A review of community support measures included in Alaskan fisheries and a roadmap for their use in sustaining and rebuilding small fishing communities

This chapter looks at how Alaskan commercial fisheries have evolved and how this has affected small coastal communities. Alaska's commercial fisheries policies and regulations have maintained the biological integrity of the ecosystem, but they have also, intentionally or inadvertently shaped the economies of fishery-dependent communities along the Alaskan coastline. Federal fisheries off Alaska are conducted under the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (Public Law 94-265), later renamed the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (MSA). Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) were implemented in the halibut and sablefish fisheries in 1995. This paper focuses on the halibut and sablefish IFQ program (NRC 1999a), but also looks at some of the other major commercial fisheries in Alaska; these include the salmon, pollock, and crab fisheries. Alaskan fisheries are often looked at worldwide as successful from a biological perspective, but all of them have had rough periods in their histories, and some have experienced economic disasters, with widespread adverse social and economic consequences for vulnerable communities (Criddle 2012).