When you look at the data, the pollock trawl fishery is among the cleanest damn fisheries in the state. Should the country sacrifice millions of tons of renewable, high-quality protein to save the comparatively small number of kings taken as bycatch in that fishery? That's the question that needs to be asked.
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What's interesting is that when we started protecting sea lions the king salmon started diminishing!
Alaskans always blame everybody else for their problems. When you run a road to any salmon fishery it's doomed, and now we have airplanes and jet boats to make sure of it. Build some more remote lodges and advertise on all those cruise ships. At least before Magnuson in 1976, those foreign trawlers had to stay outside the 12-mile line. Now they get to scoop 'em up close. The Russian Red Scare was quite popular trawling off Kodiak in the '60s and '70s. Now the commissioner's blaming Russia again, after flying out to that sport lodge to catch a few more kings.
Plenty of blame to go around and really don't we all know it? By catch, Sporties targeting huge salmon while they are trapped in a river spawning. seiners fishing the ocean capes, Subsistence over harvest, logging, set nets...... You can blame one group but really we all ought to look in the mirror. And really so should the Commissioner of Fish and Game and KRSA who both, for the last thirty years has had a huge role in making these rules. Plenty of shame that they let the great Kenai River has been reduced to a hatchery sockeye river from its amazing past....... Shame on all of us!
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Spock
Maybe all of us are harvesting too many fish. Lower TACs and bag limits until things turn around.
Maybe it's not just the harvesting — and all the restrictions on harvesting in the world won't help some rivers.
It's not all about salmon, it's also about those "midwater" guys towing on the bottom killing crab, halibut and destroying habitat. Otterboards hit the bottom dont get lifted up in a timely fashion pay fine. i'm guessing the tech exists.
What a dumb comment. The midwater fleet kills 5% the halibut that the longline fleet kills and probably a similar number of crab relative to the pot fleets. Pelagic otter boards collapse when they hit the bottom. You can't catch fish like that. Get bent.
The question posed by Medred has been asked, and overwhelmingly the answer from Alaskans is YES.
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