Session: Property Rights
23
date, the secretary’s approval appears to have been proforma.
[Larry Merculieff - cont.]
CDQ’s are meticulously monitored by the state, We must submit
quarterly, midterm and year-end reports; budget comparisons; annual
audits.... We cannot exceed any budgetary line item by 20 percent with-
out authorization from the Secretary of Commerce. To do so brings
heavy punitive action in the form of quota cuts. The last allocation
included multi-million dollar state cuts ranging from 20 to 50 percent.
The 7.5 percent quota cap set in 1992 translates into about 70,000
metric tons per year, divided competitively among our six groups.
But an individual commercial pollock ship costs $40 million to $60
million. That’s why most CDQ’s sell their rights in a joint venture; they
receive royalties in return, ranging from $210 to $310 a metric ton.
The CDQ group that represents St. Paul Island and its 600 Aleut
residents has been investing its returns in harbor improvements, small
boats, scholarships and internships. In less than half a generation, we’ve
become one of the most robust economies in rural Alaska.
In the 1980s, our island had no economy. Now it has $34,000 per
capita income. Our port is No. 2 in tax revenue for the state. The new
boats have employed 100 residents and generated $1 million in just
three weeks. Our island has attracted $70 million in private investment.
Nonetheless, our people also have a legacy of stewardship.
U.S. ships throw 740 million pounds of targeted fish overboard
each year. We don’t know how many nontarget species are wasted.
We were successful in securing mandates in the Magnuson Act, to
substantially reduce this wanton waste. We hope to get the Secretary of
State to negotiate unilateral agreements with Russia on indiscriminate
waste on the Russian side of the Bering Sea.
Indigenous peoples know everything is connected. Scientists and
physicists (with their complexity and chaos theories) are essentially
confirming our view.
The State Department established a multi-disciplinary scientific
group to examine the Bering Sea as an ecosystem. Our nation has had
single species management regimes and now is seeing the results. This
group identified the research gaps and made recommendations.
When our Wisdom Keepers look at the world, however, there’s no
question they see a growing monoculture with singular ways of
thinking, singular ways of educating, singular ways of agriculture,
singular ways of communicating. That’s not the way nature functions.
Nature adjusts in multiple directions and dimensions. It requires
constant movement toward balance, yet never achieves balance, because
it is always changing.
To the extent humans become telescopic in thinking is the extent to
which the human race will become extinct. We need to bring to the table
people from different world views, to help us survive. CDQ’s can make
a meaningful contribution to fishing management and to our nation.