The
population of king salmon has crashed in Alaska again and still the
state fisheries management have decided to have a winter king season
albeit with limited activity. Why do the fish have such difficult
times reproducing? Are they trying to achieve zero population growth.
Surely something could be done to encourage them to breed, perhaps
marijuana fish pellets?
King salmon are what many people regard as a kind of spirit of Alaska along with killer whales, bear and eagles. An Alaska with weak king salmon sport fishing is a pathetic condition to many, and that hurts revenue streams generated by travelers seeking to bring in a large fish on small tackle.
King salmon are what many people regard as a kind of spirit of Alaska along with killer whales, bear and eagles. An Alaska with weak king salmon sport fishing is a pathetic condition to many, and that hurts revenue streams generated by travelers seeking to bring in a large fish on small tackle.
Actually
fish management seems to be treated as a saving account that will
refill if their is enough escapement of fish-capital to reproduce
itself. Of course the overall size of the account keeps shrinking
since none of the high tech fisherman can resist taking any sizable
chunk of money-fish, and the state cannot resist giving it to them
except for a tiny quota of escaped fish that are regarded as capable
of replenishing supply each year and of course cannot. The king
salmon fishery has been beaten down to a sliver of its former natural
size for decades.
It is not surprising that fish are regarded in the same way as money. The value of fish to fishermen and the state is money, just as the velocity of money through accounts govern Wall Street investment priorities so it stimulates fish management toward resembling financial rather than natural cycles.
Instead
of treating the king salmon fish stocks as a saving account it should
be recognized as part of nature that will decline with habitat loss
from development and logging, and that over-fishing and poor
management may reduce it permanently to something as pitiful as that
of Washington State.
The
answer is simply to allow no fishing at all except for provable
subsistence needs in a third of S.E. Alaska (rotating third) for two
years of every six. it might be reasonable to allow
sports-fishing a 3/4s of the the usual size-with a very low absolute
fish number threshold, in the third of S.E. closed for commercial
fishing. Then fish can have a chance to recover some size and
numbers. Since kings are plundered in the North Pacific in their four year cycles the U.S., Canada and Russia should agree to close the ocean fishery and police that closure two of every six years, together.
The
main thing for fishermen would be to have a stable fishery. The
opportunity cost of an an irregular and paltry fishery is probably
fairly high. Given more certainty of fish numbers and seasonal
reliability fishermen could probably plan for something else to do
than fish during the recovery years.
