Halibut dinner for orcas?

A four-page paper posted on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council website looks at the practice of halibut deck sorting on certain trawl vessels operating off Alaska.

The idea with deck sorting is to quickly collect halibut hauled aboard as bycatch and return them to the sea, hopefully to swim away alive and uninjured.

There's concern, however, that these halibut don't swim away, but instead are chomped by feeding orcas hanging around the vessel.

With the paper, regulators are looking to better account for marine mammal feeding on halibut discards.

Here's a slideshow on how halibut deck sorting works.