Entangled: People and Ecological Change in Alaska's Kachemak Bay by Marilyn Sigman

Author:Marilyn Sigman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections, General, Nature
ISBN: 9781602233492
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
Published: 2018-02-15T00:55:46.016000+00:00

The charter boat fleet are well behind the commercial longline fleet in the amount of halibut their clients catch with hook and line and gaff on their daily forays. The quota they’re allowed off the top of the commercial one has grown, however, to 20 percent of the total harvest—a source of annoyance to the commercial fishermen over many years. In 2011 a limited entry permit system capped the growing number of boats in the charter boat fleet.

Leading up to decisions on every year’s regulations, however, Homer’s newspaper editorials and coffee shop conversations are full of dire warnings about the end of the charter industry or the commercial fishery, or both. Almost everyone is united on the evils of allocating a portion of the catch to by-catch, the polite term for the halibut wasted after being scooped up in trawl nets dragged across the bottom for pollock and cod. The trawlers consider them “nuisance fish.”

Amid these dire warnings of impending doom for the fishery every year, the fishing tourists keep coming, eager for their chance at seasickness and fishing fame. The charter boats go out every day in summer, and those young men keep trundling halibut up the ramps to their photo ops. Homer remains the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.

Even after decades of strife among commercial halibut fishermen and the people charged with sustaining them, there’s something incurably romantic about the quest for halibut. The gargantuan, ungainly creatures are raised up from the deep with an epic struggle. During the restaurant season on Homer Spit, which lasts only as long as the tourist season, my favorite serves up grilled halibut, halibut and chips, and halibut salads, which I could easily eat every day.

A sepia-toned photograph on the wall shows four men posing with an enormous halibut caught in 1904 “near the Wharf on Homer Spit,” so the caption says. The men in the picture are “Messrs. Smith, Stone, Penberthy, and Nicoli.” The caption says that Penberthy was Homer’s first postmaster. Smith and Stone flank the halibut, hanging head up, as usual. It’s longer than they are tall and wider than the two men combined. Stone wears jeans with a halibut hook through his belt loop, a short spiffy vest over his shirt, and a cowboy hat. His arm stretches up to rest on the halibut’s flank in a friendly embrace. Penberthy wears a tailored jacket typical of gold miners photographed at their diggings and sports a jaunty fisherman’s hat and a mustache reminiscent of Karl Marx. Nicoli sits down a bit away from the others. His round face and black straight hair are those of an Alaska Native. He’s the only one smiling faintly.

It’s a seriously large fish hanging there.

This is serious business.

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