James Moore, who has pulled lines for 50 years, has been honored by the Alaska Trollers Association as a Friend of the Fleet.
Longtime Sitka troller James Moore has won recognition for his work in developing salmon hatcheries in Southeast, promoting a troll-fleet logbook program, and many other activities supporting Southeast fisheries.
After five decades as a salmon troller in Southeast waters, advocating for the fishery all the while, Moore has been honored by the Alaska Trollers Association as a Friend of the Fleet.
Moore attributed the accolade in part to his work in establishing the Chichagof-Baranof Aquaculture Association, which later morphed into the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association (NSRAA). He worked to bring the Seafood Processors Cooperative to Sitka and helped develop a trolling logbook program that kept track of critical fishing data.
He said his involvement in the Alaska troll fishery had an unlikely beginning - classical music.
"I'm an art student, a musician, a violinist, and somehow I got involved in trolling because they say trolling is an art and I love that," Moore said. "I came up here and fell in love with the whole life. ... Two of my kids are also fishermen, better than I am."
Moore, skipper of the Aljac, is particularly proud of his efforts to increase the take of chum salmon.
"If you have an opportunity to do some good then you do it. ... But what is the best thing I've done? It's difficult to say, and it's hard for me to take credit for it too," Moore said. "One thing that really benefited the fleet was the development of the gear that's effective in harvesting chum salmon, dog salmon, and then working within the associations, NSRAA in particular, to get opportunities for the fleet to develop and grow into that."
Because chum feed on plankton instead of forage fish, they had proven difficult to target in a hook-and-line fishery. But Moore found that reducing troll speed and changing the color of the bugs on his hooks led to a big improvement in his catch rate.
This year, while other trollers in pursuit of chum salmon were buoyed by high prices and a solid return of fish, Moore opted to fish for kings instead.
"This last year, I have to say I did not target chums except for just a couple days, and we did phenomenally well and made a lot of money," he said. "But the opportunity presented itself for us to go king salmon fishing and that's what we chose to do. We may have taken a little bit of a hit financially from doing that, (but) king salmon is what trolling was invented for, it's what it's all about, and one of the most frustrating things I've seen in all my career is the reduction in our access to that resource."
In the past decade, Moore worked on harvest allocations between various gear groups around hatchery terminal harvest areas.
He described the allocation strategy as "peace through development. We developed a brand new project, we designated it primarily to trollers with the understanding that all the cost recovery for NSRAA would be done at that project and that enabled much less restrictions harvesting in terminal areas. ... The project was just through the roof, successful beyond anyone else imagination," he said.
He also highlighted his role in the troll logbook program.
"I participated in the original troll logbook program which was done over a 15-year period of time from 1976 to 1991. And that was really cool. ... The original logbook collected information on catch, sea surface temperature, sightings of marine mammals. Really important was the forage fish," Moore recalled. "We'd record what was in the salmon's stomach, where and when."
Though his application for a grant to relaunch the program was declined this past fall, Moore still hopes to revive the trolling logbook.
The program involved the trollers association, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries Service, and other organizations.
He is on the board of the trollers association. "I've been trolling now for over 50 years so I'm kind of a veteran of the fleet. I've seen a lot of changes in our industry and I don't think that trolling has experienced a time like this of such dire existential threat. Our industry is really on the ropes."
Moore is concerned about the pending results of an ongoing lawsuit.
Filed in 2020 by the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy against the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the lawsuit remains in litigation. The WFC alleges that NOAA has violated the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act in the management of the Southeast Alaska king salmon troll fishery.
From Moore's perspective, the issue of the decline of king salmon stocks stems from habitat loss in the Pacific Northwest, not overharvesting.
"The problem is not harvest. The problem is habitat degradation. Most scientists I've talked to or even people involved for decades in the (Pacific salmon) treaty believe that some of these runs will never recover, that the habitat has been degraded beyond recovery and yet the (Endangered Species Act) is still used as a bludgeon against us," he said.
In September, a federal judge ruled in favor of the conservancy group. Further proceedings are underway.
After his long career trolling for salmon, Moore is "looking forward to pulling back from it and playing Bach and doing some painting and maybe making some guitars."
Reader Comments(0)