Contact: Brian Gorman FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
6/5/96
The Makah tribe has been allocated 15,000 metric tons of whiting, the most abundant commercially important groundfish off the Washington coast, under an interim arrangement for the 1996 season, the National Marine Fisheries announced. The tribe is one of four Washington coastal Indian tribes entitled to harvest Pacific grounfish under treaty rights dating to the 1850s.
The fisheries service estimated that last weekend 60 percent of the remaining U.S. harvest for non-Indian whiting had been reached, triggering a closure of the at-sea processing portion of the fishery. Without the Indian allocation, the fishery would have continued for only another day, the fisheries service said.
The quantity of whiting available to all U.S. fishermen this year -- an amount known as the harvest guideline -- is 212,000 metric tons. Of that total, 197,000 tons were allocated to non- Indian fishermen.
The fisheries service's decision, which became effective May 31, stems from discussions over the past several years about whether the coastal tribes have a treaty right to harvest groundfish species and, if so, the amount of fish to which they are entitled.
Although the fisheries service supports the treaty right of the tribes to harvest groundfish in their "usual and accustomed" fishing areas, there is disagreement over the size of the allocation.
The fisheries service believes that the current one-year compromise of 15,000 tons will give both the federal agency and the Makahs time to determine the appropriate Makah entitlement for whiting under its treaty.
In addition to the Makahs, Washington's coastal Indian treaty tribes are the Hoh and Quileute tribes and the Quinalt Indian Nation. These three other tribes have not expressed an intention to harvest whiting at this time.
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