"In Their Own Words" RQE: A Way For Charter Halibut Operators to Own a Pool of Commercial Quota
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] by Peggy Parker - December 7, 2016
To understand what an RQE -- Recreational Quota Entity -- is and why the North Pacific Council is taking final action on it this week, one must look back ten years to the efforts of charter boat skippers and longline halibut fishermen to resolve the age-old problem of sharing the resource.
The need was triggered by an unexpected rejection of an original plan to put charter operators under an individual fishing quota (IFQ) program. When the Council started over, a Halibut Charter Subcommittee was appointed to come up with new ideas. By then the charter industry in Southeast and Southcentral Alaska had grown to many times its size of five years earlier, and the halibut resource was...
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