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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.
Blog archive
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2026
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January
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- Seattle sinking
- Here's your Copper River salmon forecast
- Juneau watch
- Halibut catch limit goes lower, but only a little
- Congressman Begich draws a fisherman challenger
- Two hoisted from boat in distress off Kodiak
- An update on the F/V Arctic Sea grounding
- Commercial group takes aim at sport bag limit
- Juneau watch
- Mary Peltola announces U.S. Senate bid
- How long is too long in Bristol Bay?
- AMCC is changing its name to ... AMCC
- Juneau watch
- Bycatch Reduction and Research Act introduced
- Southeast Chinook run forecasts released
- 9 reportedly rescued from grounded boat in Bering
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January
(16)
11 comments:
It’s about time. Halibut stocks are seriously depressed and all sectors have taken huge cuts in harvest limits EXCEPT unguided sport fishing and the comparatively small subsistence fishery. They have not made one single contribution to conservation.
The most facetious response to this proposal is that this proposal adversely affects "food security" and "we need to feed our families". Those folks conveniently leave out the high costs of their sport fishing.
Go ahead, add up the annual cost of your boat and all it's working equipment, plus insurance, moorage and launch fees, fuel, licenses, repairs and maintenance, sport fishing gear, and everything else. Your "food security" would be much further ahead if you merely buy fish dockside from a commercial fisherman who is licensed to do so.
If they chopped the draggers bycatch there would be no shortage of halibut.
Bycatch reallocation, yup that works. Or make the draggers keep and process everything they catch, but then force them to donate the halibut to the poor 1-fish-daily sport fishermen whose children are starving for halibut.
I think the issue is cutting the sport limit, which comes off the top, simply reallocated those fish back to charter and longliners roughly 20% to charter and 80% longliners..... so there is no sharing in the burden of conservation when you reallocated those fish to another harvester. it is really taking fish from a group with zero representation in the process and awarding to other groups that are well represented. I'm an IFQ share holder and charterboat captain and I clearly see the hypocrisy of the seattle based longliners asking for this for "conservation"; can't all of you?
Your fearless leader Linda b is the reason that isn't in play. She doesn't mind looking the other way on the 2.2 million pounds of wastage in her gulf fleet tho.
The key concept is “sharing” in conservation. Currently, the sole burden falls on charter and IFQ fisheries. Yes, if the number of unguided sport-caught halibut drops, then IFQ and charter allocations bump up a bit, but then all 3 groups have contributed. Nothing hypocritical about that.
I don’t care if Halibut stocks are at Historic Lows. If I can’t catch 500 Halibut a year Sport Fishing I’m going to Sue Someone!
Contributed to what? To the collective suffering? yes but not one bit to conservation
if you want conservation, lower the Trawl by catch cap, eliminate the longline commercial size limit that gives you a fishery where all you kill is breading age females ( for market preference), require barbless circle hooks to the sporties, and then cut the recreational limit and leave those fish in the water...... Then you are actually sharing in the burden of conservation instead of sharing the collective suffering.
"Trees have Standing" as Justice Douglas from Washington State explained in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 741 (1972). which basically gives Halibut standing, the very First issue the court questions.
You don’t understand where the conservation starts and ends. It is set by the IPHC, and it is the combined mortalities from everyone: trawl bycatch, subsistence, unguided sport, charter & longline, discard mortality - everything. Step 2 is purely allocation: i.e. if the total removals are going to drop, who pays for it, and how? Some groups are left out of that sharing, and their catch comes off the top: unguided sport, trawl bycatch up to their limit, and subsistence. Subtract these catches, then charter and longline (including their discard morts) are calculated. Get it now?
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