Fight for the Fisheries

At twin hearings in Seattle and Juneau last week, a Senate Commerce subcommittee stewed over the biggest economic problem of the nation's 49th state. The great salmon fisheries, which normally bring 41% of Alaska's $146 million annual civilian income, are on the verge of destruction. In the past 23 years, the pack has slipped from 8,500,000 cases to 3,000,000 cases in 1958. This year the outlook is for a bare 1,800,000, the lowest level since the canneries started keeping records in 1910.

The fishermen can blame themselves for part of the trouble. For years U.S. fleets fished with such predatory methods that the Government now permits no salmon fishing outside the three-mile limit, this year outlawed the use of fish traps at the mouth of spawning rivers. But the U.S. has no control over other nations, whose fleets catch the salmon before they ever get to Alaska waters.

Cut off by the Soviets from their traditional northwestern Pacific fishing waters, Japanese boats are ranging far into the mid-Pacific to intercept the salmon as they head for Alaska spawning grounds, trap tens of millions before they can reproduce. Up to 20% of Bristol Bay red salmon runs in 1957 bore the telltale scars of long, fine-meshed Japanese gill nets, which can be strung to form a solid, ten-mile barrier across the ocean. By using these nets, say U.S. fishermen, the Japanese kill many immature, Alaska-born salmon and violate the intent of a 1953 treaty designed to prevent the Japanese from fishing for native Alaska salmon.

The U.S. has hopes of negotiating a new conservation treaty with Japan. But last week a second power was moving into the fishing grounds--and one with which negotiations are considerably more difficult. As U.S. Navy planes kept a 24-hour watch, a Russian fishing fleet of 64 boats cruised off Alaska's Pribilof Islands. "Research into fish migrations," explained the Soviets. The Alaskans see another purpose: they think that the Russians are lying in wait for the thick schools of salmon just beginning their annual spawning run.

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