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| AIS snapshot taken at 10:15 AM February 22, 2011. |
Trawling for pollock off Karluk River where king salmon escapement goals continue to fail. We are assured that the pollock dragging has little to do with it. But with the drag fleet so close to the river and so concentrated, we have to wonder.
King salmon bycatch projections and conjurations will be available in ten days or so, here:
This is the same general area where the joint ventures back in the 1980s killed off thousands of sealions, mostly females and junveniles. Too much money interferred with controls, like now with king salmon.
Keep yer flippers wet.
3 comments:
NOAA Technical Report 104, Incidental Catch of Marine Mammals by Foreign and Joint Venture Trawl Vessels in the US EEZ of the North Pacific, 1973-88 states:
"the greatest incidental mortality levels ACTUALLY OBSERVED and REPORTED by US fishery observers [which were stationed aboard the motherships] during 73-88 occurred in 1982 in Shelikof Strait when it was NOT UNCOMMON for 50 or more dead sea lions to be found in a single haul"
"A total estimate of 6,543 northern sea lions were incidentally caught and died in trawls of both the foreign and JV fisheries throughout Alaska during 1978-88" "We estimated that an ADDITIONAL total of 14,830 northern sea lions died incidentally in trawl fishing in alaska during 1966-77, based on average observed incidental catch rates during 1973-77"
The best part is pillar of the community and NPFMC member for life, Al Burch, claimed he never caught a seal lion in a trawl despite having two boats participating in the Shelikof JV's.
PBS's oft repeated sea lion special also makes no mention of incidental catch or shootings and have scrubbed comments to this point from their website.
What makes the news about SSL's decline? Biostitutes talking about how they are starving on a pollock diet or maybe killer whale predation???
Incidental catch? Shootings?
The trawl industry reps just have to change a few lines in their playbook and they can pass the buck on chinook salmon just like they did with sea lions.
hey that is way cool seeing were the AIS has the vessels. How do you find that information. Is there a website I can go to to observe the boats on AIS?
Bill
AIS is available for some vessels. www.mxak.org
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