The scientific staff of the International Pacific Halibut Commission today recommended catch limits for the 2011 season, and the numbers are seriously ugly.
Coastwide, the staff is recommending a 19 percent cut to 41.02 million pounds.
For Southcentral Alaska (Area 3A), the staff is calling for a 28 percent cut to 14.36 million pounds.
For Southeast Alaska (Area 2C), the staff is recommending a fearsome 47 percent cut to 2.33 million pounds.
Ouch.
The commission meets in January in Victoria, British Columbia, to consider the recommendations.
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16 comments:
I listened in at the meeting. Once again, everyone avoided the 800 lb. Gorilla in the room. Trawl bycatch.
These cuts are a serious bummer, but probably the right move. Are they ever going to address that darn gorilla? Hard to imagine...
These cuts are a VERY serious matter. Every other user group except for the trawl industry is at the table to work with halibut managers. When will be the time to reduce the allowable trawl by-catch???
Is there a link to these numbers? IPHC is difficult to navigate.
"targeting large fish, nah that doesn't hurt a thing. Besides the canary pays us more for larger halibut." Short sighted didn't take that long to catch up with the fleet. + 800 pound gorilla even - charter boat growth = dumb asses
catching the quota 3 times to fill it becouse of whale predation doesn't help-
Whale predation doesnt really effect the halibut fishery. Black cod and turbot yes, but you cant apply whale predation that Black cod fisherman get to Halibut guys.
if you could provide a link to these numbers that would be great. couldn't find them on the IPHC website. was interested to hear what the results showed for the Area 4 quotas
Unbelievable. And I thought the TAC was going to level out.
http://www.iphc.washington.edu/documents/2010IM_presentations/im2010catlimv7.pdf
Quit the bitchin and book all of your tickets to attend and testify at the DEC. council meetings in Anchorage. This meeting we will see Kodiak trawl interests press the council to increase halibut PSC so they may fully utilize these flat fish TACs'. Think it is B.S. think again as the play has been in motion for some time now. Last year at one of our Kodiak Fisheries B.S. meetings Julie and trawl dudes mentioned that they(trawl) need this extra PSC. This at the expense of the halibut stocks and all users.
News flash....pg. 127 of halibut PSC discussion paper reads, and I quote, "the value of halibut as bycatch exceeds the value of halibut in the directed target fishery for groundfish fisheries targeting groundfish(pollock, pacific cod, rockfish, and sablefish. Still think the play is not on to ream us up the keester? They will take additional halibut if we do not act at this council meeting.
Well according to NMFS catch reports the Kodiak Trawlers came up short 500 tons on halibut, I dont think they are going to argue for more, just against getting cut.
Why penalize the fleet when they are doing pretty good to stay under and way under the cap. If they were hitting the cap then maybe I think it would be worthwhile penalizing them, but being good means a deduction. That is 500 mt of halibut left in the water.
500 MT of halibut by-catch left in the waster? Reality is that we don't have any clear idea what the Gulf draggers are catching for halibut because the observer program is so lacking. Actually harvests could easily be far larger than reported numbers. Directed commercial fishery and the sport fishery will pay the price
500 ton POSTER.....Read the latest catch report NOAA site and you will see that remaining halibut for trawl is 416 ton, bear in mind these figures reflect extrapulated observer data up to 1/10/2010. Report for the year is incomplete and I am convinced that numbers will be just as dirty for your trawler. Maybe you guys can exert pressure on bycatch bean counters and dumb down the numbers like you did by making 8000 chinook disappear from the chinook bycatch report for your fall pollock season.
Above comment should read observer data up to 10/1/2010......OOPS
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