An anxious moment for Bering Sea pollock trawlers

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting for a week starting Thursday in Anchorage, and the main item on the agenda is possible action to crack down on chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery.

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 met, 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.

Look out for the ladder cops

A fishing vessel owner tells Deckboss he was surprised a few days ago when a U.S. Coast Guard boarding team issued his skipper a ticket for lack of a pilot ladder onboard.

The owner shared a copy of the ticket with us.

The ladder regulation hadn't been enforced previously — boarding teams never asked for a ladder during numerous boardings, he said, and no one ever asked to see one during dockside exams.

The boat involved in the Jan. 21 boarding was a 58-footer fishing cod in the Bering Sea out of False Pass. The boarding team was from the Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley.

The boarding team told the skipper they were "starting now" to enforce the ladder requirement, the fishing vessel owner said.

A pilot ladder is a flexible ladder lowered over the side of a vessel to aid people coming aboard.

Such ladders are helpful, as it's always perilous to climb from boat to boat.

This recent enforcement action begs the question: Are we seeing a crackdown on the pilot ladder requirement?

The vessel owner noted that pilot ladders are bulky, and expensive.

Scott Wilwert, the Coast Guard's fishing vessel safety program manager for Alaska, told us he was not aware of any big enforcement push on pilot ladders.

But fishermen should be aware that if their vessel has more than 4 feet of freeboard, federal regulations require a boarding ladder to assist law enforcement personnel and fishery observers, Wilwert said.

Freeboard can change considerably depending on whether the fishing vessel is tanked down, he noted.

The False Pass vessel had a freeboard of 5 feet, 6 inches, the ticket said.

Seattle sinking

A venerable fishing vessel, the Quaker Maid, sadly has sunk at Fishermen's Terminal in Seattle. We don't have any details on how this happened, nor do we know much about the vessel's history. The 72-foot wood boat, a Hanson make, was built in 1935, according to the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission database. The boat was registered for many years with CFEC as a fish tender, with 2020 being the last year. Her homeport is listed as Excursion Inlet, and the owner is Quaker Maid Fisheries, of Lynnwood, Wash. Note the "for sale" sign on the wheelhouse. Jeff Pond photo

Here's your Copper River salmon forecast

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game predicts an uninspiring commercial harvest this year of 728,000 sockeye.

Juneau watch

The House Special Committee on Fisheries has introduced House Joint Resolution 29 supporting continued prohibition of Russian seafood imports.

Halibut catch limit goes lower, but only a little

The International Pacific Halibut Commission, meeting this week in Bellevue, Washington, set this year's coastwide catch limit at 29.33 million pounds.

That's a decrease of 1.3 percent from last year, says this IPHC press release.

Notably, the entire cut comes in Canada, Area 2B.

The commission set a commercial fishing season of 6 a.m. local time March 26 to 11:59 p.m. Dec. 7.

Congressman Begich draws a fisherman challenger

Independent Bill Hill, a Bristol Bay salmon driftnetter and former teacher, says he'll run against U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska.

Here's his announcement, and here's his bio.