What does Huhtala do? (Part two)

I joined Pacific Marine Conservation Council (PMCC) in the fall of 2000, hired as the Rockfish Campaign Coordinator. I had been honing my skills as an advocate for the environment and on behalf of fisheries for just a few years previous – participating, some say leading the challenge to the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to deepen the Columbia River shipping channel for over 100 miles, from the ocean to Portland.

When a detractor accuses me of being anti-commercial fishing, this both irritates and puzzles me. I forgive them, because I understand that they are possessed by their investment in a malignant and Neanderthal belief system akin to that of the current Resident of the White House… Whoops, that was my outside voice.

In any event I am proud to be considered an environmentalist. My lifelong interest has been that of a naturalist, and I’ve cultivated my particular fascination with the sea, the rivers, the estuaries, marine life, and fishing. It’s actually fishing that turned on a light bulb that allowed me to realize the unbreakable link, the adamantine fusion of the environment and our economic and leisure lives. Without a healthy marine environment there are no fish to catch.

I was the executive director of the Columbia Deepening Opposition Group (CDOG). It was extraordinary how many diverse interests came to agreement around the channel deepening issues, issues such as the redistribution of chemical contaminants in the river’s sediment, the construction of a pile dike field in an historic gillnet drift, filling in Lois Embayment east of Tongue Point, dumping millions of tons of sand on crab beds and flatfish nurseries, and digging a trench through the Superfund area of the Willamette River. My allies included crab and salmon fishermen, local governments, and environmentalists.

In the end the deepening project was approved, but the Willamette section was removed, the pile dike field was not built, and Lois Embayment was saved. It’s still a bad project, but it could have been much worse.

As Rockfish Campaign Coordinator for PMCC, I was thrust into the eco-political realm of federal management of ocean fisheries. It turned out to be an arena with considerable depth and, so far, endless challenge.

Out of the gate at PMCC, I was swiftly integrated into the small team seeking to implement a strategic plan to bring back the rockfish. I didn’t know a whole lot about rockfish, but the creatures very quickly captivated me. There were dozens of species, all of the genus Sebastes, which I learned meant ‘magnificent.’ And they were. They came in a multitude of colors and patterns. They gave birth to larvae, not eggs. Some of them lived 50 years, 100 years, even 205 years! "Dude, there’s a fish here that claims that the last European type he met was named Meriwether."

The game plan was clear enough to me. We needed to make sure we were counting all the rockfish we killed in our fisheries, whether they were brought to shore and discarded at sea. (It turns out that sometimes more fish are shoveled overboard in the trawl fishery than are put in the hold to be brought to market.). We needed to make sure that the habitat these fish need to grow to maturity is adequately protected. We wanted to encourage fishing methods that were more selective and less destructive. We wanted to help bring fishermen and scientists together to collabate on research projects.

I was amazed to learn that fishery managers were basing many of their decisions on estimates of the total fish killed in the fishery that had no real current data to back them up. PMCC was advocating for an observer program, so scientists could tag along on a percentage of fishing trips to get a better idea of how many fish were discarded. This was vital information. The rockfish have a swim bladder, and when they’re hauled up from deep water the bladders burst, their eyes bug out, and they die. If we were to bring these fish back to a healthy population, we needed to count what we killed. Logical. Well, logical and controversial.

Apparently there was some resistance in the fishing industry to carrying observers on the boats. Some were offended that this meant that the government didn’t trust them, or that it was surveillance that violated their civil rights, an unfair imposition, or potentially in conflict with their business policies, as in, “My boat does not allow women on board.”

At my very first Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, PMCC’s executive director at the time, Bob Eaton, delivered testimony that basically said that the Council should shut down the trawl fishery on the continental shelf off the West Coast, unless they implement an at-sea observer program. Hearing this, the fellow standing next to me in the back of the room stared at me (the new PMCC guy in suit and tie), broke the handle off of his coffee mug, threw the handle, which impaled in the sheetrock 12 feet away, and stared at me again. Oh. Then I realized that my new job description had me as the primary spokesperson delivering most of such testimony in the future. I was starting to get an inkling about what it meant when Bob said they were going to paint a target on my back….

Undaunted, I went forth testifying up a storm, educating Congress until I had blisters on my feet, meeting the fishermen who supported the Rockfish Campaign and those who detested it, learning the management process, getting to know the scientists of the ocean fishery world, and most important learning to work with the extraordinary science and communication staff at PMCC. I also began associating with the Marine Fish Conservation Network, a coalition where the relatively small world of conservation-minded fishing groups and environmentalists with a marine focus hammered out common positions regarding national fisheries policy.

Within about a year we celebrated success as Congress appropriated money to get a West Coast groundfish fishery at-sea observer program underway. I fully believe that this was the right thing to do and should be celebrated. There are those who disagree, and I’ll have to proudly accept their wrath.

The Rockfish Rebuilding Campaign was off to a good start. And perhaps I’m starting to describe what I do. But the campaign had further to go, and changes were ahead for PMCC. All that and more in Part Three.

Cheers.