s, and political action curbed our fishing time. With the numbers against us, we sold out. Life has never been the same since.

Today, however, we are doing a pretty good job of revisiting the aesthet-ics we clung to so dearly before taking steady jobs, raising a bunch of kids and putting more than two decades behind us. Is there anything that quite matches the taste of boat coffee?

The drone of the engine becomes medicinal with each hour that ticks by. Today all talk is small talk among us as we embrace the oh-so-familiar mix of optimism and angst that precedes the day in terms of fate and fish. The Homer Spit has faded to a faint, thin line on the northeast horizon. Groundswells of the open ocean begin rocking us from the south, and rain gear hung in the rigging swings like a pendulum.

The opener will come at 7 a.m. But we went on deck an hour earlier, searching the calm waters for the silver glint of jumpers. The fleet has been confined to a corridor of water hugging the eastern shores of Cook Inlet, and we vie for position on the southwest corner of the area when the clocks strike 7.

We toss out the buoy and make our set. Chris throttles up the Chipmunk, tows the net and holds its west end to the line, as the tide wants to push us to the east. In the course of about 20 minutes, fish are hitting. They splash near the corkline and leave us with the impression that we’ve caught between 30 and 50 fish

Alas, when we pick the net an hour later, we have only 20. We run east

Cook Inlet’s first drift-gillnet opene usually comes in the third week of June; it was June 19 this year. The peak week comes in mid-July, and fishingtapers off fast after July 25. Fishing usually takes place on Mondays and Thursdays for 12 hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The fishing a ea lies north of Anchor Point and extends to Colliers Dock, north of Kenai. Fishing in recent years has been limited to corridors, which keep drift gillnetters within boundaries on Cook Inlet’s east side. Fishermen hope for openings that would allow them to fish the enti e inlet, west of Kalgin Island, but the Alaska Board of Fisheries’ action to conserve stocks for recreational fisherme

in northern drainages makes such openings rare. Some 516 drift-gillnet permits were active

in the 2013 fisher , the most recent year for which statistics are available. Average permit

values during the same year totaled $83,000. Average gross earnings per permit holder

totaled $52,000 in 2013, according to the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission. Deckhands receive between 5 and 10 percent of that average

when there are two of them, and a little more if the skipper hires just one.

The size of participating boats in the fisheryranges from 30 to 45 feet, and this year there were even a couple of 50-footers and a 58-footer. Boats are made of wood, aluminum or fibe glass, with fibe glass being the most popular choice.

The cost of fishing boat varies widely in Cook Inlet. Boats range from $40,000 to more than $300,000. Gear costs include buoys, $200; lines, $150; and nets, $3,000.

Local processors in Homer, the main port used as the fishery opens, include the AuctionBlock, Snug Harbor Seafoods, Inlet Salmon, Great Pacific Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods. As the runprogresses, Ninilchik becomes a common port, and fishing moves to the Kasilof and Kenai Rivers. Mostof the aforementioned processors have buying stations or tenders up in the rivers.

Homer also has a plethora of companies that offer a wide variety of marine services, from boat repair to engine service, parts and supplies, ice, cold storage, bait, safety equipment and more.

COOK INLET DRIFT GILLNET FISHING FACTSCOOK INLET DRIFT-GILLNET FISHING FACTS


GEAR SHIFTS

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute ........................ 5 www.alaskaseafood.org

Bulletproof Nets LLC .................. 22 www.bulletproofnets.com

Cascade Engine Center LLC ....... 14 www.cascadediesel.com

Coast Guard Foundation ............. 35 www.coastguardfoundation.org

Compass Courses Maritime Training ........................ 21 www.compasscourses.com

Delta Marine Industries Inc. .......... 3 www.deltamarine.com

Dock Street Brokers .................... 15 www.dockstreetbrokers.com

Fremont Maritime ....................... 19 www.fremontmaritime.com

Harris Electric Inc ........................... 9 www.harriselectricinc.com

Kodiak Shipyard .......................... 18 www.kodiakshipyard.com

Lunde Marine Electronics, Inc ............................ 17 www.lundemarine.com

Lynden Logistics ....................... CV2 www.lynden.com

Marport ...................................... 29 www.marport.com

National Fisherman ..................... 15 www.nationalfisherman.co

NET Systems Inc .......................... 12 www.net-sys.com

Pacific Power P oducts ................ 16 www.pac-power.com

Petro Marine Services ................. 35 www.shoresidepetroleum.com

Satellite Technical Services .......... 13 www.satellitealaska.com

Seattle Marine & Fishing Supply ........................ 23 www.seamar.com

Simrad Fisheries ....................... CV4 www.simrad.com

STORMR ...................................... 27 www.hendersonsportgroup.com

Mick Kronman brings aboard

a load of rockcod.

ing the pullers were gear boxes taken out of cars or trucks. These, in turn, were powered by shafts connected by belts to a boat’s main engine.

By the 1960s, hy-draulics, rod-and-reel gear and electric line haulers replaced me-chanical pullers. One guy in 1971 hooked his hydraulics to a truck-tire rim and called it a 96/0 Conkmaster. Most line reels were good to about 100 fath-oms, but the Conkmas-ter brought fish up from 130 fathoms. In one case, he pulled 56 cow cod — all 20-pounders — on one line.

The 1970s were the hook-and-line rockcod fishe y’s heyday, and with an increasing number of boats en-tering the fishe y, fishe men were looking for more efficiengear. Many turned toward monofilament line and exchanged

Continued from page 25

their J-hooks for circle hooks (remember the Chumash?). It paid off with landings for some of a ton a day.

By the late 1980s, things weren’t looking so good for the hook-and-line crowd, what with offshore oil com-panies’ seismic blasting, fewer fish and com-petition from trawlers catching rockfish from California to Canada.

Many rockcod fis -ermen abandoned their vertical hook-and-line fishe y for longlining, but that’s another part of Kronman’s gear story, and he tells it well.

Michael Crowley is the Boats & Gear editor for North Pacific Focus.

Mic

k k

ro

nM

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BOATBUILDING

to 1,460 gallons,” Pincombe says, “and we have room if we want to put in re-frigeration.”

The fish holds also picked up space. The forward hold was pushed all the way into the sponsons, as was the for-ward crossing in the aft fish hold. The aft crossing became a bait tank. Pincombe figures the larger holds will allow him to pack another 10,000 pounds of crab for a total of up to 32,000 pounds.

The Viking was repowered just be-fore she was hauled at Fashion Black-

smith, so her owners won’t be able to compare fuel consumption before and after the refit.

The old engine was a 280-hp Cat-erpillar D334. “The Cat was getting tired, and you couldn’t get parts for it,” Pincombe says. He replaced it with a Cummins QSM11. It’s now rated at 355 horsepower but can go up to 455, he says.

The engine room was also pushed out to the sides, making space for a new

4-cylinder Kubota generator to go along with the existing 22-kW Mitsubishi generator. “While we were changing the main, it was kind of silly not to put the auxiliary in there, with everything

Continued from page 29

torn open,” Pincombe says. When it comes to comparing how

much fuel the rebuilt Viking requires, compared to what it previously used, Long acknowledges it won’t be an “ap-ples to apples comparison.” But he says, in his experience with sponsoning and lengthening jobs that included a bulb, there have been differences

“The boat is usually between half a knot and a knot faster. It’s about the same fuel consumption but usually turn-ing about 100 rpm less. You are push-ing more boat through the water, so it comes out to be an even trade.”

Pincombe will find out just what his fuel consumption is when he heads out to the crabbing grounds, but one thing he already knows is that the ride will be a lot better.

“I know I’m still goin’ roll but nothing as fast and as quick as it used to be.”

Michael Crowley is the Boats & Gear editor for North Pacific Focus

Ted Long (white shirt) and the Fashion Blacksmith crew gather under the Viking’s stern after another successful sponsoning and lengthening job.

“I know I’m still goin’ roll

but nothing as fast and as

quick as it used to be.”— Randy Pincombe,

VIKING OWNER

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petromarineservices.com

It’s possible to be in more than one place at one time.

Petro Marine Services has always made a habit of being in the right place at the right time. Kodiak, Wrangell, you name it — if you want the most reliable fuel and petroleum products your hard-earned money can buy, make certain you’re running with the Petro Marine brand. No brand works harder. Our marinas are open early, open late, open when you need us. So stop by before heading for open water. We’re pretty sure there’s a marine docking station near you, at all times.

Alaskan owned and operated since 1959.

800-478-7586


IN FOCUS / ALEUTIAN ISLANDS ATKA MACKEREL

Deck crew Sean Fowler (left) and Francis Nansen shake out the cod end of a trawl while fishing for Atka mackerel on the factory trawler Seafreeze Alaska near Seguam Pass in the Bering Sea.

PHOTO BY COREY ARNOLD / www.coreyfi hes.com

IN FOCUS / ALEUTIAN ISLANDS ATKA MACKEREL

Inspire leadership, learning and a legacy of service by supporting

the brave men and women of the United States Coast Guard

through the Coast Guard Foundation.

They protect us.

Every day. Every night.

And they need your support.

The United States Coast Guard

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To learn how you can help, call (860) 535-0786 or visit our website at www.coastguardfoundation.org

Ask About our boAt DonAtion ProgrAm

USCG photo by pA1 tom SperdUto

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Presented by · FALL 2014 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS 1 FEATURES 24 HOOK-AND-LINE SHIFTS The development of the gear used by Santa Barbara fishermen can be traced back to the Chumash Indians