NOAA Fisheries News Releases
NEWS RELEASE
December 13, 2006
Sheela McLean
(907) 586-7032
Phil Smith retiring from NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region
Phil Smith, who helped pioneer and still leads the Restricted Access Management Program of NOAA Fisheries' Alaska Region, is retiring December 22, 2006.
Smith was hired in 1993 to lead implementation of Alaska's new halibut and sablefish IFQ (individual fishing quota) program. He remained to head the division, responsible for the details of getting the region’s limited access programs onto the water and keeping them there. The work has included responsibility for eligibility determinations, issuance, transfer, and renewal of licenses and permits, and provided overall management to limited access programs, including cost recovery.
Phil Smith, Restricted Access Management Division Director for NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region
"Phil Smith has served this agency, fishermen, the general public and the ocean resources well. He's been an outstanding communicator on fisheries topics. We're grateful for his work and sorry to see him go," said Doug Mecum, Acting Regional Administrator for the Alaska Region of NOAA Fisheries. "On the other hand, we wish him a great retirement and are glad that he will remain in the community."
Reflecting on the highlights of his career with NOAA Fisheries, Smith said: "I have really enjoyed working with some very committed, capable and skilled professionals who give credit to the idea of public service. I have also enjoyed working with industry. People do get grumpy sometimes, but overall the industry has maintained a remarkable amount of good will during a time of truly significant changes in management strategies."
He said he also appreciated the “tantalizing challenge” of working on limited access systems that turned out to be cutting edge nationally.
"It's been quite a ride," he said of the thirteen years in his current position. Before joining NOAA Fisheries, he served as a State of Alaska Limited Entry Commissioner for eight years and as Executive Director of the Rural Alaska Community Action Program.
Smith arrived in Alaska during World War II when he was eight months old. He lived with his parents in a number of small Alaskan communities, while they aided in the 'Lend-Lease' effort to move materials and airplanes through Canada and Alaska to the Russian front. Until he was ten years old, he lived in Northway, Summit, King Salmon and Annette Island. When the family moved to Cordova, they settled down, and Smith graduated from high school in Cordova. He said he distinctly remembers the declaration of Alaska's statehood, as he was playing saxophone in the Cordova High School Band, which marched to the town park to play near the community bonfire in honor of statehood.
Smith served in the U.S. Army and studied at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Washington, and Golden Gate University, where he took a Bachelor of Arts Degree in political science. He has also studied at the National Judicial College of the University of Nevada.
Smith's first career move was in the fisheries. When he was eight years old in the community of King Salmon, he and his elder brother would go from house to house in the neighborhood, taking orders from Catholic households for fish to eat on Fridays. Then he and his brother would chop a hole in the ice of the Naknek River and jig for smelt. They would lay the smelt--just as many as 'ordered' by his own family and others in the community--on the ice until hard frozen and then deliver the fish.
"It was an early effort to engage in niche marketing. I think we each made enough to buy about two candy bars per week," he explained, laughing. "It wasn't a limited entry fishery so anyone could do it."
Smith says he has no intention of leaving Alaska with retirement, but plans to remain in Juneau with his wife Deborah in their pleasant home, and maybe--just maybe--write, photograph, and sleep in. He said he plans to increase his volunteer efforts at KTOO Public Radio where he is a new board member, and with Veterans for Peace. He may become a consultant on fisheries topics, he said.
NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) is dedicated to protecting and preserving our nation’s living marine resources through scientific research, management, enforcement, and the conservation of marine mammals and other protected marine species and their habitat. To learn more about NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, please visit our websites at www.fakr.noaa.gov or at www.afsc.noaa.gov
In 2007 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, celebrates 200 years of science and service to the nation. From the establishment of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson to the formation of the Weather Bureau and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the 1870s, much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA.