Trawlers are worried over the possibility the council might recommend limits, or caps, on the number of chum the fleet could take each season. Once reached, such caps could result in closure of the fishery, leaving valuable pollock quota stranded in the water.
The council is under enormous pressure from Western Alaska villagers, environmental groups and others to impose caps on the trawl fleet, which has been broadly blamed for poor chum returns and subsistence fishing restrictions.
"The salmon situation in our communities has become an existential crisis," the Bethel-based Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission said in a letter to the council.
The pollock industry is adamantly opposed to caps, arguing they wouldn't do much to help improve Western Alaska chum runs. For one thing, they argue, many of the chum caught as bycatch in the pollock trawl fishery actually come from Japanese and Russian hatcheries, not Alaska rivers.
Trawl interests urge the council to select a different option, one that would build upon steps the fleet already has begun to avoid chum — particularly Western Alaska chums. These steps include fleet communication, avoidance of chum "hot spots," genetic identification of chum to determine their origin, and the use of salmon excluders in nets.
"It is obvious that the pollock fishery's bycatch is not driving Western Alaska chum declines," United Catcher Boats, a Seattle-based fleet organization, said in a letter to the council. UCB noted complex factors such as changing ocean conditions.
The chum bycatch issue is expected to draw a ton of public comment at the meeting. Council members likely won't have an easy time deciding this one.
