American Fisheries Act

In an effort to get around the AFA's major provisions, Sen. Gorton worked to stall the bill and avoid a Committee vote. He later convened a closed-door meeting with industry representatives and Congressional staff to come up with a new industry-supported framework for the bill. In the end, the big winners in the Senate's political maneuverings are the multi-national corporations who wanted to continue to use factory trawlers to ravage our oceans in order to reap a short-term profit. Under the final bill, the marine environment and our nation's fish stocks are clearly the big losers.

Essentially, the AFA privatized the North Pacific groundfish fishery. This action violates a moratorium on privatizing the nation's fisheries and anti-trust legislation, but the bill conveniently exempts itself from those restrictions. Through the AFA, a handful of fishing vessels is specifically granted, by name, exclusive rights to fish in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands, primarily for pollock. The owners of the vessels are composed of multinational corporations, based in Seattle, WA. Although the Federal government sets catch quotas and maintains observers onboard, the vessels are more or less free to fish off the coasts of Alaska in their own private playground, careless of the effects they have on Alaskan communities, ocean ecosystems and endangered species, including the Steller sea lion.