Sunday, September 8, 2013

Speaking of bycatch...

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has posted this flier touting its efforts to reduce bycatch of halibut, crab and Chinook salmon in the federal fisheries.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quality propaganda provided with hard currency. Covering their asses while catering to the trawl industry and the processors. Bycatch is far too high to sustain the Gulf.

Anonymous said...

Gulf bycatch numbers are worse than no numbers at all. Trawlers game the system and fish totally different when unobserved.

The "new" observer program results in less observer coverage on trawlers.

No scientist with a sense of shame will even cite NMFS bycatch numbers.

Anonymous said...

Always patting themselves on the back. They closed millions of square miles to trawling that had no catch history whatsoever. They should've added all ponds and puddles to that list. No difference. Now this? Yea riiiight. Bycatch will always go down every year. Its a no brainer. They are killing the ecosystem that support all sea life. Less fish in the water = less fish to bycatch or catch at all.

Anonymous said...

I notice they had a picture of a nice big chum in their release about Chinook. If they can't correctly identify the salmon in a press release about by-catch it makes you wonder about the credibility of salmon identification on the vessels.

EWJ

Anonymous said...

Notice the halibut by catch in the table has remained stable while the Ebio is in the crapper. That means the GOA trawlers are killing 65% more of the available biomass, IF they were under full observer coverage but since they are under only 13% coverage.....The rest of the 87% are reporting their by catch on the honor system..They are destroying the halibut resource and laughing all the way to the bank......Sound work from the NPFMC...." The envy of all the other regional councils......

Anonymous said...

BINGO! sept 9 7:57

Years ago there were Shelikof JV cod ends with over 100 dead steller sea lions (this is confirmed by NMFS observers on the motherships)

Now we don't have that problem anymore??? Wonder why???

How many more years of deep water flats tows with 10,000 to 20,000 lbs of ping pong paddle halibut pewed overboard before halibut bycatch ceases to be a problem?

Anonymous said...

7:08 has a BINGO himself! All these are very reasonable comments actually. Do you see the article above where American Seafoods is barely solvent? Even after all the Millions of metric tons?? The industry has turned into a forest fire, out of control. NPFMC members, some of who's boats are directly responsible, are nothing more than spin doctors, sent to bumper car us off the track making way for a locomotive of destruction.
Trawling is the most disgraceful thing humans have ever done.
KC