Red Headed Step-Crew

I'm sitting next to Dr. Fina in the hotseat. The twenty or so members of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council's Advisory Panel are looking at me like a semicircle of angry bears. It is nearing five o'clock in what has been for them a long afternoon chewing tough flavorless staff reports and gulping unwise amounts of keg coffee. My proposal is in their packet--a scheme that would take something away from many of them, at least on the surface. I look down at "The Proposal" a single page in Mark Fina's vast binder (It is the same as the one below). The Advisory Panel members seem to find it a bit confusing. Hell, I find it a bit confusing (though no more confusing than most of the paper that passes through this panel).

But it will work.

I drift back in time --Branson and I showing up at the meetings before Ratz was implemented wearing sweatpants and rainboots, hand scrawled demands in our hands. Just look at me now--wearing slippers and jeans and the magic hat, with printed up demands right in their packets. We asked for all manner of things back then- (I put in one for a quota pool that would fund health insurance for fishermen) anything, really--value was obviously being carried away from the fishery like furniture after a fire and deckhands were sitting on the soggy lawn like confused stepchildren. Skippers were at least given a ratty folding chair...

Whoops my mind wandered a bit there.

To my left Panel member Mike Martin is fixing me with a flat emotionless gaze. I like Mr. Martin (damn that weakness!) He has a talent for details and is a hounddog for clarification. Later he will grill me like a king salmon steak.

I read the proposal aloud, mouth suddenly croaking dry. Nevertheless I stop with irritating frequency to expand on points (I am a terribly self important blowhard) and the bears begin to shift in their seats, realizing I will be seriously challenging their five o'clock quittin' time.

The Chairman opens the panel up for questions. I hold my breath. As nervous as I am the worst possible thing that can happen right now is that no one asks any questions. Its like hearing "Next!" as you begin your audition.

I needn't have worried. The questions fly, despite the lure of beer and sushi one mere circular flight downstairs. Mike starts. His list of questions is longer than santa's naughty list. Then more questions from the right and left. They bounce back and forth like a Williams sisters tennis match. With a voice like a Death Valley frog I try to answer.

The idea, I say, is to distribute the benefits of rationalization among stakeholders in a way more reflective of the pre ratz distribution.

"If the intent of the Council when they created the program was to privatize access to a public resource so that a small group of stakeholders can extract the maximum value from the resource to the detriment of other stakeholders, and that they be allowed to do so forever, without any investment in the industry, then I question that intent. If such was not the Council's intent then it is their responsibility to fix the program."

"Crew Quota would be unowned and simply harvested by working fishing boats without the onerous lease fee."

Lots of doublespeak has been written about crew compensation. Here's the bottom line: if you charge working fishermen a seventy percent fee to fish King Crab but tell him he can harvest more, that's like telling the McDonald's guy you have to bust him from ten down to three dollars an hour. The good news is you get to work lots more hours.

Gee, thanks mister!

In the end the Advisory Panel seriously looked at all the crew proposals. And that, my friends, has never happened before. Do I dare to hope?

Hope is good. Work is better. I'd better get back downstairs and see if I can't corral Denby or Duncan. And ask them questions.