Tag Archives: Community Fishing Association
Groundswell – Opposing Catch Share Embezzlements for the Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawl bycatch amendments for analysis top this week’s North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Kodiak. First up is the 10-year review of the Crab privatization quota system. It put roughly 1,350 fishermen out of work and shifted roughly $800 million of labor’s surplus to some sealords — embezzled from captains and crew. Into today’s capital flight torrent enters 40 groundfish trawlers, also wanting a mixed economy of brutish capitalism combined with another socialistic program of government giveaways. That’s Alternative 2 in the analysis outline, an IFQ proposal. It will result in more capital fleeing Alaska, robbing our communities of the labor surplus that drives rounds of respending that stimulate coastal economies. Greed and lazy are common economic bedfellows. They’ll embezzle 70% off the top, too. IFQs are euphemistically called “catch shares,” while those who do fish get less of a share than before. Since they saw trawl IFQs as inevitable politically, a splinter group of weak feeling local fishermen came up with a nonsensical idea to at least get one piece of the giveaway trawl pie, in something misnamed a Community Fishing Association. Read the op-ed here 20:51
