Crab Advisory Committee appointed by fish council

November 20, 2007

By Stephen Taufen - The North Pacific Fishery Management Council chair, Eric A. Olson has appointed the restructured Bering Sea Crab Advisory Committee's newest members on November 16, 2007.

It was a repair job on a mess that Stephanie Madsen left behind as prior council chair. And many question, Why is it that any committee is handling what is the Council's own business? Obviously, it will be far more difficult for the public to participate in any meaningful way.

NPFMC member Sam Cotten was named chairman of the 14 member committee. He's a former state legislator, and lately a resource consultant to the Aleutians East Borough. Due to the importance of this committee in handling a recent State motion to review Crab Rationalization, especially the 90/10 split that prevents crab from facing free market forces, Sam is an excellent choice for chair. He's certainly capable of running an effective set of meetings and is friendly and approachable.

Appointees to a skewed committee:

The four seafood Processor members are Dave Hambleton of Trident Seafoods; Phil Hanson of Nippon Suisan as vice president of UniSea; John Moller (sits on the council Advisory Panel) of Adak Fisheries; and Rob Rogers who is general manager of floating operations for Icicle Seafoods now owned by the out-of-state Fox Paine equity group. Moller is the only Alaskan resident in this subgroup. This group will generally resent changes in the 90/10 split, or removal of processor quota shares (IPQs), with a vengeance. They'll make a joke of the committee while their companies do political end-runs.

The four Harvester members are Jerry Bongen (F/V Pacific Venture) of Kodiak; Florence Colburn (F/V Wizard, K.H. Colburn Inc.) of the Alaska Crab Producers Coop, wife of Keith Colburn (the Wizard is seen on The Deadliest Catch); Leonard "Lenny" Herzog, formerly an assistant AG for Alaska regarding oil royalties issues under the Murkowski administration, who apparently co-owns crab vessels with Neil Anderson (Northern Orion, Blue Attu?). He was partner with John Hanson as principal shareholders of Diamondback Seafoods, Inc., which owned the F/V Anna Marie that fished blue king crab in the St. Matthews. (Readers, we'd appreciate corrections and updates, thanks.)

The fourth member is Kevin Kaldestad, part of a family group who in 2005 owned 9 vessels a.k.a. "the Mariner fleet". As with a few other vessel owners, Crab Rationalization took away open market public resources and turned them into super-millionaires. He was always a decent enough fellow to deal with (or rather just say hello to), but after the motion passed at the October meeting, he pointed the finger at Groundswell by saying to me, "so now you're beating up on the crabbers?" What an paradoxical complaint. He'll obviously be more of a sore loser if he has to compensate crewmembers for their loss of historical participation rights.

Kodiak crabbers were not aware of Bongen having any active participation in the crab fisheries, as he mainly represents pot cod fishermen. He apparently leases out his small crab quota. One crabber complained loudly at the appointments for vessel owners, saying "there is not one independent crabber in the bunch."

Many of the vessel owner group will surely protect the current system where they got quotas instead of all of the real historical participants, such as boots-on-deck crewmembers. Keith Colburn was recently the subject of an Alaskan Journal of Commerce article "Deadliest catch captain says crab rationalization works," but is likely not in favor of IPQs. Other vessel owners may perhaps be fine with the idea of IPQs going away completely, as well.

And there are four Community members, all Alaskan residents. Simeon Swetzof, Jr. is the mayor of St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands; Linda Freed is the Kodiak City manager; and Ernest Weiss is the mayor of King Cove on the Alaska Peninsula. Frank Kelty is a former mayor and now resource analyst at the City of Unalaska, a SWAMC member and past president, and formerly a crab plant manager for Alyeska Seafoods/Marubeni/Maruha. To the extent that IPQs ensure crab deliveries to certain plants in their communities, this group might protect IPQs in part. However, several of these community leaders should recognize that the economic losses that occurred because crewmembers did not get their historical participation rights upheld (skippers only got 3% shares) meant losses of tens of millions of dollars annually, locally and within Alaska.

Finally, there are just two Crew representatives. One is Tim Henkel of the Deep Sea Fisherman's Union, which has an office in Seattle. Tim's an Alaskan fisherman and frequent Council attendee, strongly working to ensure crew rights to loans promised for buying current quota, as promised. And the other is Steve Branson of Kodiak, also a strong representative of crab crewmember rights, and a real fisherman that you'd have to pry the deck boots off. They should stand firm for the removal of IPQs and even cooperatives altogether, and stand up for finally recognizing the rights of crewmembers to their historical participation share (estimated to be between 35 and 40% of the net vessel settlement dollars). Linda Freed of Kodiak should promote the same, or she won't be serving the best overall interests of Kodiak Island residents and fishermen.

One key note is that the two price arbitration representatives previously seated, John Iani for legal arbitrators; and 'Jake' Jacobsen, executive director of the Bering Sea Arbitration Organization on the vessel owners' cooperatives side are gone. This is in response to the changing needs of the committee, which will now focus on the analysis package required by the October motion. That motion will guide their work (see prior Groundswell writings) over the next year.

It probably won't work:

We wish the committee and Sam well, but with this structurally disastrous make-up (inherited largely, so little fault of Olson's), crewmembers and Alaska residents and fishery dependent communities' interests may not get served well. We'll leave that to the god Neptune. After all, the processors' response to the motion was to take their toys and leave the sandbox, then rush back to Washington DC for uncle Ted Stevens and Don Young to tuck new fixes into appropriations bills. Legislative end-runs are exactly the kind of major misbehavior the GAO pointed out in its report (GAO 06-289) on what's wrong with regional fish councils not representing stakeholder best interests. So, as long as this spoiled behavior continues, Alaska doesn't have a chance.

Crewmembers from all States should realize that if this is a federal committee, then it should be possible for anyone in the public to attend the meetings in Seattle and Alaska, and participate with proper respect. After all, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of crab that lie on the ocean bottom in the public resource 'Commons zone' off Alaska. The oligopolists cannot prevent you from attending.

With Ted Stevens recently telling several outsiders and even a few constituents that the NPFMC, since Governor Sarah Palin's imprint has been made, is "now a rogue Council" - 180 degrees off from the old propaganda that it is the world's finest (well, it was - at giving away public resources, Ted) - it proves once again Stevens' lack of respect for the People and a legitimate process. Maybe it is time to scrap the regional appointment system altogether, and get some more science and public representatives helping to manage and conserve the United States' precious resources, instead of an overwhelming number of those that have their greedy hands in the Treasury chest.

Council needs new requirements for disclosure:

On a final note, council chair Olson should demand that the recent teams of end-run artists explain on the federal record what they were doing in Washington DC these past few weeks, and show us all language that Don and Ted slipped into Appropriations or other bills that will only serve their personal interests. And list each Senator and Congressperson and staffer, and lobbyist that they met with.

Until then, this Bering Sea crab advisory committee will remain as one scene in an Act of more stage-show politics while a resource robbery is continuing behind the political curtains.

Stephen Taufen - Groundswell Fisheries Movement