Draggers only managed to get an additional 2,500 added to the cap, but the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council vote for 25,000 is still better than the 30,000 bycatch king salmon kill the draggers wanted.
The State of Alaska showed it was concerned with king salmon trawl bycatch, as ADFG Commissioner Cora Campbell made the motion for the Council's preferred alternative of 22,500 kings for the bycatch cap, backed by Duncan Fields, and Sam Cotten. This was amended to 25,000 kings when Dan Hull, Ed Dersham, and Jim Balsiger failed to stand for Alaska and sided with the draggers and their processor allies. The other Council members...well, you know.
From the Bristol Bay Times: First-ever king cap placed on Gulf of Alaska pollock fishery
Interestingly, the dragger testimony, in a thinly veiled argument for the Council to move toward 'rationalization' of the Gulf of Alaska groundfish, complained that they couldn't do better in controlling bycatch because of rogue captains who would not comply with conservation efforts. So perceptions that the drag fleet is out of control have been publicly confessed to be true. Draggers must be made to follow the rule of law. The Council must regulate the drag fleet.
Keep yer flippers wet.
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18 comments:
yeeeehaw
Now on to halibut.
So the question is-
Does it matter if they remove 15% of Halibut by-catch quota if it does nothing to stop the unobserved and underreported waste that occurs?
Those issues, unobserved and under reported waste must end. Dragging must be cleaned up or extinguished. Their dirty secrets are getting out and the public will not tolerate this kind of behavior. Now we need more searing photos and videos to expose the waste. More and better observer coverage as well.
Cameras and 100% retention of all landed fish. Sell the fish/utilize it and encourage more local boats. Problem solved.
Pictures and video will never surface.
Wiglaf how come you dont have an email address?
Did they shut down shallow water sole in Kodiak or did you succeed in outing how dirty it is?
We need to protect as much of the Bering Sea Marine life as quickly as we can to protect the ECOSYSTEM that is VITAL for all those that DEPEND on the fish and wildlife for food and income, NOT only for the RICH to continue to say that they are MORE IMPORTANT than those that have depended on the Natural resources LONG before they realized how rich the Bering Sea and N. Pacific was and taking over dependence what has had been our most BASIC needs before they TOOK over from the Foreign TRAWLERS.
Now we have CDQs, Longliners etc. intercepting salmon, halibut, crabs before their mature enough to be legally caught and passing them around as (Prohibited Species Catches) and not to those that really need them.
Doesn't it suck when they privatize a public resource and include the whole ecosystem in the deal?
Eocsystem means all of it. How can you get some of it separated from all of it? Therefore, if you get anything, you get the ecosystem too, they are inseparable. Breaking things down into pieces is the first mistake. Draggers think they can impact some fragment of the ecosystem and they won't change the rest...WRONG. Because of draggers we have huge influxes of dogfish and arrowtooth flounder. Wasting "trash fish" is not good. No fish is trash, it is all important to the eco-system. Da! All fisdhermen MUST be cautious of piecemeal thinking.
How can you blame dragging for influxes of trash fish? Dragging is possibly the only way to scale back numbers of these species like Arrowtooth. They could bring down the bio-mass if not for the Halibut bycatch.
Look at the total allowable catch for groundfish and what is being harvested at present. When the Halibut are gone they are going to be making ALOT more money. Might be time to see if you can get a trawl permit for your charter business.
Oh wait, Guess Sole isn't shut down, they're just waiting a little bit and saving the PSC. Will be interesting to see how much of the landed volume is actually observed when they do go after it. Historically shallow water flats has seen very little observer coverage (http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/sustainablefisheries/inseason/percent_observed.pdf)
The numbers for Central GOA range from 34% coverage in 2004 when only 3,340 Mtons was harvested to 13% in 2006 when 10,432 Mtons was harvested.
Percent observed catch for shallow water sole is further skewed because these numbers take into account Shallow water species caught in pursuit of other targets as well, such as Cod. This helps somewhat to offset the obvious gaming that is taking place during the pursuit of Flatfish.
Shit tholepin, think I need to develope this more outside of the comment box. I'll get back to you after a few cocktails.
You can blame dragging for influxes of "trash fish' because of huge amounts of dead bycatch shoveled over souring the bottom and offering easy meals to dogfish and arrowtooth. Dragging upsets the benthic balance of predator-prey relationships in part because it is so nonselective and wasteful.
I can see how this could drive you to drinking.
Yea, watching as the last large bio-mass of fish in North America is stolen in plain view by a bunch of rich assholes and drug addicts gets to me sometimes.
http://alaskajournal.com/stories/061711/fis_gccsa.shtml
Thanks for the link. Salmon bellies to ya.
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