OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2016
GUEST COLUMN
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
Anchovy ishery is
riddled with conlict
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
By DEBORAH JAQUES
For The Daily Astorian
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
OUR VIEW
Tourism-related
DUIIs illustrate
pinch on resources
ourism usually brings to mind the idyllic scenes of vaca-
tioners relaxing on the beach, strolling through town while
visiting shops, enjoying the plentiful recreational activities
and frolicking about at the numerous weekend festivals the North
Coast has to offer.
The North Coast and the Long Beach, Washington, Peninsula
are no longer secret destinations, and the past decade has ushered
in a boom of visitors and tourism spending to both sides of the
Columbia River. Local leaders who tout tourism growth point to
the past two years and the clear inancial impact tourism has gen-
erated, especially in Clatsop County. According to Travel Oregon,
visitors to Clatsop County in 2015 spent $539.6 million.
While some residents may wish there wasn’t as much tour-
ism occurring here, simply put, the tourism bell has been rung and
people from other areas have heard it and responded. Like the line
from the movie “Field of Dreams” goes, “If you build it, he will
come.” It’s been built and they have come, and while some may
wish it was otherwise and the coast could go back to the quiet
days before the boom, that train has already left the station and
won’t be returning anytime soon.
T
Need for balance
But there is a great need for balance between the two view-
points because tourism brings negative side effects as well, like
stress on public infrastructure along with trafic snarls, crowded
beaches, shopping areas and restaurants that come with those dol-
lars. One of the more serious — and potentially deadly — side
effects is an increase in drunken driving and the danger it presents
for other drivers as well as the strain it causes for police, prosecu-
tors, probation oficers, treatment providers and jail staff.
As The Daily Astorian reported Friday, nearly 40 percent of
the DUII cases iled with the Clatsop County District Attorney’s
Ofice each year within the past ive years have involved people
who live outside the county. So far this year, the number of DUII
cases is on pace to surpass previous years — a igure likely inlu-
enced by the transfer of misdemeanor DUIIs in Astoria to Circuit
Court — and the number of out-of-towners in those cases hovers
right at about 40 percent.
As District Attorney Josh Marquis points out, “The citizens of
Clatsop County, who pay taxes, are subsidizing visitors in ways
that go beyond our streets.”
Tourism taxes
Leaders in county government and the coastal cities need to be
mindful and proactive in addressing the delicate balance between
the local quality of life and the growth of tourism, along with
issues like the DUIIs that tourism presents. In all likelihood those
issues will continue to grow along with the surge in the number of
visitors and tourism spending.
Although it varies by jurisdiction, Clatsop County and cities
within it generate revenue from tourism-based taxes, some more
than others. In Cannon Beach for instance, more than 60 percent
of the city’s entire general fund is generated by tourism taxes, and
portions of those tax revenues are earmarked for various quali-
ty-of-life residential services as well as tourism marketing.
The area’s city and county leaders should examine how the
tourism dollars that low into their individual budgets are used,
and they should ensure there is a continuing balance between tour-
ism marketing and fulilling the growing need to address the side
effects like DUIIs and the stress on public infrastructure.
Tourism and residential quality of life can coexist, but it will
take proactive efforts to manage that delicate balance.
T
he Daily Astorian article
(“Anchovies pick up where
sardine left off in Astoria”
Sept. 20) painted a pretty rosy picture
about the uptick in local commercial
anchovy harvest. I was also initially
excited to see ish going up the
conveyor belt on the Riverwalk; it’s
nice to see a ishing
town at work.
The people at
Sea-A and ishing
crew from Kodiak
are friendly and
show pride in their
work and product. Our anchovy
wealth has also been relected by the
magniicent seasonal occurrence of
marine birds and mammals feasting
in our Columbia River Estuary,
including brown pelicans and hump-
back whales again.
After being astonished to see that
the new anchovy purse seiners were
actually ishing in the river as far up
as the bridge among the Buoy 10
ishermen, returning salmon, surfac-
ing whales and foraging seabirds, I
got an uneasy feeling and investi-
gated further. I did internet research,
listened in on the recent Paciic
Fisheries Management Council
Meeting, and contacted state oficials
and salmon ishermen.
As it turns out, this year’s
Columbia River anchovy ishery is
riddled with conlicts. It is a massive
extraction of these forage ish,
unprecedented in decades, primarily
for export to Asian markets.
At this scale, the ishery is poten-
tially harmful to our local ecosystem,
established local bait ishing busi-
nesses, ESA-listed salmon stocks,
and is directly counter to state and
federal efforts to reduce salmonid
predation by seabirds. The anchovy
take limits are not based on current
scientiic data regarding stock size;
isheries managers are only guessing
at the ability of the stock to support
the allowable catch. Since these
ish have been a relatively untapped
resource for commercial ishermen,
absence of a stock assessment was
not a pressing issue until market
conditions changed, and the small,
but mighty, leet from Alaska came
in to exploit the stock at its center of
abundance.
This is taking place in the midst
of unusual oceanographic conditions
that may be constricting the range
of anchovy and creating unusual
densities of mature, egg-bearing ish
in estuarine waters.
‘Last resort’
Anchovy have been described
as a ishery of ‘last resort’ by the
California Wetish Producers
Association. Something to turn to
after other species decline and isher-
ies are shut down. Following the clo-
sure of the West Coast sardine ish-
ery, increased pressure on anchovy
was fully expected. According to
some analyses, the central stock
of anchovy based off southern and
central California has plummeted
largely due to environmental change,
yet ishing has continued.
The proit on harvest per ton of
anchovy is Oregon is higher than it
is in California, so it is not surprising
that some purse seine boats shifted
efforts north. The eficiency of the
leet to capture their daily capacity in
our estuary is increased by the use of
the use of spotter planes, cues from
Deborah Jaques/Submitted Photo
Pelican swarm around a salmon-fishing boat in the Hammond Boat
Basin in August. The author was conducting pelican surveys.
pelicans, predictability of bait-ish
movement with the tides, shoreline
and freshwater boundaries, and
ability to transfer excessive catch
from one boat to another in relatively
calm waters.
This new anchovy ishing effort
has been described by a local salmon
ishermen as akin to “shooting ish in
a barrel,” as well as a “train-wreck in
motion.” Until recently, the Oregon
ishery has taken place in the absence
of an observer program to monitor
bycatch, including ESA-listed
salmon.
Harvest limits
The Paciic Fisheries
Management Council sets federal
harvest limits for coastal pelagic ish
species and has set the acceptable
biological catch for the northern
stock, from San Francisco to the
Canadian border, at 9,750 metric
tons. This year that quota may be
met over a period of a few months,
and nearly all of it will have come
from one place, our Columbia River
estuary and mouth waters.
States have the right to reduce
federally allowable take within their
waters.
The state of Washington places
priority on the ecosystem value of
marine forage species. To protect
the food web and existing small
bait isheries, the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife
years ago adopted regulations that
impose daily and weekly possession
limits for anchovy. The limits
preclude development of the type of
large-volume ishing operations that
are taking place in Oregon this year.
Washington rules limit the catch,
possession or landing of anchovy
to 5 metric tons daily and to 10
weekly.
Just one of the three new boats
working the Columbia this year
has been aiming for about 85 tons
per day, as reported in the Daily
Astorian. The accumulated tonnage
of catch to date is not publicly avail-
able due to conidentiality concerns.
The Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife was apparently caught
off-guard by this year’s anchovy
ishery and is moving forward on
temporary adjustments to the rules,
partly in response to testimony at the
recent Paciic Fisheries Management
Council meeting where concerns
were raised about ESA-listed salmon
and local depletion of prey resources
for dependent predators.
Cormorant cull
Meanwhile, in a few days, federal
Wildlife Services agents will resume
shooting double-crested cormorants
in the Columbia River in response
to a mandate from the NOAA under
the guise of the ESA. The ODFW
is one of the many state and federal
agencies that developed and support
the seabird control plan.
The bellies of the dead birds will
probably mostly contain northern
anchovy, but nobody will be looking
at that.
The culling continues a now
nearly 20-year-long campaign
against birds, originally designed to
reduce Caspian tern consumption of
salmon smolts upriver and encourage
greater reliance on northern anchovy
in the estuary. Our government agen-
cies are now allowing depletion of
this same northern anchovy breeding
stock, so it theoretically follows that
breeding terns and cormorants may
increase consumption of salmon
in the coming years, which could
result in more birds being killed and
displaced.
How much sense does a
large-volume commercial anchovy
ishery make in light of the millions
of tax payer dollars invested in
controversial cormorant and tern
control measures? These measures
also result in harassment of brown
pelicans and other nontarget animals
that are not fairly disclosed.
The anchovy stock based off of
the Columbia River is clearly critical
to many marine wildlife species
who migrate thousands of miles
annually to feed on the ish in late
summer-fall. Over 80 percent of
all brown pelicans surveyed by the
USFWS in Oregon and Washington
occurred within the Columbia River
Estuary in mid-September this year.
Pelicans tend to know where the
anchovy are.
The warm water Blob and
other ocean anomalies that reduce
productivity, have probably only
led to greater importance of our
estuary to ish and wildlife in the
California Current system. Please
contact the ODFW marine resources
department and the Paciic Fisheries
Management Council if you want
urge more thoughtful stewardship
and long-term protection measures
for northern anchovy and the rich
biodiversity that depends on it.
Public comments to Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife are
accepted at odfw.info@state.or.us
Public comments to the Paciic
Fisheries Management Council are
accepted at pfmc.comments@noaa.
gov
Deborah Jaques is an inde-
pendent wildlife biologist, owner
of Paciic Eco Logic consulting,
based in Astoria, and brown pelican
specialist.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Land of the free
W
hatever happened to tolerance?
The current presidential cam-
paign strongly implies there are many
Americans who would deport the
Statue of Liberty, whose famous son-
net advises other countries to “give
me your tired, your poor, your hud-
dled masses yearning to breathe free.”
I suspect that Donald Trump and
his surrogates might prefer this ver-
sion of the sonnet: “Give me your
extreme-vetted and send only your
smartest, best-connected and richest
white people to our shores. No los-
ers, no Mexicans and no Muslims,
please.”
That kind of hate speech might
get rave reviews from the neo-Na-
zis and the Ku Klux Klan, but no hur-
rahs from those of us who encour-
age admittance of people whose only
asset may be the desire for a better
life.
Think about it. Where would we
be if Trump’s opportunistic intoler-
ance of other ethnicities prevailed
throughout our history? Sorry, Albert
Einstein, Andrew Carnegie and Alex-
ander Hamilton. Under The Don-
ald’s extreme vetting proposal, you
wouldn’t be admitted. Nor would
ilm director Billy Wilder and Croa-
tian-born Nikola Tesla, who gave the
world alternating current.
Since Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
father, Gustav, was a Nazi and Arnold
went AWOL from the Austrian army,
serving a prison sentence, we’d have
to terminate the Terminator.
Bid Gule gule (goodbye) to con-
troversial TV Dr. Oz, who hosted
Trump on his Sept. 15 show. Oz’s
Muslim parents are from Turkey and
Mehmet speaks luent Turkish. Whoa!
And (drum roll, please) we’d say
sayonara to The Donald himself.
Trump’s grandfather, Friederick, was
a draft-dodger who led Germany to
America, where he applied for citi-
zenship in 1892, and lied about his
age. Oops! Schadenfreude.
Others not admitted might include
British-born Charles Chaplin and nov-
elist Aldous Huxley, author of “Brave
New World,” and Haiti-born John
James Audubon, whose father sired a
number of mixed-race children.
That’s just my short list of some
who might be denied residence in “the
land of the free and the home of the
brave.”
Since diversity and inclusiveness
are what “make America great,” we
should admonish those who divide,
demean, and demonize others. Oth-
erwise, we make a mockery of “the
land of the free and the home of the
brave.”
DR. ROBERT BRAKE
Ocean Park, Washington
Age gracefully
ged we will all become,” they
say, “if we’re lucky.” But when
we arrive on those weakened, eroded
shores, where is the wisdom that is
supposed to arrive in tow? For there
is no wisdom in depending upon two
legs, when three or four, or motor and
‘A
wheels are necessary.
Life is something you show up for,
and where is the wisdom in not show-
ing up for it because foolish pride
won’t let you accept the aid and assis-
tance to do so? Where is the wisdom
in an old person not wanting to appear
old, then complaining how native
tribes and Eastern societies hold their
aged in high esteem?
Alas, where is the wisdom, after
having lived a life fully able, to resent
or deny the disabling nature of age,
when others were never allowed the
gift of being so able, or knew such a
briefer moment in it?
Do you remember youth and all
of its glories? Would you deny youth
its glory, because you have aged out
of it?
Let youth glory, let it lend a hand,
as you once lent a hand.
Show up to the life you have, that
is still possible, by whatever means
you can. If it takes an extra hand
or leg or motorized wheel or dia-
per, there’s no shame in this. There is
only shame in prejudice toward the
disabled, toward the aged, toward
yourself.
A friend talks about seeing, in
his Montana childhood, the old Indi-
ans who fought Custer in their youth.
“They always rode with a long pole,”
he says, which they used to help them
mount and dismount their horses. I
wonder if these veterans of Little Big
Horn were embarrassed by their pole?
M. ALEX “SASHA” MILLER
Astoria
Homeless solution
keep hearing about how much
of an issue the homeless popula-
tion is causing all around the area. A
workable solution would be to put
them to work, for pay. If they won’t
work, then make them leave the area.
This worked when we had the Civil-
ian Conservation Corps, and it would
work now.
CLEVE ROLFE
Seaside
I