Bonding on BOF

Many of you have probably watched the miniseries, “Band of Brothers,” which appeared on HBO last season. The show portrayed a group of young GIs fighting in the European theater during World War II. A second miniseries about GIs fighting in the Pacific front of WW II ran last spring. The miniseries were based on actual events and individuals and how they adjusted to the horrors of warfare and the bonding between individuals, which can only happen to those who share a common but stressful experience.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) is currently meeting in Anchorage to address fisheries issues for the Upper Cook Inlet. This meeting happens once every three years and, in my opinion, is one of the two most contentious meetings board members face in their three-year cycle. I was on this board for one cycle and went through one Upper Cook Inlet meeting as a board member. I am now participating as a concerned citizen rather than as one of seven board members charged with making very tough and sometimes painful decisions about how to best protect and use our Cook Inlet fisheries resources.

I served with five of the current board members during my term and knew the two “new” members from their participation in previous BOF meetings. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the five “oldies” and while I haven’t worked with the two new guys as a board member, I have had a chance to observe them at this and one previous meeting. This new board, overall, seems to function smoothly and very efficiently. Members come to meetings prepared; questions are to the point and probe the heart of the issue being discussed. So far, I am impressed with the quality and dedication being exhibited.

The BOF decides issues and allocates fisheries resources worth over one billion dollars annually between the commercial and sportfishing industries each cycle. Once a meeting begins, and oftentimes starting weeks before on the larger more contentious meetings, stakeholders begin lobbying the members to educate and inform them on the nuances of each proposal coming before them. The lobbyists are also trying to sway the members over to their point of view. Some special interests are polite and low key in these efforts. Others can be quite excitable and quickly become high-pressure pitchmen for their cause. You have to go through the lobbying experience to appreciate its pressures.

Board members often stay in the same hotel during meetings, eat in the same restaurants, share drinks in the same bars, and pass colds and other sicknesses back and forth because of the closeness of the conditions. They get to know each other’s families. They generally tend to hang together because of the pressures of this decision making job. Sometimes there is safety in numbers when dealing with the public in a high stress, high dollar value, regulatory environment.

Jim Marcotte, the Executive Director of the BOF for Fish and Game has been providing board support to the BOF for several years. He is intimately involved in every meeting providing administrative oversight of both the meeting and member concerns, advising the chairman on proper procedures, and providing the support, along with his staff, necessary to make the process function. Nobody but board members is closer to the daily grind of a meeting.

Even in this close working capacity to board members, Marcotte readily admits that only board members themselves can truly relate to the stresses and pressures of functioning in this regulatory pressure cooker. Jim and I became good friends during my time on the BOF. He was, at times, a shoulder to cry on, a listener to my complaining, and an advisor to my questions about everything from booking a flight to where a good place to eat was in a meeting location I had never visited before. Even with this level of participation, Marcotte knew the pressures on the members were unique to that position.

While the process of BOF meetings is often referred to as the “fish wars,” I do not mean to imply the experiences are anything close to what the GIs lived in WW II, but the bonding between board members is similar. For that reason, there is even a special bond between past and present board members. Marcotte often said that the importance of a board meeting can be judged by how many former board members show up to either participate or just to check in. This Cook Inlet meeting, to date, has seen six former members either actively participating, just observing, or stopping by to say “Hey.”

When I found out I was not being reappointed, a couple of members offered support. Being “fired” is not always an easy thing to accept. All the members offered encouragement and, at the “thank you for your service” party they held for me last month, I was presented with a high-end, personally engraved fishing reel, purchased by the seven board members, as a token of their appreciation for my service. That blew me away. How can you say thanks for the friendship and support represented by such a gift? If I knew how, I would!

It’s not possible to appreciate the pressures of being a BOF member unless you’ve been one. I’m not sure there are words to describe the experience. The bonding that occurs often lets one member finish another’s sentence and a simple nod or look between two members conveys a world of information. I was privileged to have been a BOF member and I will treasure the friendships I made there for the rest of my life.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.