Salmon Fishery Management Plan

Final action is set for the December meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage on the council’s revised salmon fishery management plan.

This comes in the wake of the council’s review of the initial review draft analysis of options to revise and update the plan during its fall meeting at Unalaska. The council chose to retain alternative 3 as its preferred preliminary alternative, which it adopted in April of this year. That preferred preliminary alternative modifies the plan to exclude from its scope the three historical net commercial salmon fishing areas in the west area excusive economic zone, and to maintain the prohibition on commercial salmon fishing in the remaining west area. The sport fishery in the west area would also be removed from the scope of the plan. The plan would remain in effect in the east area exclusive economic zone, and the state would continue to manage the commercial salmon troll and sport fisheries in federal waters under delegated management authority, the council said.

Oral Arguments Set for Nov. 15 In Exxon Valdez Reopener Case

Oral arguments are set for Nov. 15 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage in the latest multi-million dollar litigation of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.

ExxonMobil is seeking to have dismissed efforts to make the oil giant pay an additional $92 million for additional cleanup of the oil spill in Prince William Sound.

ExxonMobil argues in its brief that a 1991 agreement and consent decree handed down by the court precludes the governments of the United States and the state of Alaska from demanding additional funds for cleanup pursuant to the court’s reopener for unknown injury. ExxonMobil attorneys said that because the consent decree released ExxonMobil from obligations to conduct further “cleanup” and that the parties explicitly limited the scope of the reopener litigation to “restoration projects,” that the court may enter an order that any attempt to base a reopener claim on a cleanup plan violates the consent decree.

Back in 1991, Exxon agreed to pay $900 million in damages over the next decade for cleanup costs. The deal allowed the government to reopen the case, in the event there remained issues not adequately addressed in the cleanup.

Then in 2006, the Justice Department and the state of Alaska filed a claim seeking to have Exxon pay an additional $92 million, given evidence that habitat and species were still impacted by the spill more than 22 years ago.

Exxon has declined to pay any additional monies. The Justice Department meanwhile has not pushed for payment, but Rick Steiner, a marine biologist who spent 14 years working in Prince William Sound, has been urging Exxon to pay up.

In documents filed on Oct. 11, Steiner urged the court to enforce the 2006 government demand for payment under the reopener provision. He said that governments must retain sovereignty over environmental offenses and be entitled to collect “even if improperly presented by government agents, any and all damages necessary to remediate environmental damages caused by offending activities as stipulated in an approved consent agreement.”

Oral Arguments Orders In Exxon Valdez Reopener Case

The U.S. District Court in Anchorage has ordered oral arguments in the Exxon Valdez in mid-November in litigation aimed at making Exxon Corp. pay up an additional $92 million for additional cleanup of the oil spill disaster in Prince William Sound. Back in 1991, Exxon agreed to pay $900 million n damages over the next decade for cleanup costs, in a deal that allowed the government to reopen the case, in the event there remained issues not adequately addressed in the cleanup.

Five years ago, in 2006, given evidence that habitat and species were still impacted by the spill more than 22 years ago, both the Justice Department and the State of Alaska filed a claim asking that Exxon make an additional $92 million in payments.

To date Exxon has declined to pay any additional monies, and the Justice Department has not pushed for payment, but Rick Steiner, a marine biologist who spent 14 years working in Prince William Sound, is pushing for Exxon to pay up.

Steiner was in Cordova following the spill in 1989 when Exxon executive Don Cornett told residents of that town “You have had some good luck, and you don’t realize it. You have Exxon, and we do business straight. We will consider whatever it takes to keep you whole.”

Steiner said in documents filed with the court on Oct. 11, urged the court to enforce the 2006 government demand for payment under the reopener provision. He argued that governments must retain sovereignty over environmental offenses and be entitled to collect “even if improperly presented by government agents, any and all damages necessary to remediate environmental damages caused by offending activities as stipulated in an approved consent agreement.”

Initiative Election Results Expected Oct. 17

Election officials in Southwest Alaska’s Lake and Peninsula Borough plan to release results Oct. 17 on an Oct. 4 election initiative that could bar permitting for large mines that would have a significant adverse impact on salmon streams.

The Save Our Salmon initiative’s aim is to halt development of the Pebble copper, gold and molybdenum mine at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, home of the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery.

Mine proponents maintain that available technology would allow the mine to operate without disrupting the fisheries, which are critical to the region’s commercial, sport and subsistence fishing economies.

Mine opponents, including biologists who have studied salmon habitat in the region for decades, contend that the project threatens spawning streams critical to the diverse salmon populations whose combined strength return millions of salmon to Bristol Bay annually.

When the Pebble Limited Partnership challenged the legal right of the borough to put the initiative on the ballot, Trustees for Alaska filed a friend of the court brief stating in part that Pebble “would have this court disenfranchise hundreds of votes of Alaska Natives protected by the Voting Right Act by denying them the ability to cast a vote on an initiative that has been lawfully certified by the borough clerk.”

Once the election results are announced, Alaska Superior Court Judge John Suddock is expected to again review motions for summary judgment on whether the initiative should have been placed on the ballot in the first place.

Lake and Peninsula Borough Manager Lamar Cotten said that if Suddock comes down in favor of the Pebble Limited Partnership that the borough will sue and take the case to the Alaska Supreme Court.

If the people enact a law through the initiative process, the borough assembly has a duty to defend the action of the people, said Cotten.

Repowering for Emission and Noise Reduction

By Bob Links

October 2011

When the time comes to decide whether to rebuild your old engine or replace it with a newer model, there are several factors that should come to mind. The condition and age of the existing engine, overall price of overhaul compared to new, environmental concerns, including working environment and how your engine treats nature, are all things that should be carefully thought about before jumping into a decision half-heartedly.

The condition of your old engine should be your first consideration. Has it been overhauled before? Are parts still readily available for the model engine you have? How much downtime will you have waiting for your engine to be rebuilt? Is there a reliable mechanic available to rebuild your engine?

All of these things can severely and expensively affect your decision to overhaul instead of replace. If your engine has been overhauled before, you need to see if it is even possible to rebuild it again. If during the last rebuild they had to bore the cylinder walls, you may not even be able to rebuild the engine. While some engines have liners in them that can be replaced and brought back to factory tolerance, not all engines have this feature. If your engine is a parent bore engine this means there are no liners. With no liners in the block if a piston ring, piston pin or trash in the cylinder scratches the liner wall, the engine will have to be bored. This will reqire you to completely remove the engine from the boat and strip it all the way down to the block so it can be brought to a machine shop and bored. After this boring is done you will have to decide if you want to use oversized pistons & rings or, if available, install an aftermarket liner. If you go with oversize pistons and rings the engine will no longer be to the original factory specifications and can only be overhauled again if there is enough metal to bore the cylinder again.

Parts availability is another concern that should be carefully analyzed. If you have an older model engine you need to think about how parts availability is, not only right now for your overhaul but how will it be in another 4 or 5 years. It really doesn’t pay to overhaul an old model engine only to find out in 5 years that parts are no longer available for that model. While it is rare for a manufacturer to completely stop building parts for most of their engines they do tend to raise the pricing on the parts as the engines get older.

Pricing is always a consideration when looking at overhauling or replacing your existing engine. While the price of the parts and labor to rebuild your engine is one thing that needs to be compared to the price of a new engine, there are other factors that will affect the price.

Downtime should be considered a pricing question; how much downtime is it going to cost you to rebuild your engine? While most fishermen don’t keep an exact record of the hours they work and how much money they make per hour, their time is still valuable. If you miss a couple of days fishing when the fishing is really good how much will that cost you in lost money? Most overhauls are done in the off-season while there is no fishing. While this is a good idea, you need to also consider how long is the warranty on the overhaul? There are a lot of engine shops that only offer 90-day warranty on repairs or rebuilds. This is usually sufficient if you are running the engine during these 90 days. But if you do the rebuild in the offseason, when does the warranty start? Is your entire warranty gone before you even make your first day of the fishing season?

Most new engines will have at least a two-year/2,000-hour warranty and will cover pretty much all of the parts on the engine. If you rebuild your old engine you will only have warranty on whatever parts were changed or rebuilt. After the rebuild you will still have a block, crank and other parts that are as old as the engine was before you overhauled it.

As was discussed earlier, you also need to look at the parts pricing question. If your engine is a model that has been replaced by a newer model 1 or 2 times since it came out, there is a good chance that the parts prices will start increasing. The older the model the engine and the less of them in the field, the more a manufacturer will have to charge for the replacement parts. This is not because manufacturers are greedy. It is simply because the higher the quantity of a part they sell the less expensive it is to build it. So conversely if they are building fewer of a part the price of that part will be higher.

The last but certainly not the least aspect of price should be to compare the fuel consumption of your old engine to a newer model engine. With the newer technology that most engine manufacturers are using today fuel consumption has really been improved – in some cases by huge amounts. If you have an old heavy engine with older technology, a new engine may pay for itself in only a few fishing seasons. One note to think about when comparing fuel consumption is the weight of the engines. When fuel consumption charts are made the engine is run on a dynamometer. While this gives you accurate HP, torque and fuel consumption readings, you need to remember that when the engine is in your boat it also has to carry its own weight. In other words the heavier the engine is the more fuel you have to burn just to carry it. This weight issue will also limit how much moneymaking load you can carry in the boat. If you carry less paying load you are making less money.

While making money and taking care of your family are the main reasons for fishing, we also want to leave the environment as close to the way we found it. All of the new marine engines available on the market today must meet very stringent EPA standards. Today’s marine engines are cleaner running, quieter and in most cases have very limited vibration. When you begin to compare a new engine to your older technology engine you will find a lot of differences.

Exhaust emissions on the new engines are almost completely invisible today. You don’t see the black smoke coming out of the exhaust like there used to be. This actually has more advantages than helping to keep the air clean. Without all of the soot and black smoke coming out of your exhaust you won’t have to work as hard to keep your boat clean and looking nice. The days of the stack being covered in soot or the transom being black are gone. If your boat looks nice you and your deckhands will not only have a cleaner boat to work on you will just feel better and prouder of your equipment.

Today’s marine engines are also a lot quieter than older engines. Many models can barely be heard running if they are below deck. Combine the quiet running and much less vibration of the newer engines and the overall comfort on the boat is improved drastically. Wouldn’t it be nice to work on the deck without having to yell or feeling like you are standing on a vibrator all day?

One of the newer technologies on today’s marine engines is the electronic engine control. While these controllers were a bit scary to fishermen when they first came out, they do offer several advantages over mechanical controls.

One feature of some of the newer controllers is the ability to track fuel consumption while running. While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, most owners of new engines have found that they can find a spot where they are getting the speed they need but are burning considerably less fuel. They are finding that if they back off the throttle by, say, 100 rpm they may lose less than one knot of speed but save 2-3 gallons of fuel per hour. When you are paying over $3.00 per gallon for diesel this can really add up quickly.

The new controllers also give off a failure code that you can give to your service technician when you call him. This will allow him to know what the problem is before coming to the boat. With this knowledge beforehand he can bring the parts he needs to fix the boat in one trip.

So when you’re considering rebuilding or replacing your existing engine, think about the condition and age of your old engine, the complete pricing issue and how you want your work environment and the world around you to be affected by your decision. ]

Bob Links is the Commercial Marine sales manager for Isuzu Motors America. With nearly 30 years of experience in the marine business and marine engines of all types, he has been with Isuzu for almost 6 years and worked with an Isuzu Distributor for 23 years.

Crab Fisheries Begin Oct. 15

On the eve of Alaska’s commercial crab fisheries season, prices for Bristol Bay red king crab in particular were still unknown but expected to be high, considering the demand and reduced allowable harvest. University of Alaska fisheries economist Gunnar Knapp noted that the combination of limited supply and the growing strength of the yen against the dollar indicated higher prices, while the quota on the red king crab had been slashed by 47 percent. “Any time you have that kind of cut in the quota you will have a price squeeze that will drive the price up,” he said. Rob George of “The Crab Broker” in Las Vegas said he’ll be happy to lock in on 450,000 pounds of red king crab clusters this year, as opposed to just over one million pounds a year ago.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has set total allowable catch for Bristol Bay red king crab this year to a total of 7.8 million pounds, including 7,050,600 pounds for individual fishing quotas and 783,400 pounds for community development quota participants. A year ago the total allowable catch included 13.4 million pounds for the IFQ program and 1.5 million pounds for the CDQ program.

Preseason registration showed 81 vessels signed up for king crab and 83 for snow crab, compared to 84 last year for king crab and 85 for snow crab.

The individual fishing quota catch for snow crab is 80,004,600 pounds, up from 48.9 million pounds a year ago. The community development quota share is 8,889,400 pounds, up from 5.4 million a year ago, with the total standing at 88.9 million pounds, up from 54.3 million a year ago.

Legislative Fisheries

The Alaska House special committee on fisheries will meet Oct. 19 at the Dena-ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage to discuss salmon management in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region of western Alaska. Committee chairman Steve Thompson, R-Fairbanks and Rep. Bob Herron, D-Bethel, have scheduled two and a half hours for the session, which will be teleconferenced, at the request of constituents with concerns about management of those fisheries. Herron said information gathered would be provided to appropriate legislative subcommittees in the Alaska House and Senate to possibly implement management and funding changes. Herron said there are a number of concerns, from changing ocean conditions to high seas intercepts of salmon and international salmon treaty obligations voiced by constituents related to management of both commercial and subsistence fisheries. The anxiety level is particularly high because of the economy, and ever increasing cost of fuel for residents who need to make sure they have the resources to feed their families over the winter months, he said. The agenda calls for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to present an overview of its management and funding for the region’s salmon fisheries, followed by constituent comments. Community involvement in management decisions and monitoring and cooperative research and monitoring are also on the agenda.