The International Pacific Halibut Commission, meeting in Anchorage, today announced a coastwide catch limit of 35.3 million pounds, a 4.6 percent decline from last year.
The IPHC recommended a fishing season beginning at 6 a.m. local time March 15 to midnight Dec. 7 for all directed commercial Pacific halibut fisheries in Canada and the United States.
Here's a press release with catch limits by regulatory area. For comparison, here's last year's press release.
2 comments:
Halibut biomass is at a 30-year low, catch rates poor, and big fish have aged out of the population. Fishermen are very cautious.
And the trawlers keep catching them and killing them, catching and killing them, and every year as they drive the biomass lower and lower into commercial if not actual extinction they point out that their bycatch numbers are improving! When tha halibut are gone of course they will claim "no bycatch at all! Mission accomplished!" while NMFS heralds their great achievement.
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