A number of loans programs have been created in the state of Alaska following limited entry when it was clear that rural and low-income fishermen in particular were disadvantaged in a system that uses the free market to allocate the right to a public resource.
Over time, it was clear that those programs primarily benefited urban-based fishermen. A number of factors contributed to that: geographic factors, cultural and language barriers, access to credit or credit history and higher borrowing costs for rural fishermen. New programs address the limits of older programs but there is a suite of loans programs.
There are also regional programs designed to benefit specific regions. One in particular is an innovative solution, and it's attached to our community development quota, CDQ, program. In the case of Bristol Bay, the CDQ group is using revenues from the royalties of the federal fisheries to finance a loan program to support rural fishermen in the region. To date, it's brought back more than 50 salmon permits to the region. With that loan program, you have to be denied a loan from a traditional banking institution to qualify. It's meant to create greater parity and access to financing. It has been well documented in the case of Alaska that our rural fishermen are primarily the ones disadvantaged in these types of situations.
Many of those loan programs I cite in my speaking notes, and you can read about them in the “Turning the Tide” report.