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Alaska's largest
fisheries trade show starts next week here in Kodiak. This is the 32nd
year for ComFish. It's grown from being part of Crab Fest and eventually
outgrew its space at the armory and the Coast Guard base. This year the trade
show will be at the Kodiak
Harbor Convention
Center. Kodiak Chamber of Commerce Executive
Director Trevor Brown says at its peak ComFish has hosted 200 vendor booths.
While there will be 40 booths this year, Brown says the forums are another
important element of ComFish.
"The
trade show is very important but the forums is a great community service that
we can offer to the fishing community and the community in general. A lot of
these issues affect everyone in the community, not just the fishermen."
Laine
Welch produces the daily syndicated Fish Radio and writes the column Fish
Factor. She's put together the lineup for this year's forums at ComFish. One
workshop will be especially useful for those interested in participating in the
North Pacific Fishery Management Council's June meeting here in Kodiak. Welch
says the workshop will be a primer for people who need help understanding the
complicated hearings.
"Many
people don't realize, I know this caught me by surprise a year or so ago, that
80 percent of all of Alaska's seafood landings come from federal waters meaning
three to 200 miles. Eighty percent of that and the North Pacific Council
oversees all of those fisheries. So it's real important that you pay attention
and now Kodiak and the community will have the opportunity to engage in the
council process when they're here for seven to nine days. These two groups are
going to give a workshop on how to do that effectively."
Welch
is also excited about a series of forums which she calls unprecedented. The
State of Alaska's
large mine permitting team will present again this year. Also on the agenda is Pebble
Partnership's environmental studies
manager, Jane Whitsett, and vice president of public affairs, Mike Heatwole. They will give an overview of
the environmental baseline data related to the proposed Pebble Mine. Following
that will be the project manager for the Chuitna Coal Project, Dan Graham. He
will give a summary of the status of the project which Welch says would
displace 11 miles of salmon stream.
"Dan
Graham, the Chuitna Coal Project Manager will be coming to talk about what
their plans are. They say they can rehabilitate and revitalize these 11 miles
of stream after 25 years of strip
mining and everything will be just fine, so he will explain that. And then the
state large mine permitting team will be here. They came a few years ago. It
was extremely successful and interesting. So after the Pebble discussion, an
hour of Chuitna Coal Project in upper Cook Inlet, then the state large mine
permitting team will talk about the permitting process for hard rock mines like
Pebble and coal mines like Chuitna and just take all questions. I think that's
going to be a real eye opener."
Welch
says some other important forum topics will be safety regulations that go into
effect this year and initiatives that fishing communities in the Lower 48 are
advancing to keep the smaller boats fishing.
ComFish
kicks off next Wednesday at 4 p.m. You can find the complete schedule here.
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