Bob Alverson: A legacy of leadership in fisheries management

Article four of a series written by Arni Thomson- History of the Fishing Vessel Owners Association (FVOA), Seattle, WA, Activities from 1914 – 2024.

Early Conservation Efforts and the Halibut Treaty of 1923

An important precedental issue surfaced in 1915 and took place at an FVOA meeting in Seattle on November 24, 1915, at which the organization voted to ask the government to establish a closed season on halibut fishing during November and December each year.   The FVOA took its first step in fisheries’ resource conservation matters.  A growing number of fishermen in both Canada and the U.S., NEFCO’s Hager, and the journal Pacific Fisherman feared depletion of the southern grounds had already begun, and they began advocating for a winter closure.

At a meeting a week later attended by Canadian fishermen, the FVOA members, following representations by the Canadians, decided to change their recommended closing months to December and January.  According to Lokken, nine years later, in 1924 (the year that Harold started his 50-year career with the FVOA), the International Fisheries Commission, later renamed the International Pacific Halibut Commission, was set up with both American and Canadian industry-based commission members and scientist administrators to study and regulate halibut fishing.

Its first action was to institute a closed season from November 15^th to February 15^th, each winter, for the purpose of protecting halibut during the spawning concentrations.  A subsidiary benefit was the closing of fishing during the usual period of severe storms with their attendant hazards to vessels and crews.  This was preceded by FVOA in 1919 petitioning the governments of the U.S. and Canada to jointly manage the fishery.

Canadians joined with Americans in the request. A draft treaty was developed, and a joint investigation into the life history of halibut was called for, and a winter closed season for halibut for ten years.  In this effort, the halibut industry was supported by Dr. William F. Thompson, a Canadian scientist who published a Preliminary Report on the Life History of the Halibut in 1914, that the spawning season for halibut began about December 15^th and lasted until about the end of April.

Of more significance was the disclosure that female halibut did not reach maturity until twelve years of age. This was startling because it set the maturation figures four years later than previously recognized.  The Halibut Treaty and the Commission became the cornerstone for rebuilding the depressed West Coast halibut stocks and managing the North American fisheries.

Summary of the the Harold Lokken period of FVOA achievements, 1924 through 1976, 1976 being the year the US Congress adopted the MFCMA, a period of 52 years:   

• Harold Lokken completed his formal education at Lincoln High School in Seattle, and graduated in 1922.  When asked once if he had attended college or university, he admitted that he attended a few extension classes, but generally speaking “I was educated in the school of hard knocks.”  In 1924, when Harold was nineteen, he took over the reins of the FVOA from his brother John who had been there for two years.  Halibut fishing was not a part of his family traditions growing up on Queen Ann Hill overlooking Smith Cove, but construction of halibut schooners was and connected him to the rapidly developing industry.  His grandfather John Strand was one of the earliest builders of halibut schooners and was located in Tacoma. A photo of the Mary a typical halibut schooner of the 1890s, built in 1898, one of several vessels he built, is shown under sail on Puget Sound and is on display in the FVOA office. 

• Maintenance of an office and meeting place
• A fish exchange
• Navigational aids, lighthouses
• Standards of vessel safety
• New markets
• Orderly collective bargaining with union groups
• Effective presentations on behalf of the membership have been made to regulatory and state and federal legislative bodies—and at all times conservation has been the guiding principle of FVOA. 
• Called upon to lead the fleets of both owners and fishermen in Canada and the US in many projects of mutual concern
• Seattle Fish Exchange has been successful in creating a free market not only in Seattle, but it assured fair prices up and down the coast. 
• 1930s, Lokken travelled by steamship to Alaskan ports and set up the industry-based mandatory Eight Day Lay Up system that lasted until 1976.  The voluntary layup required vessels to tie-up for eight days after each halibut trip.  The Layup System lengthened the season by pacing deliveries and stabilized marketing.  The Lay Up system was a voluntary program with no government involvement and it was endorsed by both American and Canadian unions and boat owners’ associations. 
• 1933 Lokken established the first liability pool in the U.S. for fishermen.  It is now called the Marine Safety Reserve. 
• In WWII a war insurance fund for vessels was established, it was a cargo insurance fund that FVOA still operates today.
• During the 1960s, the FVOA’s Lokken worked with Senator Warren Magnuson and Senators Bob Bartlett and Ted Stevens from Alaska on extended jurisdiction. Extending the U.S. Zone from 3 – 12 miles was accomplished through Congressional legislative “bilateral agreements” in an attempt to protect halibut, crab and salmon resources from uncontrolled fishing by 500 foreign vessels from seven nations who were depleting America’s fishery resources from California to Alaska.  
• Lokken was an advisor to Senator Warren Magnuson on fisheries legislation and was called upon by Magnuson to begin a first draft of the MSFCMA in 1974.  The draft was modelled after the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, on which he served for 23 years.  Harold was highly instrumental in the creation and passage of the MSFCMA.  
• Harold was among the first group of industry representatives that served on the NPFMC, one of eight such fisheries management bodies around the coast of the U.S and Hawaii, established by the MFCMA.   He served three terms from 1976 through 1984.  
• Recognition awards: Northwest Fisheries Association, Man of the Year 1963;
• Received President’s Commendation from President Nixon, for promoting conservation and wise use of marine resources 1970; from the Emperor of Japan, the highest award to a non-citizen of Japan, in recognition of international fisheries involvements KUN-3-TOU ZUIHO-SAO. (Year of the Award); and King Neptune Award for fisheries achievements from the Norwegian Commercial Club of Seattle, 1996. 
• Harold operated his own fisheries foundation called the Pacific Fisheries Foundation, providing scholarship funds for essays on fisheries issues for U of W students. 
• Following his retirement, Harold conducted exhaustive research on the halibut schooners which were built in the early 20^th century. He published a comprehensive article about the schooners in 1988 at the age of 83 that is of historic significance today, entitled “Pacific Halibut Schooners and Their Builders.” (Sea Chest, PSMHS, Seattle, WA 1988)

Summary of the Bob Alverson period, 1974 through 2024: 

• Bob Alverson, like Harold Lokken grew up in the greater Seattle area and graduated from Mount Rainier High School in 1967.  Distinct from Harold, he then went on to the University of Washington where he earned a BA Degree in Economics in 1972.  Summer months while he was attending the U of W, he worked at the Red Salmon Fish Company, a Bristol Bay salmon cannery, his first job in the fishing industry.  Following graduation, he took a job as Assistant Manager at Pacific Finance in Renton, WA (Transamerica Corporation) and he also joined the Washington State National Guard where he achieved the rank of an E-6 before completing his military service in 1977.   
• Bob brings special personal traits to his work at the FVOA that help account for the association’s numerous achievements.  He is a tireless worker, he works long hours, attends a lot of meetings and he strategizes with the long-term perspective in mind.  Alverson is known to be a very determined individual who knows what he wants to achieve and he will take many routes to get there.  Bruce Leaman, the former IPHC Director once noted that “industry and agency representatives, including IPHC scientists he respects, know they have to be well prepared if they are going to be dealing with him.  He draws on the expertise of a lot of folks and he comes well prepared to meetings.”   Leaman continued to say that “we don’t always see eye-to-eye, but he respects science, even when the science is not what he wants to hear.”  Bob is also a very patient and personable individual
• For the first two years from 1974-1976, Bob worked under Harold Lokken as the Assistant Manager of FVOA during which time Harold wrote the first draft  of the MSFCMA, which extended the U.S. fisheries jurisdiction from 12 to 200 miles and created the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for all the coasts of the U.S. and Alaska.  This resulted in the phase-out of all foreign fishing in the EEZ.  Under the leadership of Senators Magnuson and Stevens, this was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1976.  Alverson has been continuously involved in MSFCMA developments since 1974.  
• Bob vividly recalls his early days at the FVOA in 1974 when Harold was drafting the MSFCMA and he was preparing to take the draft document to Washington D.C. for hearings. He had only been working for Harold for a few days when Harold informed him that he was going to be running the fish auction the next day (the Fish Exchange), located in the office. 
• Alverson was slightly overwhelmed when Harold gave him a three-minute review of how to conduct the auction, then Harold handed him a piece of chalk and an eraser and started out the door for Washington D.C.  So the next day the fledgling assistant manager was conducting the auction in his office, overseeing a live auction of boatloads of halibut being sold to company buyers.  At one point, Harold advised Bob that the FVOA job was 45 per cent logic and the rest was politics. Bob credits Harold with making the halibut fishery what it is today. 
• Bob has continued his work on MSFCMA reauthorizations since beginning with FVOA in 1974.  During the 1990s Bob and the FVOA spearheaded a coalition of fisheries organizations that were successful in the development of three new National Standards in the MSFCMA in October of 1996.  NS 8 required Councils to take into account the importance of fishery resources to communities; NS 9 stated that conservation and management measures shall to the extent practicable, minimize bycatch; and minimize the mortality of such bycatch.  NS 10 provided that conservation and management measures shall to the extent practicable, promote the safety of life at sea.
• FVOA was also a leader in negotiating a modest fee program from six per cent to a cap of three per cent, to administer limited access programs that were also included in the 1996 Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization.  The legislation also provided for the set aside of up to twenty-five per cent of the fees collected in IFQ fisheries for development of loan programs for entry level fishermen and fishermen who fish from small boats.  

Bob continued the FVOA focus on existing programs essential to fisheries management at the regional, national and international levels— plus significant new conservation and business-based initiatives. 

• The FVOA was at the forefront of the sixteen-year struggle for the halibut and sablefish IFQ programs in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, 1979 – 1996.  This remains the largest IFQ program in the world today. The initial allocation included 3,500 recipients with participation in fisheries from Southeast Alaska to the Pribilof Islands in the Eastern Bering Sea.  It is noteworthy that the IFQ program eliminated the need for the ninety-year old FVOA Fish Exchange in 2005.   The fishing vessel owner became a “self-marketer” who sold fish to the highest onshore bidder via cell phone from the high seas.  
• The FVOA also led the industry in the development of the sablefish IFQ program off Washington, Oregon and California.  This was authorized in federal legislation in 2002.    
• Development of a not-for-profit subsidiary in 2006,  Eat on the Wild Side, that oversees its Marine Stewardship Certification (MSC) for U.S. Halibut and Alaskan Sablefish; it is also engaged in national marketing efforts of sablefish through Northwest Sablefish (NS); and under the subsidiary, it co-manages with the Deep Sea Fishermens Union of the Pacific a novel maritime apprenticeship program that involves classroom and on-the-job training The Inbreaker Program.  Apprenticeship programs address skilled labor shortages by providing potential workers a direct path to employment without advanced degree requirements and the burden of accrued student debt.     
• The FVOA was an outspoken leader in the contentious halibut and crab bycatch reduction measures of the 1980s and 1990s (“the bycatch wars”) through the reintroduction of no-trawl zones and numerical bycatch limits for domestic bottom trawl fisheries in the Southeastern Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska around Kodiak Island.  It was again a leader in renewed trawl bycatch negotiations at the NPFMC in 2015 and 2020.    
• Development of the domestic at-sea observer program for commercial fisheries under the jurisdiction of both the NPFMC and the PFMC, the first of which began at the NPFMC in 1991.      
• Active industry leadership in the avoidance of seabird entanglement in longlines in West Coast and Alaskan fisheries;
• Avoidance of marine mammal interactions with longline vessels and gear;
• Management of the Marine Safety Reserve insurance program for boat owners’ personal indemnity insurance;
• West Coast/American /Pacific Marine Funds insurance pools for hull coverage
• Halibut Producers’ Pool cargo insurance programs;

Added to this workload of day-to-day industry responsibilities, Bob has found the time to actively participate in numerous meaningful government appointments and industry committees, some of which are noted here.  These appointments have proved to be integral to the success of the FVOA.   

• 1988 to 1994, served as a member of the NPFMC and elected as Vice-Chairman for five consecutive years; 
• 1997 to 2006, served as a Washington State member of the Pacific Fishery Management Council;
• 2014 to Present, serving as a Commissioner to the International Pacific Halibut Commission;
• Alverson is the only industry delegate to serve in all three capacities; two west coast Councils and the IPHC.  
• 1982 to 1988, served on the Marine Advisory Fishery Committtee (MAFAC);
• 1994 and 1995, appointed West Coast Chairman for the national forum, “Solving Bycatch Workshop” held in Seattle, WA in 1995.  
• 1980 to 1989, served as a Commissioner to the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission for the State of Washington;
• 1977 to 1988, served as a member of the Advisory Panel to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council; Chairman four years; Vice-Chairman five years;
• 1976 to 2012, a member of the Conference Board and delegate to the IPHC; elected spokesman for the Canadian and U.S. fishermen for 34 years;

Awards: 

• 2015, recipient of the Presidential Migratory Bird Federal Stewardship Award; 
• 2006, recipient of the Halibut Association of North America’s “William J. Kelliher Award for Excellence”; 
• 2004, recipient of the Norwegian Commercial Club of Seattle’s “King Neptune”
• Award for 30 years of service to the fishing industry.

FVOA and MSFCMA Developments

In addition to overseeing day-to-day and year-after-year responsibilities at the regional and national levels, Bob has authored a few significant fisheries policy papers. Two of those are mentioned here. They provide insights on the breadth of his knowledge and experience in Northeast Pacific commercial fisheries in 1978 and 1995.