Adak Fisheries wants the right to process pollock from the Bering Sea, and is hoping for a favorable decision from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Dec. 11 in Anchorage.

Opposing Adak Fisheries' application are the city government and pollock processing companies in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor.

“Another fish grab as is typical in our industry. They're trying to take fish away from other plants and other communities,” Alyeska Seafoods plant manager Sinclair Wilt told the Unalaska City Council Nov. 27.

“We're looking for a way to survive,” said Adak Fisheries' David Fraser. “The closed class of processors in the American Fisheries Act pollock club don't want any new members in their country club.”

With a big cut in next year's Bering Sea pollock quota looming at the December NPFMC meeting, Unalaska officials are nervous about any loss of fish revenues. The fish council is expected to set a quota of 1 million metric tons, a 26 percent reduction from this year's 1.39 million tons.

Adak Fisheries is the largest private business at the former Adak Naval Air Station. Military officials gave the Cold War outpost to the Aleut Corp. in hopes of creating a civilian economy on the island, located 1,100 miles west of Anchorage.

Adak has been hard hit by a huge loss of brown king crab following crab rationalization, Fraser said.

The Adak plant processed 2 million pounds of brown king crab annually between 1999 and 2004. But after a federal crab rationalization prgram was approved in 2005, Adak was left with 88,000 pounds this year. Most of the brown crab shifted to Westward Seafoods in Unalaska, and catcher-processors, Fraser said.

An annual allocation of Aleutian Islands pollock to the Aleut Corp. hasn't helped, because the fish is inside areas closed off to protect the endangered Stellar sea lion, said Fraser.

Now Adak is left with little but its mainstay Pacific cod in January and February. And Fraser sees crab rationalization posing a threat to the plant's cod supply, “the last fishery that's keeping the community alive.” He said crabbers are consolidating quota into fewer vessels, potentially freeing up boats to chase cod around Adak in the last derby-style fishery in the Bering Sea.

Adak's pollock proposal “involves potential loss of resources to this community,” Unisea executive Tom Enlow told the Unalaska City Council.

“We fail to see any justification for the implementation of the regulation in the AFA that provides for an additional inshore processor permit to be issued under certain circumstances,” Unalaska Mayor Shirley Marquardt wrote in a letter to the council.

Marquardt said Adak wants pollock via an “interesting loophole” intended to allow a new Bering Sea pollock processor only in the event of a crisis such as a processing plant burning down.

Fraser disagrees. “It clearly was not a loophole. It was part of the regulations about maintaining a degree of market opportunity for catcher vessels.”

Marquardt doubts the Adak proposal, brought to the NPFMC in October, will prevail. “It doesn't pass the smell test,” she said. Fraser admits he faces an “uphill battle.”

“This decision will be made without a problem statement, without staff tasking, without the analysis of the data,” Marquardt said.

In Fraser's view, that's code for “study it to death,” and “an elaborate way of saying no.” He wants the council to vote it up or down.

“What are they afraid of?” Fraser asked, saying the Adak plant could only receive a “trivial amount of fish.”

Unalaska city natural resources analyst Frank Kelty doesn't think the Adak proposal makes sense because of its long distance from the pollock grounds.

He doubted that many boats would haul fish to a plant 500 miles away, especially with fuel costing more than $3 a gallon.