Bill Aims To Curtail Factory Trawlers -- Alaska Senator Favors Onshore Fish Processors

SEATAC - Seattle's embattled fleet of factory trawlers, dominant on the lucrative Bering Sea fishing grounds for more than a decade, is battling another political storm.

Just weeks after Greenpeace demonstrators blockaded a northbound factory trawler in Lake Union, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens formally introduced a bill in Congress to banish most of those vessels from U.S. waters.

Stevens dropped his bomb while industry rivals lobbied federal officials to cut factory-trawler harvests in half, re-allocating millions of dollars worth of groundfish to shoreside plants.

That plan was weighed at a North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting at a SeaTac hotel, where the debate at one point deteriorated into a fistfight between two fishermen in the parking lot.

Passions are high because the stakes are high. The federal panel decides who gets to harvest how much of Bering Sea pollock and other fisheries that are worth billions. The export value of Alaska groundfish in 1996 alone was $916 million.

The factory trawlers, most of them based in Seattle, catch and process Alaska groundfish on board ship. In recent years they have been allocated 55 percent of Alaska pollock.

The balance is allocated to four shoreside plants in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands.

Introducing his bill, Stevens said factory trawlers waste the resource, discarding thousands of tons of fish. Russian trawlers, he argued, caused the collapse of New England's groundfish industry in the 1960s.

His bill would phase out vessels that were built in foreign shipyards and would require 75 percent U.S. ownership. Since most Seattle factory trawlers were built in Norway or other foreign yards, few would meet his proposed standards.

The bill received a warm welcome from shoreside companies and from Greenpeace, which has campaigned for such a ban. "In the short term, it will take out seven of the largest factory trawlers, which should reduce depletion of the resource," said Fred Munson of the Seattle Greenpeace office.

Leaders in the factory-trawler fleet are furious at the two-pronged attack. "It's outrageous," said Bernt Bodal, president of American Seafoods, which operates 16 factory trawlers.

"All we have going for us is the facts. We are a Seattle company with foreign investment. We employ 2,000 people, including 150 Alaskans. We have just opened an office in Anchorage. And our fishery is one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest."

Public testimony at last week's fishery meeting suggested that the issue has become a contest for the loyalties of Alaskan natives, whose traditional homes border the Bering Sea. Native workers from Dutch Harbor supported allocating more fish to the local shoreside plants, while workers from more remote villages supported the factory trawlers.

"What Senator Stevens fails to understand is that this has become a very complex industry," said Paul McGregor, director of the At-Sea Processors Association, which represents factory trawlers. "Diverse markets, diverse products, diverse employment. . . . "

Representatives for shoreside plants, however, argue that they waste less fish and are not as hard on the marine environment - a view shared by Greenpeace.

No action is expected immediately on either Stevens' bill or on the re-allocation measure. However, factory-trawler officials said the shoreside plants appear to hold the political advantage.

"Economics and common sense has little to do with it," said Bodal.

Ross Anderson's phone message number is 206-464-2061. His e-mail address is: rand-new@seatimes.com