53 



:t!e Post-liiielligencer 



Factory-trawler fleet fishing for answers 



F!SH 



coniinued from C ' 



(luncu scn'in^ each day for 37 days. 



Some pollock winds up in supermarket cases, 

 and a Id! more is sold as fish sticks, Tish-and-chips 

 ..Ad me fish sandwiches at fast-food restaurants. 



'■u; '!h- Inilk (II 11. whether processed by factory 

 ;:.i\♦:t■;^ ui uris.'iure plants, is turned into sunmi. 

 mosi 01 which IS shipped to Japan, where it is 

 made into a variety of food products. 



AJIhough each side in the dispute is quick to 

 cast aspersions on the other, both are sizable 

 contnbuiors to the Seattle economy. 



The trawler companies list crews of alxiut 

 lOoiHJ, about two-thirds of them from Washington 

 iijic. and have payrolls that totaled $294 million 

 lasi year The trawlers also provide rents to the 

 Pen of Seattle and millions of dollars in annual 

 lepair and fiiiing-out work for boatyards. 



Some trawler operators, notably Royal Sea- 

 tnnds and Arctic Alaska Fishenes Corp., process 

 ine'i pioducis further in Seattle. 



Ui.Mi; lur example, employs about 400 people 

 j; l.^ V-dcre facility at Pier 89 It products fish 

 ^iicKi. entries for jenny Craig frozen meals and 

 fish sandwich fillets for every Burger King west of 

 the .Mississippi 



Royal President Stuart Looney said the Long 

 John Silver fast-food chain - the largest single 

 consumer of pollock fillets in the U.S. - has 

 indicated it will seek other suppliers because of the 

 uncenainties caused by the Benng Sea allocation 

 battle 



Tha allocation plan is a double whanuny for- 

 Rnyal Seafoods Its trawlers will be hurt by lower 

 caivtiea, and iis Seattle shoreside operations, 



uii.i;v.- iho!,t in Alaska, will receive no benefit. 



'. '..ij ■•(i-.hure plants in Alaska owned by Seattle* 

 01 cd companies employ 3.500 to 4.000 people, 

 man\ ul whom are Washington residents, said latti 

 of the Pacific Seafood Processors Assocution. 

 Seattle-based catcher boats working for the Alaska 

 plants employ several hundred fishermen. Com- 

 panies such as Tndent Seafoods, the only one of 

 the major onshore operators that is US -owned, 

 and Uniiea also employ about 2,500 at their 

 SeaMle-area operatioru. lam said. 



Kdctorv-trawier operators estimate that initially 

 aiii'ui 1 Con jobs may t>e lost to onshore prtKessors 

 I' \ij-K.i vsiih larger losses in subsequent years If 

 'r. irjiii.n is cut further 



X .\..n.- ano has eaten artificial crab knows 

 '1 1* - and might well wonder how it 

 I. -■.: .,...1. acrid charges of political manipula- 

 iiun eiunomic "pre-emption." the giveaway of 

 L i- resources 10 a foreign country and Japan- 

 bashinj; 



But thia IS fishing, where the commonplace 



expenations of landlubber business people rarely 

 appK In pan. this is because anywhere there's a 

 fish [here s bound to be a politician nearby. 



The present Benng Sea fishery was created by 

 poliiits The 1976 Magnuson An created a fishery 

 riannpiment zone extending 200 miles off the U.S. 

 cu.oi which was intended to "Amencanize" a 

 li'". -m iiihury ihai had been developed by 

 1 ■L.tr., ..r .ind oiher loreign fleets in the 1950s and 

 I. .. ., tun i:.. une in the U.S. had an interest m 



pi.li:....-! 



Noi much happened for a few years. But when 



more valuable salmon and king crab fisheries 

 t>egnn to decline. US. fishermen's interest in 

 pollock increased Seattle-area companies began 

 converting vessels for the pollock fishery and lor 

 sunmi production. 



Factory trawlers are capable of catching vast 

 numbers of fish quickly, and within just three 

 years the fleet had grown to the point where too 

 many boats were chasing too few fish. That left . 

 expensive vessels with high carrying costs tied up 

 at docks in Seattle more than halt the year because 

 the years allowable catch could now be landed in ' 

 two seasons of about 2 '/i months each. 



The two Japanese conglomerates. Taiyo Fisher- 

 ies Co and Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd , decided to 

 invest in onshore plants in Alaska, increasing 

 Dutch HartKir's prxxressing capaary by about 60 

 percent and greatly increasing the shoreside . 

 demand lor pollock. The last of the plants came on 

 line last year - after the factory trawler fleet had 

 already grown to a size larger than the fishery . 

 justified 



With the fishery heavily overcapitalized, poli- 

 tics again entered the picture, and while the factory 

 trawlers were cleaning up at sea they lost badly 

 ashore. 



The Paafic Seafood Processors Association ' 

 complained to the North Paafic Fishery Manage- 

 ment Counal that its plants would be pre-empted 

 by the faaory trawlers unless the pollock catch • 

 was allocated 



In other worxls. the factory trawlers, which are 

 able to catch and process the fish on the fishing ■ 

 grounils while the catch is freshest, were likely to 

 win a competitive t>attle with onshore plants that . 

 must rely on catch brought to them over often 

 corutderable distances by catcher boats. 



The council, which The Times reported last fall ". 

 IS dominated by onshore interests and riddled with 

 confiias of interest, accepted this argument and 

 developed the allocation plan. 



Alaska's congressional delegation - Sens Ted " 

 Stevens and Frank Murkowski and Rep Don' 

 ■ Young, all Republicans of long senionty - earned •■ 

 the ball in Washington. D.C. They were helped by 

 Charles Black of the high-powered public affairs ■ 

 firm Black, Manafort. Stone & Kelly and a key 

 adviser to President Bush's re-election campaign. . 

 Black IS the onshore processors' registered loboy- 



Th« lactory trawlers got strong support from 

 Washington s Democratic congressional delega- _ 

 tion. but none from Republican Sen Slade Gorton. ' 

 who maintained a careful neoirality. saying he had 

 constituents on each side of the dispute 



Despite wntten opinions by the Commerce 

 Uepanmeni s inspector general and the antitrust, 

 section ol the Justice Depanment that the alloca-; 

 tion program was unjustified, the first year of the' 

 program was approved by John Knauss, undersec- ., 

 retarv for oceans and atmospheres, on March 4. 



The result, the factory trawlers argue, will be to • 

 stnp public resources artitranly from more thani 

 20 small US companies who were there first to; 

 subsidize rwo large Japanese companies that made-* 

 poor business decisions 1 



Having been thwarted politically, the faaory; 

 trawlers are turning to the courts. 



However, the trawler operators concede that, 

 the track record of challenges to fishery manage- J 

 ment decisions under the Magnuson Act has been* 

 boor And if a court challenge fails, the way would, 

 be opened lor them to tie pushed out of the fishery! 

 altogether 



