JUNEAU -- Commercial fishermen who make their living in federal waters off Alaska are watching as Gov. Bill Walker prepares to announce a set of appointments to the board that manages the multibillion-dollar fishing industry in the North Pacific.
One of the principal roles of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council is overseeing the massive, Seattle-based factory fishing vessels that catch and process lower-value groundfish like pollock, mackerel and sole.
But since those fleets also make incidental catches of salmon and halibut, Walker’s appointments will have ripple effects on smaller commercial and recreational fisheries and on communities across Alaska.
“The public really doesn’t understand, I don't believe, the full scope or depth of the commercial fisheries that the council regulates,” said Mike Szymanski, a former state legislator who now works in government relations for Fishermen’s Finest, a Washington-based company with two large boats that fish in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. “Every decision that’s made at the North Pacific council directly or indirectly moves around that engine, that economy.”
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