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| Here the Golden Fleece and her cohort, both owned by Wm. Bisbee of South Bend, Washington, drag away on arrowtooth and pollock. This area is a known tanner crab hot spot (halibut too). AIS from 10/29/2011. |
As the Kodiak 2012 tanner guideline harvest level is cut some 650,000 pounds as compared to the 2011 season, trawlers continue to drag away on known tanner crab habitat. Of particular concern are vessels like the Golden Fleece whose March 2010 bycatch was particularly inexcusable, reaching over 350 individual tanner crab per metric ton of catch observed. Consider: the capacity of the Golden Fleece is listed by the Alaska CFEC at 6000 cuft (times 64 pounds divided by 2200), or 174 metric tons; the Golden Fleece could have removed as many as 60,900 tanners per trip. While this 350 crab number was observed only for four hauls, the real take is completely obscured, or occulted by the faulty observer system, by the gaming, and by requiring only 30% observer coverage for vessels under 125 feet. Regardless of the actual numbers, to err on the side of caution, when population numbers of species are down, is prudent management.
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| 2010 data show how devastating trawler hauls on tanners can be. |
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| Curiously, the Golden Fleece disappeared from AIS shortly after this screen shot was taken. |
Spring forward to 2011 data from
http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm Vessel Specific Bycatch:
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| While the extremes of 2010 data are not found in 2011, nevertheless huge numbers of tanners were observed to be caught by GOA draggers. Golden Fleece here represents three differently dated observations resulting in 24 observed tows. These are the worst offenders in 2011. |
In 2010, the NPFMC passed restrictions keeping trawlers off some known critcal tanner bottom in the Kodiak area without full observer coverage, yet the NMFS has not published the regulations putting these new restrictions into effect. The result? More tanner crab get lost to bycatch, fewer crab available for harvest, less money coming into the Kodiak economy, less likely the tanner crab will recover to historical levels, etc.
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| Golden Fleece and Mar Pacifico position from AIS, on the proposed tanner crab protection area as selected by the NPFMC. What is the delay in implementation? |
KYFW.
9 comments:
This is really troubling and small boat fleet will bear the burden of conservation again. Trawl will not voluntarily change their behavior to avoid these areas of known tanner crab abundance so we(fixed gear) must make calls to council staff. A little arm twisting of staff to let them know we are following this and want to see this implemented in a timely manner. Julie has the ability to slow this down and stretch out implementation by years. Do your parts, make the calls, apply some arm twisting, get er done.
If the data is bad then how can you use it to say what boat is the worst offender? Just sayin.
What is witnessed is all there is to see. If you are the fastest runner but no one takes your time, you don't win. Just asying. We know the GF is consistently in the running for the worst in observed tows. Are there others who are dirtier? Surely, and they hide well. The dodges are well known and used.
The data won't tell you how much PSC is caught or which boat fishes the cleanest, there's just too much time unobserved. Golden fleece focuses on flatfish year round, they're undoubtably one of the worst offenders in the observer gaming and PSC discard. I read the report on the closures a while back. From what I gleaned this area is one of the most productive and heavily fished areas for flatfish so getting 100% coverage will greatly impede the gaming. At the same time some spots within it are used for observer tows so it won't stop them from continuing to use these spots to cover up their dirty fishing elsewhere. Shut them down in this area and they'll just spend more time fishing in the next closest productive area while still continuing to use their same old observer tows.
I liked the part of the proposal where they mentioned that since the boats will be needing 100% coverage in this heavily fished area they can get their coverage here and use the observer days elsewhere....
Worst proposal ever.
Draggers argue that the expense of observers is their greatest concern. This is a red herring argument. The real concern is if managers see how much the bycatch really is, draggers will be cut back. 100% observer coverage is the only way to ground truth bycatch. The shell game of statistical extrapolation of bycatch is straight bullshit.
They got away with it for another year.
This site should just become a rogue's gallery for Alaska commercial fishing.
Rogue's Gallery: Why? Because you are ruining it for the rest of us? Shame on you.
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