Ir"rationalization"

There might want to be some more town hall meetings held by legislators around the state on SB113 on "rationalization," as some call it. I don't know how rational it was to throw out on the street 700 to 800 king crab crewmen and almost 150 skippers. The little town of King Cove lost 20 crew jobs and crabbers delivering will drop from 50 -60 down to 20.

The attendees at the "rationalization" meeting didn't seem to find SB113 very rational either. Is what would have been rational, to counteract the greed of the boat owners, would be to put a timer on the pot hauler to keep it from working 24 hours a day for days on end. I've heard crew tell that they could only crawl acorss the deck after a few days of fishing non-stop. Or you could have pulled the license of a boat that lost a man.

Anyway, to say "rationalization" is a success just means you have stock in a crab boat. Everybody else is singing the blues. And the North Pacific Fishery Management Council just says, "ya got to be tough, you see." Well, I hope a NPFMC member doesn't make a wrong turn and end up in a dark alley in King Cove. If the Alaska Municipal League would ever get a grip on fisheries issues, you wouldn't have King Coves, Port Grahams and Pelicans, to name a couple, popping up all over the place.

The irrationalization people thrive when folks say, "it's not my job." I met a retired doctor in the Dallas, OR city park one day and he was still apologizing for HIS FRIEND who was in Oregon Fish and Wildlife when all the salmon streams were being killed off. All I can say is don't end up having to apologize for the rest of your life if there's anything you can do to be truely rational.

And down here in Oregon some writer was saying how this has gone on for years in Alaska. He is obviously a shill for the big hake processors who are lobbying for a big quota share. Any more of this in Alaska and the state will have to start a Ghost Town Days celebration to draw tourists. Also read a Kodiak Native's take on SB113.