Speaking of pollock, the Bering Sea pollock fishery opens at noon Sunday with a customarily enormous quota of more than 1.2 million metric tons.
The season is divided into two parts, the A season and the B season.
The A season runs from Jan. 20 to June 10 and is the most important for the industry. That's because pollock are fat with lucrative roe during the winter.
The B season runs from June 10 to Nov. 1.
Despite the vast quantity of fish to be harvested, the pollock fleet is relatively small.
A total of 132 vessels — 108 catcher boats, 21 factory trawlers and three motherships — hold federal permits under the American Fisheries Act.
Of course, some of these vessels are among the largest and most powerful in America, if not the world.
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24 comments:
may the gods protect the salmon and halibut.
All the huge salmon and halibut have been wiped off the face of the earth.
Humans have to step in now in order for them to have a chance to grow to the size they were once able to grow into.
The god here is that which drove King Midas into the greedy man he became.
A bible-thumping freak-of-nature observer is on the loose...
Does anyone else out there think that removing a BILLION pounds of pollock each year could in general be messing with the complex ocean web of life in profound ways that we just don't have a clue about? Halibut size & numbers? King Salmon numbers? I'm not talking about bycatch here. What affect does removing this biomass have on the entire system?
It gives you millions of pounds of fish sticks and Fillet of Fish sandwiches at McDonalds.
Oh yeah, I forgot the roe for the Asian market. Other than that, not much good at all.
mmmm-fishstix
The poorest owners of the CDQs in Western Alaska can't afford to buy packaged pollock fish sticks. Instead they load their shopping baskets with Top Ramen. Here these people own gargantuan investments in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. Or should I say, CDQ Managers own the lucrative pollock fishery investments because the handful are not held accountable to the stakeholders.
The pollock B season just ended a month and a half ago. Does anyone know how the season went in terms of poundage caught yet?
Blogger 1/19 @ 12:39 PM has pointed out some very good questions about this gigantic harvest of pollock - YES, removing that amount of biomass will indeed mess with "the complex ocean web of life..".
It's obvious that killing off salmon and halibut and other sea creatures as Bycatch is drastically effecting a hundreds year old culture and tradition of living off the salmon for Western Alaska's aboriginal people.
To continue on with this destructive fishery leads me to believe that the primary fishers, those who own and operate the "132" vessels really don't give a damn about Alaska's poorest people on the coast of Western Alaska who's livelihoods have changed as a result of pollock fishery Bycatch in the past 35-40 years.
If the US continues to allow the pollock fishery this high harvest allocation, we'll see the extinction of Alaska's King Salmon in a mere lifetime. They have been showing the stress through documented declines in as long as the American vessels have been involved. It's not an innocent coincidence as it's been made out to be.
It is important that we continue to protest for reductions in the trawl fleet fishery to the powers that be. Not sure why they call it the "pollock fishery" with the amount of other species they kill. Seems like it should be called "rape the ocean fishery" or something like that.
How about for every year that Subsistence Fishermen in Western Alaska can't fish for King Salmon, the pollock fishery gets shut down for a least six to give the salmon a chance to rebound.
This is a situation where the poorest people in Alaska gets restricted and a handful of rich gets priviledges.
OR, the pollock provides food for thousands, and the villages don't.
It doesn't matter what the villages provide to the economy of the United States of America.
What matters is that their rights to live "with liberty and justice" is being violated by a handful of men in control of a fishery that is destroying their culture, tradition and livelihood. That should mean something in our country!
There are hundreds employed on the trawlers, and in their offices. Their families are fed and clothed by the fish.
But, no one wants to see the king salmon stocks decimated, so there does needs to be a balance.
A balance.
There may be hundreds employed by the draggers
now, but there could be thousands employed to
catch the same fish without the collateral damage
to salmon and halibut. The idea that we "need" to
balance the damage to our resources and
communities against the short term profits of the
processors and their bribe taking buddies, is
bullshit.
Thousands employed to catch the same fish without collateral damage? That sounds like a plan worth supporting. How would we catch pollock without trawling?
Where there is a will, there is a way. If an
experimental pollock allocation can be established
for a clean, alternative gear type, then inventive
fisherman will find a way to make the catch. Look
at the cod fishery. Pot and jig allocations have
increased along with quality and market value.
The pot/jig fleet was given an opportunity to
prove themselves, and now there are new boats
being built and entering the fishery every year.
Even cod draggers are trying to bleed their fish
now because of better prices for quality
product, prices that are established by potters and long liners.
The GOA & BS/AI is supplying markets that went
begging because draggers decimated Atlantic
stocks. Is that anything we want to repeat?
Let's re-examine the pollock fishery before the
stocks collapse, because if the draggers are
allowed to fish more and more for less and less,
then "regulators talking sustainability" will
finally be seen for the joke it is, but the kings
and halibut will be gone. Forever
And 2012's C season?
"The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they're in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked." –President Barack Obama, 2011 State of the Union.
Scientists don't blame trawling. Maybe if all fisheries started taking responsibility our fish stocks might start to improve. Read the science not the hype.
what "scientist" do you cite?
cite your source please
NMFS scientists of course. See comments under the PWS Pollack post.
No science at that posting, just an unsubstantiated hypothesis by a government mouthpiece - the true definition of "hype"
meanwhile in the back office, estimates are made based on what the observer "saw" from their laptop on the galley table
www.fakr.noaa.gov/sustainablefisheries/inseason/goasalmonmort.pdf
The secret is out, the Pollock Trawl Fishery is destructive. It took about 5 years for the word to spread. It'll take another 5 years to place more severe restrictions on the fishery, but by that time the Western Alaska culture and tradition of living off the salmon will also be totally destroyed. The crash started 30 years ago and it's been downhill ever since.
A billion dollar industry will work hard to keep it that way. Manipulating the ignorant and illiterate is pushing the King Salmon right off the face of the earth and the dumbies continue to throw pollock promises out to the poor.
Pouring pollock promises out to the poor. Pounding pollock promises into the poor. Pissing pollock promises onto the poor. In the end, the poor will be even poorer without the salmon.
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