Homer Alaska - Seawatch -

It points out that 68.4 million pounds of salmon were landed on the Kenai Peninsula last year, and that it is second largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

Roland Maw, executive director of UCIDA, indicated that language in the task force resolution touting the economic benefit of sport fishing over the ex-vessel value of commercially caught salmon helped highlight the need for compiling the information in the bulletin.

"(Ex-vessel values) just represent the money you (Cook Inlet commercial salmon fishermen) got paid for your fish," Maw said. "It doesn't represent the money that you put into the economy, and how that money circulates through the economy."

Maw said that fishermen investing in multiple fisheries is what makes it possible to make a living on the ocean.

"We are an integrated fishery, and it's that integration of all of these fisheries, these big three, that really add the richness to both our society and to our economy," he stated. "We can't survive on any one of them, but we can do reasonably well on all three of them."

Maw said that the numbers included in the bulletin, provided by Fish and Game, dispute claims that the Cook Inlet commercial salmon fishery is impacting the valley economy.

"(Valley sport fish biologist Dave) Rutz told the Board of Fish (in February) that anywhere from 100-150,000 kings go past the Forelands," Maw explained. "By and large they're mostly headed for the Valley. Commercial fishermen here caught 2,300 of those northern stocks (last year). It's unreasonable to believe that their economy is suffering because of those 2,300 fish, when if the run is 100,000, they're getting 97,000 and change. If it's 150,000, it's 1.5 percent. And they're screaming because their economy is hurting because of the fish we intercept? I don't think so."

Maw defined the differences of opinion this way: "I don't see this as a fish war," he said. "I see this as an economic raid on what we have."

Maw has a variety of plans for the informational bulletin, beginning with a presentation to the Kenai Borough Assembly.

"I'm going to take it to the assembly and I think the assembly should take it directly to the task force, and tell the task force 'look, you're getting just about all the fish that are raised up in the valley, and we have a strong, vibrant industry here that's important to our community, and you're not going to raid our economy,'" Maw said.

Maw said that appointees to the task force so far follow the initial indications that objectivity is not the order of the day. Only the House portion has been selected, and it includes two Valley legislators, Mark Neuman and Bill Stoltze; two Anchorage legislators, Mike Doogan and Craig Johnson; and one legislator from Ketchikan, Kyle Johansen. None of them have any commercial fishing background, although Stoltze has served on the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute board. Four of the five list sport fishing as a special interest on their legislative Web page, and Neuman is a member of the Matanuska Valley Sportsman Association and the Alaska Outdoor Council,

No commercial fishermen and no one from the Kenai Peninsula, which, as Maw points out in the bulletin, has a very large stake in the outcome of possible legislation forwarded as a result of the task force findings, have yet been chosen, although Senate President Lyda Green has not announced her five choices.

For more information, contact UCIDA at (907) 260-9436.

Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She also designs and builds gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and gillnets salmon in upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist. She can be reached at cristy-fry@excite.com.