I normally refrain from these kinds of internet posts as they take away too much energy that needs focused on keeping our fisheries going. Many times on the internet, decisions are formed, are either decisions made on partial information, misinformation, or sometimes misunderstandings and then things get out of control like wildfire. There are some things that need cleared up about Phil so I need to clear the air. First we need to look back at where our fisheries were, now are, and heading, to understand where he is. Then start connecting the dots.
When Phil was a nomination for Director, most of the fishing organizations were very skeptical. I was only a Puget Sound Anglers VP at the time got bombarded immediately with phone calls from most of the fishing organizations about Phil. We knew he had a lot of background with the tribes and policy making between us and them. But policy making was his job. At times we felt we were not dealt a good hand. But we need to go back and look at the pecking order of how WDFW was structured. WDFW was basically a puppet for Senate Natural Resources. Senate Natural Resources was ruled by the commercial fishing interests. Our fisheries have been ruled by the commercials since Washington state started commercial fishing in the 1800s. It has where all of the Alaska fisheries started from for the US.
Ken Jacobsen was the head of Washington State Senate Natural Resources. He was the senator from Ballard. Ballard is where the commercial fishing fleet of Alaska and Washington reside. Alaska is one of the world’s largest fishing fleets and has tons of money. With that money comes power-extreme power. (I had a talk with the late Phil Harris of deadliest catch. He told me of how the commercial fishermen had voted on one of the Alaska commercial fisheries at one of their council level meetings. The next morning there was a Lear jet on the runway from Seattle. That fishery went back on the agenda the next morning and was overturned! This tells you how much power the money of the commercial processors has.)
Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska was the Senator that got the commercial fisheries all of their power. He got them federal funding and lawmaking that made them untouchable. This connection goes right into Ballard. Anything that could fall in Washington state could cause a precedence effect against Alaska. So Washington has been protected by the commercials at all levels of the government for them not to fail anywhere. The commercials have woven themselves for way over 100 years into Washington State. They have gone unopposed as we have never been effective in stopping them. We have always been too busy fighting each other and bickering to ever begin to be a threat. Meanwhile while we were infighting they continued to fund and lobby legislators and go on their way commercial fishing.
WDFW was the end result in dealing with sports fishing or the ones giving us the leftovers.
Now we have the Boldt and Rafeedie decisions. The Boldt and Refeedie decisions gave the fish and shellfish resources back to the tribes, up to 50%. We all know that is not how it is. They were given co-manager status. In reality, our fisheries were put on detention and we have to work under the tribes. For those of you that work with WDFW fisheries know that if the tribes don’t agree with our seasons or quotas, we do not fish. They fish while we sit at the dock. Now as a director how do you deal with that? Tribal agencies have sued Washington state many times and never lost. So now the tribes and the commercials are WDFW’s boss. How do you make your sportfisher customers happy when you know what you should do but you have marching orders. Give both commercials what they want.
The non-tribal commercial and tribal fisheries have dictated our resources and fisheries. We got the WDFW commission in place by a vote, referendum 45. The commission is the agency that has authority over the director. When it was first put together, the senate put in a couple of commercial interests that were senate confirmed. This means the governor cannot fire them. So the chair being the active voice, senate confirmed, and commercial laden, meant that we would not be heard- again. Phil’s boss was the commercial industry one more time.
We worked hard to get the Commission away from the commercial interests and a blood bath occurred. We finally got there. Had the WDFW commission gone away as has been tried over and over by Senate Natural Resource, we would have lost our voice again. Then there was the try by them to put the director under the governor away from the commission, once again silencing us. (We stopped this one too.)
Now we have a commission that looks out for the resource and works well with our director, Phil Anderson. He now has a new boss that does care about the resources and sportfishing community for one of the very first times.
I and my constituents work with Phil on a very regular basis. We have done some very great things with Phil and many things are not broadcasted. Some things I can tell you that would not have happened without Phil, you would have already had full blown marine reserves or no fishing zones. We have the 120 depth foot line by the state of Washington for rockfish. This is basically a buffer to keep the federal government from stepping in and stopping fishing altogether that has happened many places on the East Coast, Gulf, and California. Phil has been “our” advocate that has helped to keep us fishing at all costs. The average person has no idea how hard he has worked to do the right thing for us.
Phil is the one that truly knows our fishing history and background probably better than anyone. He works with NMFS, NOAA, IPHC, PFMC, and every other agency out there. He can talk to them from history and his background cannot be ignored. We do put him in some uncomfortable places and a hot seat at times. But I will attest he has done a great job for us. I don’t think anyone would or could have kept us fishing in these times like Phil has. There are many things that are out of his hands with things like ESA listings. Those listings he has to deal with as there are no alternatives. There are mandates that come down and it is his job to try to manage and recover the resource the best he can. Previously we have had commercial fisheries that have made WDFW manage resources to extinction. But he is still under the WDFW Commission and they are under the Governor. Lets not forget the governor has a strong connection with the tribes as they gave her huge campaign contributions. Her retribution has been costly to us. I am not sure how much worse it can get but it certainly can. Read this link
http://nwifc.org/treatyrightsatrisk/ This important white paper called Treaty Rights at Risk details Tribal Concerns regarding ongoing loss of Salmon Habitat, declining salmon populations and recommendations for change. There have been high level meetings and discussions occurring on this with Tribal Leaders at the federal level in WA DC and at a statewide level with state & federal agency departments heads and at the Puget Sound Partnership’s Recovery Council.
There are so many things that are really out of his hands that he gets the discredit of. When the feds tell Washington to do something, they have to do it, like it or not. He and the commission are that end result. Many do not know or understand this.
I was not yet president of PSA when he took Directors position. I had no intention of becoming president of PSA either. I watched the meetings for the MA 4 rockfish closure with a certain commissioner make a proposal and passed to shut down MA 4 or Neah Bay rockfishing. Phil was the person that combated that information that was presented with true government based science. He told it like it was and that his information did not agree with the others. My blood was boiling as I knew this fishery very well. You see I have worked with Phil on our coastal halibut and bottom fisheries for probably about 15 years for so. The info provided to close the Neah Bay fishery to citizen based science was not in our best interest but was done. Mainly Rob Tobeck, Bear Holmes of CCA ( and a couple of others that I cannot mention their names) were the only ones at that time fighting to keep our Marine area 4 open to bottom fishing. Phil knew better. This area keeps the entire west coast bottomfishing through the Magnusson Stevens Management act as it is managed coast wide. So the healthiest yelloweye population on the west coast, lower 48 states, was just closed due to bad information!
This decision was what made me decide to step up and become PSA State Board president. The commission had unjustly closed my fishing grounds since the 1980s! As soon as I called the state board existing president and gave her the opt out, she agreed. I had been asked three previous years and declined. Due to family reasons she needed out and a special meeting was arranged to vote me in. Next call was to Phil and tell him that I was becoming the PSA State Board President and we were going to work together to reverse this closure. Which we did. This would not have happened with any other director, period. I took 13 PSA members to the next rockfish meeting. We sat through it and sat with WDFW staff for hours afterwards with them and Bear Holmes of CCA. We voiced our concerns and staff took it back to Phil, Phil reached the commission the next day and they overturned the vote of the closure by phone conference. Phil called me the next morning to tell me it was overturned.
I watched our fisheries for many years never go anywhere. The recreational fishing community used to draw a line in the sand and expect them to give us what we asked for. Our fisheries management relationship techniques were to go into the director or other staff office and pound on their desk and yell at them. “Give em the what for!” and feel like we did an effective job of telling them how it will be. I don’t know about anyone else but in my business that is what I call a one time customer. I choose not to deal with that person again. This is surprising to me that people think they can be effective by whining, complaining, or just causing problems, then expect them to go to bat for us. Ludicrous!
I got involved in fisheries years ago with the attitude of working with WDFW and staff to do their jobs by being an advisor. We offer suggestions, roll up our sleeves, and try to work with them instead of name calling and tearing them down. Tell me anyone who is effective by doing this? Phil and WDFW deserves better than this. I see meetings that sportsfishers do not show up to present their case but the commercials do. Then the sporties are upset because they start losing.
You would not have seen the changing of the WDFW crab policy, the earlier halibut opener in the straits in 2004, and the fin clipped Chinook fishery, without the help of Phil Anderson. These are only a few victories that come to mind. However you would have seen fisheries close this year had our paid representatives not worked with him in increasing our license fees to cover these fisheries. This is a fact. We are working with him on many fronts and many good things are yet to come. One thing I do know is that somethings seem as a loss where it actually was a head it off at the pass and make the best of it. Still a win, but not a total loss. But bashing is done as a result.
In Olympia I sat in the North of Falcon salmon season setting process room this year for the ocean fishing seasons. One of my VPs had to take it one day when I had to sit in on our Crab Policy steering committee to implement our new crab steering committee for our newly gained allocation change for the sportfishers. The meeting day was Phil, Pat Patillo, WDFW staff, probably about 30 commercial salmon fishers, two Westport Charterboat Association Members, and me. The Tule (lower Columbia River Chinook) had been placed on the ESA listing. This king was a huge run and takes the hit all of the way up to Alaska for other kings to get through. This was major trouble for us. 2011 had a huge resource of Chinook and so Alaska and BC had expanded their salmon take. Washington state is the end of the line so whatever they did not take, Washington state was going to pay the price with whatever quota that was left in the decreased fishery. So instead of us getting a huge bump in our fisheries like everyone else, we were going to get cut back by paying for the Tule.
At this meeting we had talked about the June fin-clipped Chinook fishery. The thought was that there could be some incidental Tules caught in June costing us the late season Chinook and silver fishery. I watched one by one as the commercial fisherman slammed the June fishery. The consensus was that it was not a good fishery as they could not take a fish home if it was not clipped. Some days you cannot get a wild fish. One said they fish recreationally too, and their guests get upset when they have to turn fish back and not take anything home when its all wild catch that particular day. I was the only one that spoke up in favor of that fishery. Maybe it was not the year for it, but a great fishery and I didn’t have to kill every fish that I caught. The consensus was to kill that fishery. But Phil kept it as an 8 day fishery as they have plans to make this a regular season for us, against the tribes will. It takes five years of consistent yearly data building to make this fishery and had they not gone with this fishery for that short date, we would have either lost that fishery or had to start over to build that data again. This was a sportfishing victory as we already have part of that data built.
I watched the emergence of the Willipa Chinook recreational fishery by a dear friend leading this charge. It took years and was turned into a great fishery. That friend took a new job and could no longer sit in on those meetings and I watched that fishery start going back to the commercials. The background done to keep that fishery was no longer present. It’s a shame but a reality. If you do not show up at meetings to present your case, don’t expect it to continue as it appears that no one is interested in it. This is probably the biggest case today.
The fin clipped fishery is against the tribes will and the VTR or voluntary trip reports are the tools used to build these fisheries. They have had to go head to head with the tribes to keep this fishery and still have been expanding it.
I became very active in our fisheries many years ago when I saw a small bulletin that there were some senators were making a run at shutting down coastal fishing. I could not believe this came up and no one knew of it. I wrote letters and contacted people to write their legislatures to stop it. It was stopped. Back then those attempts were very weak. But now the non-governmental organizations have gotten collectively better at doing closures. They have been doing it all over the world. Some places need them and others can be fixed by management. I try and keep my eye on these closures with very key close friends in the upper government fishing agencies. When the Yelloweye ESA listing in the Pacific Ocean of of Washington came about, we had to work with Phil and Michele Culver. Every year the feds screwed down the amount of catch allowed for us to kill and keep fishing. It was getting ugly and there was a proposal to close down the entire Washington North Coast for halibut and leave three small areas open for halibut. One near the SW corner of the C closure, one near Bluedot, and one near Swiftsure. His office sent me the coordinates and I plotted them. I went over them with my bottom fishing friends and charters. I went back and asked they leave the entire ocean open and we should use the SW corner open to take the brunt of the halibut off of as it is loaded with halibut. This area has already taken some of the yelloweye off of it as there is not that many as some of the other areas have. My request was granted and we were able to keep fishing. This is what working relationships get you.
When the catch share program came out in Alaska that was a bomb shell for me. I made some phone calls to those friends and was assured that the people we have lined up in those councils and agencies are not anti-fishing and have our best interest at heart in our state. Phil Anderson is one of those few key people that know the truth about the health of our fisheries.
We have brought our groups together such as PSA, CCA, FishNW, NSIA, and even at times NMTA to work for a better tomorrow with Phil and many others. Our groups on the upper most levels are working together and changing things for the better for sportfishing. Some things we lose opportunity, but not as bad had we not worked with Phil. We have dodged some very huge bullets lately. Given the climate in Olympia today with more special sessions, Phil is going to be our best help in keeping us fishing. He fishes and used to be a charter fisherman. What more can you say?
The average person does not know what we are doing and probably thinks most things happen by accident. Not so. Being that I have a more than full time job along with fish politics, I don’t have the time to tell many and in most cases, can’t, and have to make decisions for us. Over the years I have heard too many complain and I ask them if they have gone to the meetings or drive to Olympia to talk to someone about it. The answer is 99.9 times out of 100-no. Everyone claims to be too busy to make things happen, but I guarantee you none are any busier than I am. If you do not take the time out to build relationships, you will get nowhere. I have worked on fisheries issues with Phil for a long time and he has yet to disappoint me on things that I have asked for. I don’t bother him unless it is really important. Then we get things done on the top level.
Phil Anderson has a very tough job to do and is doing a great job. With the amount of cuts and volume of shifting going around in Olympia it has to be the hardest jobs in the world. During the fat times all agencies got bumps in funding and WDFW still got cut. We worked with Phil on our license fees keeping our fishing seasons open where before we would have had them closed. Could you imagine if we had Jeff Koenigs during this time? I could not. I have sat in some meetings with Phil with some wanting to help replenish certain fisheries and needed his approval. Phil set them up with some people in key positions and organizations to help them get their projects going. These are projects to bring fish back before the NGOs start marine reserves. He did not have to help them but did because he cares.
My vote is thumbs up for Phil Anderson as he has done more for sports fishing than anyone really knows. He is a huge asset to the sportsfishing community and you can take that to the bank. Working with Phil has stopped some very nasty things that could have happened with the sportfishing community and most will never know. I talked to a friend today that told me about this post so I had to respond and let people know what Phil is really made of. My biggest concern is who will replace him when he has to leave or retires? At the rate of anti-fishing groups growth and sky is falling mentality, we need someone that has the real background to offset bad information. Remember that these groups cast doom and gloom to get funding through homemade science and not actual science. Good news never gets funding and bad news does. These anti-fishing groups take away fishing areas. I sit in these meetings to see where they are going and are trying to do. I also educate their members on the truth and they are surprised when I back it up with paper. They take the sportfishing dollars for licenses, manufacturing, boat sales, etc. and replace it by funding from the government and NGOs by kicking us off of the water. Phil is a critical piece of the puzzle to keep our fisheries open. Believe me there are anti-fishing organizations planning against us as we speak.
Ron Garner
President
Puget Sound Anglers
State Board
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