By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

A federal official charged with overseeing Alaska's commercial fisheries observer program says the safety and welfare of observers remains a priority and that the program is working well.

“In a given year, we send out around 300 individuals,” said Bill Karp of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They work on over 200 (groundfish) boats and 20 different shore-based fish processing plants, and get 35,000 data collection days.”

Karp was responding Oct. 17 to a report issued by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based group that has issued two statements saying attacks on fishing observers have risen dramatically over the past year.

PEER alleges that attacks and threats against observers monitoring commercial harvests increased to 73 in 2006, compared with 50 cases in 2005 and 26 in 2004. PEER alleged that only in one case was a violation prosecuted.

“These numbers indicate that more than one in 10 observers is reporting a sexual assault or other intimidation on the high seas,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER.

Karp said there were 48 incident reports in 2006, compared with 50 in 2005, and that the vast majority related to incidents other than violence or sexual harassment.

“There is a range of things that happen, from denying observers access to the catch to taking sample and removing fish from catch before the observers get there,” Karp said. “The main duty of observers is to provide data on quantity and composition of retained and incidentally caught fish discarded. That data is then used for quota management and to provide information for the stock assessment.”

Karp said he had a telephone conversation with Ruch regarding data that NOAA released to PEER.

“We tried to clarify misunderstandings on interpretation of statistics, on how we prioritize safety and the welfare of workers,” he said.

Karp said that NOAA officials take incident reports seriously and do immediate follow-up on them. In one case, the U.S. Attorney's office did prosecute a crewmember, he said.

Liz Mitchell, of Eugene, Ore., president of the Association of Professional Observers, has worked for years as an observer in Alaska fisheries. Mitchell said that she feels there is a strong association between increased rationalization (privatizing of the commercial fisheries) and higher pressure on observers.

“When data from a particular vessel is directly related to the sample of that vessel's observer (rather than open access fleet-wide quota sharing), it is inevitable that there will be disagreements over the observer's numbers,” Mitchell said. “I have personally experienced pressure to re-examine my sampling when the vessel was getting close to its bycatch cap. I've only been on two CDQ (community development quota) vessels and it happened on both vessels, though the argument didn't go far with me because I make sure my sampling is solid and most know that it is an offense to try to persuade an observer to change their data.

“However, if the observer is inexperienced, there are bound to be problems,” she said. “If quotas get smaller, it follows that the observer will be the one to take the heat, especially with bycatch quota, where a bycatch cap can force a vessel to stop fishing the rest of their target quota.”

In this way, Mitchell said, she is in agreement with Ruch's statement that economic pressures fall on observers.

“Furthermore, as is the case with the North Pacific Groundfish Observer Program, when the vessel holds a direct contract with the observer provider (who employs the observer) and there are multiple contractors all competing for the vessels' business, this exacerbates the problem and offers little protection for observers from harassment and interference,” Mitchell said. “The only way to know for sure if harassment and interference is on the rise or not, is for NMFS Enforcement to be transparent with the statistics and it appears that they have not been (with 2006 statistics).”

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.