The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting in Kodiak this week, and the big item on the agenda is halibut bycatch.
With halibut biomass declining in the North Pacific, the council is under considerable pressure to do something to curb waste of the premium fish.
Thus, it would appear inevitable that Gulf of Alaska commercial fleets are going to have to swallow some painful measures to reduce the bycatch, or incidental take, of halibut while pursuing other species such as pollock and cod.
As a "prohibited species," halibut caught incidentally must be thrown overboard, whether alive or dead.
As it stands, the Gulf trawl fleet has an annual limit of 2,000 metric tons of halibut bycatch, while the longline fleet has a 300-ton limit.
The council is expected to consider cutting these limits by 5 to 15 percent.
As you might imagine, a groundswell of voices is urging the council to take the most stringent action against the industry.
Here is one example. And another.
One state legislator is even encouraging people to call the governor to put heat on council members.
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13 comments:
Good luck calling "the governor". He'll just direct you to his ADF&G Commissioner, who by the way sits on the NPFMC. You'll be playing phone tag for several days.
Call anyway and leave your comment...and email also. This is how you put pressure on the Gov to get Cora and the rest of the AK votes to do the right thing and get the max 15% reduction. It sucks but this is how politics work....dig deep and make the call and email the Gov...it takes just a short amount of time and effort and HOPEFULLY he will get the message that Alaskans are tired of watching a small group of boats kill off our resource
untill we have 100 percent observer coverage on all trawl and drag and longline vessels we will not have an accurate account of the real halibut bycatch!dropping 15 percent is a start but we should call for 100 percent observer coverage also!
Gotta be a better way than dumping so much. They shoud be processing and turning over the product to cold storage, auctioned for IFQ shareholders. Something needs to be done to solve this waste.
Auctioned for IFQ shareholders? Hey, what a great idea! That'll really slow down bycatch! You are a frikin, genius!
15% reduction will still allow the draggers to waste 3,400,000 pounds of DOCUMENTED halibut. god only what actual tonnage is. :(
Let's see ,the Gov. Supports big oil, foreign mining companies and non resident hunting and fishing rights over Alaskans.I bet Alaskans don't get much help from the Gov. Slowing down the Seattle trawl fleet.
If the council really wants to know how valid the observer data is, all they have to look at fish tickets with observer coverage, and without observer coverage. Then at least we will know if the observer data is worth anything.
The data concerning volume of fish caught with an observer on board is available on the NPFMC website...at least for a few years. It's pretty rediculous for Arrowtooth and shallow water flatfish...less than 20% of volume is observed in all those catagorys in the gulf.
I don't know about this council. They don't care jack squat about the King Salmon bycatch and they are dragging their feet on the Chum Salmon bycatch so I'm holding my breath on this Halibut bycatch.
Ifq's are not working. The halibut biomass continues to go down. The ifq permit holders continue to cheat across the lines without severe consequences. Arne Fuglvog is proof, and what ever happened the this Fred Hankins trial.
Seems everyone is blaming halibut on the dragers. IFQ's
Do not work !
^^IFQs aren't the reason the scientists overestimated the biomass. They didn't compel anyone to cheat. We'd still have inefficiency and overcapitalization if it were still a derby fishery... get real!
I'm not placing blame on anyone's shoulders squarely but the directed fishery has taken drastic cuts and all users of the resource need to reduce their harvest accordingly.
It seems to me that the "IFQ's" works directly against Alaska's Constitution, Article VIII, which provides for "the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources...for the maximum benefit of it's people.."
The phrase "it's people.." doesn't mean Individuals receiving the most bennies. If the commercial fishery managed by the Federal Government is complicating and interfering with a state's mission, then it's the state's obligation to defend the rights of "it's people..". Those "people" of Alaska are losing out on the basic right to subsist off of Alaska's Renewable Resources because of the Bycatch Plague of the off shore fisheries, IFQ's and all.
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