Politics

Alaska would benefit from keeping out finfish farms

We got a call from a commercial fisherman in Washington state and thought it was for the seiner, which is up for sale. No, he was interested in the jitney. When I asked if he might be interested in a well-maintained seiner, he was surprised. Deeply surprised.

He is a former Alaskan seiner and he assumed our fishery had turned out like his, in Washington, and he explained more specifically: “We’re only a terminal fishery now. Only shallow jitneys hit the water; seiners are too big, their draft too deep.” He went on to explain that their hatcheries (placed at non-traditional salmon streams) created a “terminal fishery,” The only commercial fishing now was at the hatchery, and all fisherman do is scoop and lift–and those days are numbered, too. The hatchery could easily eliminate that process and harvest the manufactured return themselves. And that day is coming.

And this is what we’re fighting against. Hatcheries supplant wild runs. Their manufactured fish compete with wild salmon for food. The diseases these farmed fish carry from hatchery production spread to wild runs, decimating them like smallpox decimated Alaskan Natives.