Morning Edition
May 18, 2005

Halibut charters face prospect of IFQs

By John Carpenter

Homer, Alaska - After a long cold winter, a lot of Alaskans can't wait to break out the rod and reel and start fishing. But after next winter, there may be a whole other set of rules when it comes to fishing for halibut.

For Alaskan anglers, hauling in a halibut is always a treat. But there are changes on the horizon, changes with the potential to leave halibut sport fishermen back on the dock high and dry.

A plan is moving through the layers of federal bureaucracy aimed at limiting the number of halibut that individual charter boat owners can help sport fishermen catch. The plan would award some charter boat owners with an individual fishing quota while leaving others without IFQ, forcing them out of business.

The idea to limit catches on charter boats originated in 1993 when commercial halibut fishermen, bracing for their new IFQ system, voiced their concerns that the charter industry was rapidly growing with no regulations. So the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, the federal body that governs the halibut fishery, began a process to find a way to limit the charter catch.

Charter owner Bob Ward, who runs A-Ward Charters, was one of the first to fight the proposed limits.

“I stood up in 1993 -- right out here at Land’s End during a charter meeting -- when the executive director of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council came to our charter meeting and he said, ‘We're going to cap your catch. You can't have any more fish than what you're taking now.’ And I stood up and I held my fist up in the air, and I said, ‘You're not going to do that to us.’ I was the first to stand up and say, ‘You can't put us out of business, you can't hurt us.’

“And I fought it and fought it and, along the way while fighting it, I was educated. Some people prefer to say brainwashed.”

That's because in 2000, Ward had grown weary of tilting at the windmills of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, a body he feels is overly dominated by commercial fishing interests. So Ward came up with a way he felt IFQs could work for the charter industry.

“The IFQ we consider a compromise,” Ward says. “We finally compromised into saying, ‘Well, if you won't treat us right, treat us like you treated yourself. Give us equality with the commercial fishermen.’ At least, that way we know where we stand.”

The plan would use information collected from log books that charter operators used from 1995 through 1999 to determine how much IFQ they would receive. The trouble with that plan is that charter operators that didn't fish in those years would get no IFQ.

“If this goes through as proposed, I’ll receive nothing,” says Matt Kopec, who owns Whittier Marine Charters. “I fished during the qualifying years, but they were on other boats for other owners. So as proposed I'd get nothing.”

Kopec’s business is one of 15 halibut charters operating out of Whittier. Of those 15, only four would qualify for IFQ. For the rest, it would be a struggle just to stay afloat.

“It would be a definite hardship,” says Kopec. “I'd be faced with either purchasing quota from other owners or finding something else to do. It would put me out of business.”

Depending on whose numbers you believe, 30 to 50 percent of the current charter fleet statewide would not qualify for IFQ, potentially forcing many out of business.

“These guys will either have to lease shares or buy them,” says Greg Sutter of Captain Greg’s Charters in Homer. “And right now those shares are way too expensive to purchase and remain competitive with the guys that get the IFQs free. So we'll see a huge reduction in our fleet, and your choices will be severely limited on who you can go with.”

Sutter is the secretary of the Alaska Charter Association, a group formed to fight the implementation of the IFQ. He says the program will not only cut down the number of boats available to fish, but increase the cost that sport fishermen pay for those charters.

“When you reduce your competition and you have a demand at one level, and you take away the supply, then the prices will go up,” Sutter says.

Ward doesn't believe that's necessarily the case. “If I raise my price, just because I have control of the fish, and I raise my price to the point where you can't afford to come fishing with me anymore. I won't need any quota. I won't have a business. I won't have customers.”

Ironically, the charter IFQ debate comes at a time when the halibut stocks are at their healthiest levels ever. Since the commercial industry's concerns more than a decade ago, their allocation has gone from 37 million pounds a year to almost 60 million pounds in 2003 -- an increase of 63 percent. That leaves the charter industry wondering why the IFQ program for them is even necessary.

“If we're going to split this up and allocate the fish, it should be done fairly,” says Pete Wedin, owner of Captain Pete’s Alaskan Experience. “And I don't think that's fair. I think that, if we had an allocation of what it was as it rose, we wouldn't be having this conversation because there would be no need for it. We’d have plenty of fish on the recreational side.”

The conversation does continue, with the inescapably controversial focus being on who gets how much halibut. The biggest loser in this debate? That will likely be the sport fisherman, because any limit on the charter industry is ultimately a limit on them.

As for the process to implement charter IFQs, the rule is currently undergoing a legal review. If the government's lawyers say it's constitutionally sound, the rule goes to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. If he signs it, the change could occur as early as this winter, meaning that the charter IFQ program would then go into effect in 2007. That would give the charter fishermen a year to fine-tune their businesses and prepare for it.

Compared with the 2003 commercial catch of about 60 million pounds, the International Pacific Halibut Commission -- the other organization that manages the halibut fishery -- says the sports catch that year was about 7 million pounds.

That number includes all sport-caught halibut from charters and by anglers who fish from their own boats. The charters themselves are estimated to have caught about half of that.

Another interesting fact is that the commercial bycatch of halibut in 2003 -- that's the fish caught out of season that are killed and thrown back into the ocean -- was estimated at more than 13 million pounds.