1972
“The Kodiak area king crab quota for the Southern District
of Area K of 10,000,000 pounds should be harvested by Friday, September 8,
1972. As of September 1 7.6 million pounds have been harvested from the
Southern district. The majority of the fleet is on the crab grounds now and we
expect to have over 9,000,000 pounds harvested by September 4, thus
necessitating a Friday closure to stay within the quota established by the
Board of Fish and Game.”
Today
The king and Tanner crab are essentially gone from the Gulf of Alaska, thank draggers.
The Chinook salmon are endangered, with the Western Gulf Chinook dragger cap exceeded by 50%.
As the halibut abundance collapses, the draggers continue to kill off the halibut, mostly unobserved, at the rate no doubt far exceeding 4,400,000 pounds annually in the Gulf of Alaska.
Draggers get more room to remain unobserved with the New Restructured Unobserver Program.
Put one more nail in the coffin of the Gulf of Alaska with the news that halibut quota is recommended to be slashed to:
- -03% in 2C
- -22% in 3A
- -46% in 3B
- -46% in 4A
- -67% in 4B
- -66% in 4CDE
Finally, NMFS regional administrator Jim Balsiger says something to the effect that we "need to think outside the box" with regard to trawl bycatch and that he questions why only fixed gear groups get to harvest halibut. WTF. Reward the thieves?
So the draggers who continue to decimate the Gulf of Alaska get to have it all?
Preposterous. And our politicians and bureaucrats and fisheries managers just wring their hands. It is time for the public to weigh in on this and stop the destruction of the Gulf of Alaska by the drag fleet.
How can roughly 45 owners and their hand full of processor allies be allowed to kill off the Gulf of Alaska for us all?
The actual numbers recommended for cuts to halibut quota will be announced at the IPHC meeting in January. These are the Conference Board recommendations. Read more.
Keep yer head down and yer flippers wet.
10 comments:
I found an old ADF&G Emergency Order for Kodiak in my files. I was going to sent it to Wiglaf but i could not find an email address. So here it is:
The Kodiak area king crab quota for the Southern District of Area K of 10,000,000 pounds should be harvested by Friday, September 8, 1972. As of September 1 7.6 million pounds have been harvested from the Southern district. The majority of the fleet is on the crab grounds now and we expect to have over 9,000,000 pounds harvested by September 4, thus necessitating a Friday closure to stay within the quota established by the Board of Fish and Game."
Hi All,
I received a few questions on this and need to correct the % drop in 3A.
Total Coast wise. The fishery CEY dropped from 33.88M pounds in 2012 to 22.70M pounds for 2013. -33%
2B (British Columbia). The fishery CEY was 6.63M pounds in 2012; but the quota was set at 7.038M pounds by the Commissioners. The 2013 staff recommendation is 4.58M pounds (-31% compared to the 2012 recommendation).
2C (Southeast). The fishery CEY was 3.21M pounds in 2012 but the commissioners set the quota at 2.62M pounds. The 2013 staff recommendation is 3.12M pounds (-3% compared to the 2012 recommendation).
3A (north Gulf). The fishery CEY dropped from 11.92 M pounds in 2012 to 9.24M pounds for 2013. -22% (corrected from previous email).
As can be see from the 2B and 2C examples last year, the Commissioners can set the quota above or below staff recommendations, so we will have to wait until the annual meeting in January to know the answer for 2013.
Regards,
Tom Gemmell
Wiglaf is correct as usual. See it here first if I can make it happen.
Remember during the JV days when Julie Bonney's predecessor Chris Blackburn, along with our friends at the National Marine Trawl Service got bycatch numbers squelched???
The reasoning was since there were only 2 or 3 buyers, never mind the numbers of boats, bycatch numbers must be considered confidential. We couldn't even get an aggregate number.
The only way we found out about the 100 dead sea lions in a cod end was twenty years later when a biologist gave up an unpublished report with observer, on the mothership, data.
If you kill 'em all of there won;t be any to cause a bycatch problem.
Good points. And like sea lions, once our fish are gone, the controversy will be over and the draggers can the remnants, like arrowtooth and other dredgings. This is a huge failure of management.
Originally Posted by Akbrownsfan
http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/forumdisplay.php/66-Alaska-Fisheries-Management
The tholepin blog is a guy who makes things up. I think his numbers are likely right though as far as being from NMFS as far as those chinook numbers, but it's the CATCH RATE that is the big factor in his little spreadsheet and text that is important, but of it's missing. And of course he nor Doc would ever think to bring that up.
And that article is about as biased, and slanderous as anything I've read. It's the same as the other thread about stopping bycatch. Say impossible, unprovable, or untrue things often enough and people will believe them.
say what?????????????
Akbrownsfan:
Above all, Wiglaf attempts to get at the truth which is very well disguised by NMFS, et al. If you find specific data that is not correct, please let us know, show me. Obviously you are a drag lover, or you would not defend this fishery with such passion. The only manipulation of spreadsheets (available to the public by NMFS) by us are simply to sort out the BSAI data and pull out the dragger data to highlight the bycatch. While Don Johnson's assertions may be a bit speculative, they error on the side of conservation; he makes the point that there are vast unknowns about this very unselective gear. The rest of the civilized world are banning drag gear. That fact that draggers spend so much time and money hiding their activity from the public eye should raise the suspicions of an independent thinker. That is obviously not you.
Balsinger? Who is he married to again?
Heather McCarty, lobbyist for Pacific Seafoods.
here's my comment that Wesley deleted from his Deckboss blog
I could have phrased things a little better but it appears commenting on NMFS/NPFMC conflict of interest is not permitted.
What does Wiggy think???
Anonymous said...
The new observer program tried to shift the cost to the halibut fleet. Now with the proposed catch reductions that won't happen.
It places observers on small boats with relatively little or no bycatch impact AND results in less observer coverage on draggers.
It does nothing to address the gaming of coverage by draggers.
It ignores successful observer/bycatch reduction in Canada and the Oregon/Washington/California trawl fisheries.
Could NMFS position be influenced by the fact that NMFS representative on the NPFMC and head of NMFS for AK is having sex with the main lobbyist for the trawl industry in AK.
But deckboss will be keeping a sharp eye out for what comes up on those hooks. Kind of like OJ looking for the real killer on the golf course Far Side cartoon.
December 11, 2012 7:51 AM
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