According to the information George Pletnikoff, an activist for Greenpeace as the Alaska oceans campaigner, is an unpretentious former Russian Orthodox priest raised on St. George Island of the windswept Pribil of Islands. He, along with fishermen, scientists, federal and state agency representatives, and the general public came to participate in the nine-day conference offering various views to the NPFMC.
Pletnikoff participate to voice concerns from rural areas about issues facing the groundfish fisheries, NPFMC’s priority, which include cod, flatfish, rockfish, sablefish, mackerel, and pollock harvested by longliners, trawlers and pot fishermen of the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. He admit that final policy decisions would be ultimately decided by the 11 voting members of the NPFMC, six of whom are Alaskans, not including the Alaska regional director of NMFS, to decide federal regulations facing the groundfish fisheries.
The session has different agendas which includes matters surrounding salmon bycatch, crab, groundfish, fixed gear, and the protection of ecosystems, just to name a few. When his time came to testify to the Scientific and Statistical Committee, Pletnikoff seemed at ease, as if speaking at the pulpit to his followers; except that the ears on which his testimony fell were from different beliefs.
He told that villages along the Bering Sea coast were increasingly concerned about the destruction of the sea beds caused by ocean bottom trawling, which “destroys the habitat of the food that our food depends upon — the salmon, (other) fish, birds, marine mammals, seals, walrus…everything. The Bering Sea Elders Advisory Group also agrees about the changing fishing climate of the Bering Sea, and points to surveys that have continually shown a northward expansion by 45 fish species that are leaving in search of food.
