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Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
About me
- Deckboss
- I'm a journalist covering Alaska's commercial fishing industry. My real name is Wesley Loy. Reach me at wloy61@gmail.com.
Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
8 comments:
There won't be a halibut fishery if something drastic doesn't change, but it's unlikely anything will change. There are too many conflicting interests.
The power trawl contingent does not want a large halibut biomass because of problematic bycatch. They will object to any agenda that will help a halibut recovery. IFQ fishermen are in debt and can't afford a big fishery reduction. Management doesn't want to admit their mistakes — they will let halibut collapse, and blame environmental conditions.
That's not true. I am a halibut IFQ holder and have been since it started. I also trawl for cod and pollock. Fish for salmon also. I have a lot of friends that pretty much do the same. There's no way in hell that we want to go out and catch halibut in our trawls or any other bycatch for that matter. If trawlers that fish for cod fish at the right time there's pretty much no bycatch. The observer program can prove that. We have in the past and continue to try to fish right to avoid bycatch. One of the biggest issues is there always seems to be a couple bad apples in the bunch. I'm referring to WGOA fishing but even the Bering Sea trawlers have agreed to bycatch avoidance plans. There's definitely more than one culprit that is causing halibut decline and I think we all realize that. So please quit pointing at trawlers as the sole problem.
Most fisheries populations are going to drastically change in the coming decades as the ocean continues to change. Putting hard biomass thresholds on halibut will probably just result in a closure of the directed fishery unless ocean conditions change. It doesn't matter what the halibut population was 20 or 30 years ago — the management strategy is set up to allow a fishery at whatever level the ecosystem supports today. If we want to continue to have wild fisheries we must not manage based on historic population sizes.
So, the answer is we just continue to fish it down to nothing? If the price of halibut wasn't so high the fishery would be unprofitable, and in some areas like the Bering Sea and Aleutians it is already unprofitable. We've been on a downward spiral for more than a decade. Running more gear, using more bait, all the latest technology, but still catching less fish. We have a management problem not a "changing ocean conditions problem." Management mistakes were made and now it's time to attempt to correct them and save this fishery for the next generation. We've already blown it for the second-generation guys that are so upside down in quota loans they'll never recover at this point, so let's try and do something for the next generation. It's OK to admit that the halibut fishery hasn't been managed correctly since the implementation of IFQs. It was great for the market/quality and great for those that benefitted tremendously, but looking back it's been horrible for the resource. We are at ALL TIME historic lows for the halibut stock, folks — the alarm bells have been ringing for over three years now.
Shorten the length of the IFQ season by at least half to start with. See if that helps.
People that want to point out one variable or action that caused the downward fall of halibut is plain silly.
There are plenty of issues across the board. Working on solutions rather than finger-pointing, a strong stock can be built again. Sorry not sorry that fisheries are complex and complicated, and all stakeholders need to put aside differences for whole reason we are at the table for best utilization of the fish.
The alarm bells have been ringing on Cook Inlet kings for 30 years. No big deal, just wipe 'em off the map and eliminate the fishery, just like Cook Inlet set, with no more sets.
If Buck wants to stop fishing, that's fine. The young guys who bought in and are in debt sure can't. How about we make it so all original issue quota can't fish anymore? They already got 30 years of free IFQ.
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