Federal judges keep smacking down the North Pacific Fishery Management Council\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n
For the second time in the last three months, a federal court has overturned a management decision made by the North Pacific council and enacted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS. The United States District Court of Washington overturned a 2011 decision relating to halibut quota shares harvested by hired skippers on Nov. 16.<\/p>\n
Federal courts have overturned several council decisions in recent years. In September, a the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the council\u2019s 2011 decision to remove Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and Alaska Peninsula salmon fisheries from federal oversight. <\/p>\n
In this case, the North Pacific council made a decision in 2011 regarding which halibut quota holders can use a hired skipper instead of being required to be on board the vessel. Due to the court\u2019s ruling, NOAA will have to open that group back up after limiting it in 2011. <\/p>\n
Julie Speegle, the NMFS Alaska Region spokesperson, said the agency will change the impacted halibut fishermen\u2019s quota shares to reflect the court\u2019s ruling and that the council itself will review the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court order does not require any immediate change to regulations,\u201d wrote Speegle. \u201cNOAA Fisheries is in the process of modifying those halibut QS permits to allow the use of hired masters for any halibut QS acquired before July 28, 2014. NOAA Fisheries is also considering how to respond to the court\u2019s order to assess the rule\u2019s consideration of the national standards. The (North Pacific) council and NOAA Fisheries will have further discussions on the order at its December council meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ruling relates to halibut quota. The halibut and sablefish Individual Fishing Quota program, or IFQ program, was approved by the North Pacific council in 1992. Managers assigned quota shares to fishermen who commercially fished halibut or sablefish between 1988 and 1990. The program allowed for shares to be transferred.<\/p>\n
The program has certain limits on the use of hired masters \u2014 people who don\u2019t own the halibut quota themselves but who man the vessel on behalf of the people who do.<\/p>\n
Concerned about consolidation of quota and desirous to maintain an owner-operator fleet, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council approved changes to the hired master regulations in 2011; NMFS published the final rule in July 2014, effective that Dec. 1. <\/p>\n
Under the council\u2019s rule, quota holders couldn\u2019t use a hired master for fishing any quota they acquired after February 2010.<\/p>\n
The rule hurt certain fishermen who didn\u2019t make the cutoff and had warned the council that the rule wouldn\u2019t follow several of the 10 National Standards of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the law of federal fisheries.<\/p>\n
Fairweather Fish Inc. and Captain Ray Welsh filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service. Fairweather got halibut quota in 1995 when the IFQ program began and relies on a hired master to harvest its fish; the company also purchased additional quota after February 2010.<\/p>\n
Welsh, an Anchor Point resident, also received halibut quota when the program was instituted and in July 2010 sold it and received sablefish quota by transfer.<\/p>\n
Welsh has physical disabilities and relies on hired masters to fish his quota. Because the rule affected only a small number of fishermen, it\u2019s unknown what kind of impact the court\u2019s ruling will have. The court ordered that any quota shares transferred before July 28, 2014, could be fished under the previous hired skipper rules.<\/p>\n
Bob Alverson, a commissioner on the International Pacific Halibut Commission, said the ruling means very little for the fishery itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019ll have very little impact, myself,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s so far down the road. It\u2019s down to a very small minority of people, a few people that may have a problem with what the council decided.\u201d<\/p>\n
The real issue, he said, is the council itself. Alverson said the decision was hasty, as it ignored the guidance of its Advisory Panel and members of the public who wanted a different cutoff point known as a control date.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey hurt some people that didn\u2019t need to be hurt,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s that old adage: Don\u2019t inflict pain without gain. I think some people were unnecessarily injured in this, and that\u2019s why you got the lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Oliver, the North Pacific council\u2019s executive director, was unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n
\u2022 DJ Summers can be reached at daniel.summers@alaskajournal.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Federal judges keep smacking down the North Pacific Fishery Management Council\u2019s decisions. For the second time in the last three months, a federal court has overturned a management decision made by the North Pacific council and enacted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS. The United States District Court of Washington overturned a 2011 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21848"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}