CHARTER SERVICES FACE BIG LOSSES IN WAKE OF SPILL

by LEW FREEDMAN
Daily News Sports Editor

ANCHORAGE- Usually, when the phone rings at Prince William Sound Charters this time of year it is a fisherman or hunter from Washington, New York or Ohio to make a reservation. They want to chase pink or silver salmon or hunt for deer.

Not this year.

These days when the phone rings at his Anchorage business, Will Eason cringes. The phone calls are from Washington, New York or Ohio, but the people are calling to say they're not coming.

"We're basically shut down," said Eason Tuesday. "I've lost all my charters. This is real depressing. We're wiped out."

From the middle of March to the middle of May Eason gets 80 percent of his summer bookings. Since the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef about 25 miles from Valdez March 24 and spilled more than 10 million gallons of oil out of its ruptured hull into Prince William Sound, Eason hasn't had a single reservation. And 80 percent of the bookings he had were canceled. Right now he has seven days of business left for the two boats he will sail out of Whittier this season.

"I've had over 20 days of cancellations," said Eason.

And it's not just Eason's charter company. Jack Gilman of Choice Marine Charters in Anchorage also sails out of Whittier. He also has customers calling from all over the country.

"I've got a lot of very excited tourists," said Gilman. "They're very apprehensive."

Apprehensive about going on a fishing trip to catch poisoned salmon. Apprehensive that they've signed up for a sightseeing trip to see an oilstained glacier. Apprehensive that the deer they plan to hunt on Green, Knight and Eleanor Islands will already be dead by the time they get there.

Last weekend Gilman tried to book summer fishing and fall hunting trips at the Great Alaskan Sportsman Show. In past years he's signed up 25 percent of his customers there, a major chunk of his instate trade. This year zilch. Not one trip was booked during the threeday show.

"It looks grim," said Gilman.

Grim is the word. It's pretty tough to sell scenic tours of an oil spill. Come see our dead birds. Come see our dead otters. Come catch our black, gooey fish.

Can you blame people? I don't.

Every day on TV news this is what the nation sees: footage of birds stained black by the oil; footage of otters with rigor mortis lying on fouled beaches. One look at the Cable News Network film of a bird so desperate to cleanse itself of oil that it dug a hole in its chest with its own beak is enough to make you sneer at Exxon apologies.

Maybe there is enough anger out there now to turn people who used to call environmentalists "tree huggers" into environmentalists themselves. Something like the despoiliation of Prince William Sound should be dramatic enough to remind all Alaskans of what they have and what they stand to lose.

Am I mad? You bet. I've been ticked off for two weeks and something new happens every day to make me even angrier. You know what truly frosts me? Reading that Exxon made a profit of $5.3 billion last year, and that the spill hasn't had the slightest impact on the company's stock. That and hearing that Exxon is still moving tankers with oil through the Sound. Fresh oil rolling through the pipeline. More profits. Maybe we should shut the sucker down and punish Exxon. Maybe that will ensure full attention on the cleanup.

One way or another Alaskans continue to feel the pain of this country's largestever oil spill, continue to feel frustration and anger as the oil sweeps onto the beaches of island after island in the Sound and threatens Resurrection Bay off of Seward, too.

Anyone who ever believed an oil company statement that oil would never damage Alaska probably feels pretty stupid now. But even Alaskans who figured there would be a problem never imagined there would be one of this scope. Who would have predicted an oil spill so large and spread so wide by churning tides that it would equal the size of Rhode Island?

And people never imagined that if a spill occurred that the offending oil company would make little effort for two days to clean it up.

"If they spill it, they clean it up now, not in 20 days," said Brandon Rider of Anchor Point.

Rider is a fisherman. Just one of the many hurt by the spill. He sport fishes for kings on the Anchor River and he fishes commercially for herring in Prince William Sound. Not this year, though. The state Department of Fish and Game announced Monday that there will be no herring harvest in the Sound this year. The risk of fish poisoned by the oil is too great to permit it.

Rider said his family's boats are out $200,000.

"I'd rather have it in the atmosphere than the water," said Rider. "That water is Alaska's life. Four years from now the sport fishing will be gone. It's gonna kill it all."

There is some fear that will be so. Right now the Armin Koernig Hatchery at Sawmill Bay is endangered. There are 120 million salmon fry future salmon runs there and the oil washing over the boom barriers is closing in on them.

Wherever I have gone in recent days, people talk about oil in Prince William Sound. At the bookstore. At the grocery store. Day after day they are disgusted by what they've seen, horrified by the latest news they've heard. It hits them hard, hurts them in the belly, offends them that their Alaska is being ruined.

"I've talked to a lot of people who say they're depressed," said Jeff Macktaz, an Anchorage entertainment producer.

Count Macktaz as one of them. He was planning a summer vacation on a friend's shrimp boat in the Sound. Not any more.

"It makes me sick," he said of the spill.

People mourn for different reasons. Yes, they mourn things as small as lost vacations and as large as lost incomes, but they mourn on a different level, too. Some can't quite express their feelings. Others express them emotionally and eloquently.

"It's kind of like having a death in the family," said Eason. "It was one of the most beautiful places on earth."

Was. Perhaps some year it will be again.

But not this year.

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