Talk about trying to muddy the waters. Here is a link to the Radtake economic study the Owens referred to in his OP-Ed piece.

http://www.phillipspublishing.com/smbc/a...sheries%204.pdf

In that article Radtake refers to 3 major omissions in the TCW paper (remember the TCW was pretty narrowly defined comparing in State NT commercial and recreational fisheries).

The first omission was the failure to include the Tribal fishery piece.

The second omission was the failure to include "distant waters fisheries"; for example money spend to outfit various Alaskan fisheries - deep water trawls etc.

And the third omission was not including aquaculture; including clams and oysters.

Clearly this is an attempt to greatly inflate the commercial piece for an apple to orange discussion designed to confuse and miss-lead folks.

However let's accept the Owen/Radtake commercial value of 3.9 billion dollars. For sure the commercial fishing industry is an important component of the State's economic. That said the commercial salmon fishery is just a tiny piece of the overall commercial fishing industry in this state. The economic value referred to in the TCW of the NT commercial salmon industry or 9.5 million dollars represents only 1/4 of 1 per cent of commercial fishing industry. In other words completely eliminating that segment of the commercial fishing industry would hardly be seen/felt. On the other hand transferring those salmon taken in the NT commercial fishery would greatly increase the 200 million dollar value of the recreational fishery.

Not sure that many are arguing that the NT commercial salmon fishery be eliminated. Only that increased priority be given to utilizing important recreational salmon species (such as Chinook and coho) in recreational fisheries. Something akin to what we currently see in Puget Sound salmon fisheries or steelhead statewide. Further as the information provided by Owens provided via his OP-ED piece doing so would have a barely measurable affect on the over all commercial fishing industry in this State.

Curt


Edited by Smalma (02/15/15 11:29 AM)