Comment from Todd Robbins

The economic impacts of making this change would be incredibly far reaching and devastating. Our clients are not willing to pay for a fishing vacation to this area if they are only coming for 1 halibut. This is even more true now that the Kenai king fishery is in jeopardy. Making this change would make a small fishing port like Ninilchik a ghost town. Restaurants, hotels, B & B's, rental car operators, the general store, and many, many more small businesses could not even survive one season without our halibut fishery. I have been a halibut charter captain for 15 years out of Deep Creek, and there are more halibut than ever before. Yes, the average size is smaller, but there is huge biomass and lots of fish. Plus, the sport fishery is a literal drop in the bucket of the overall halibut taken from this fishery. It doesn't make sense in the name of halibut conservation to economically devastate an already stressed area for this small number of fish. If we're really trying to preserve the halibut population, we're never going to get anywhere unless we address the trawler by catch, which is three times what the sport fishery takes out of here, and for no gain whatsoever.