Proposal to cut size of crab fleet moves forward

By The Associated Press

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The idea of the buyout is to reduce the size of the fishing fleet, which is too large for the available king and snow crab, and to boost profits for those crabbers who stay in the business.

Federal officials recently took offers from crabbers willing to sell their licenses and retire their boats from fishing. The officials aim to retire the maximum amount of crab-catching capacity for the available buyout money.

As a result, the government has accepted offers for 28 of 281 licenses.

Before there's a buyout, there must first be a vote of crabbers to see if those who remain in the fishery are willing to repay the $100 million loan from the government over 30 years in exchange for reducing the fleet. Fewer crabbers likely will mean higher catches for those who remain.

Ron Berg, deputy Alaska administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, which regulates commercial fisheries, said he's hopeful fishermen see enough of a financial benefit to approve the buyout. Approval takes a two-thirds majority vote, with ballots accepted through June 11.

"My own sense is that it's going to work," Berg said.

The Bering Sea industry has been struggling through several years of depressed crab populations. The major fisheries were worth about $126 million at the docks last year, compared to $261 million in 1999.

Populations of some species such as bairdi crab currently are too small to support any commercial fishery, and the once-enormous snow-crab fishery is down to a fraction of its former glory. Scientists are not sure whether commercial fishing pressure, natural changes in the ocean or some combination of factors is responsible for the crash of some types of crab.

Each crabber had to make a tough business decision: Offer to sell out of a trade he might have practiced for many years, or stay in the game and hope crab stocks rebound as they have in the past.

Gary Painter, an Oregon resident and crab-boat owner, said he submitted a buyout offer but he's pretty sure it was not among those accepted. The government will not identify winning offers until after the fleet votes.
 
He said he encouraged fellow crabbers to submit an offer for enough money to be satisfied if the offer were accepted.

"I didn't want to sell out very bad," he said. But others do want to get out, and still more want the fleet to shrink so that those who remain can land a larger share of future catches and make more money in the fisheries, he said.

The numbers released by the government Friday should persuade most crabbers to accept the buyout program and the burden of paying back the $100 million loan, Painter said.

As an example, the government has accepted offers in the important Bristol Bay red king crab fishery that should result in the remaining fishermen sharing 20 percent more catch, based on total pounds landed in past seasons. In exchange for that gain, they would be required to pay 2.3 percent of their seasonal dockside catch value on the loan.

That's a good trade-off for fishermen, Painter said. "If you increase your gross by 10 or 20 percent, it's a big return on investment, so to speak."

"The fishermen I've talked to have all been very, very pleased," said Linda Kozak, a Kodiak consultant for several crab-boat owners.

Federal buyouts have been done in other crowded commercial fisheries around the country, sometimes with poor results. In some cases, fishermen used buyout money to shift into other overstressed fisheries.

The Bering Sea crab program contains safeguards to discourage such outcomes, Berg said. The 28 crab boats that would be bought out could not legally be used again to commercial fish anywhere in the world.