Bering Sea crab fleet buyback details still must be worked out

UNALASKA - It's called the Capacity Reduction Program for Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Crab Fisheries - buyback for short. In late December Congress created the $100 million program to reduce the crab fleet. Fishermen say its necessary for their survival in a time of slashed crab quotas. Its good

But classic free market purity it's not, and in a visit to the Aleutian Islands last year, Stevens described a fellow senator's objection.

"He seriously questioned whether we should use taxpayer money to buy boats back that had been brought into the fleet as the product return had gone up," Stevens said. "He felt that when it went down, that should be part of the risk taking of being an entrepreneur." But buybacks can work, Stevens said.

"I think it will help. I was hoping they'd just be buying permits, and not permits and boats," said Gary Stewart, president of the Alaska Marketing Association, which negotiates prices for Bering Sea crab fishermen. "If we could have just bought permits, we could have got a lot more boats out of the fleet. That way, we'd get a lot more bang for our buck."