Friday, November 16, 2012

How Many Chinook Did You Kill Today?

Dirtiest Kodiak draggers as of today on Chinook in the Gulf of Alaska:


 
From NMFS website data.

Notice the repeat offenders?  Notice NPT which means bottom draggers, are responsible for a high percentage of Chinook catch.  Notice the PTR, the supposedly pelagic trawls are fishing bottom pollock.  As fished, such designations are meaningless.  NPFMC is set to give these dirty operators the majority share of bottomfish as IFQ in the Gulf.  Currently at least four of the draggers are being purchased by processors, as Trident and Icicle.  The real power behind the give away of the Gulf of Alaska resources and wasteful bycatch is the processors. 

Keep yer head down and yer flippers wet.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So I understand that when they do the halibut numbers on that spreadsheet that it is kg/mt. How do we determine the bycatch rate for chinook?

Wiglaf said...

Bicatch listed is number of fish observed and number of tows observed. Put those together with the model they use for projecting reality, shake in a Martini shaker and voila! Then adjust downward if the draggers kick too much.

Anonymous said...

I know there is a model. I am curious what it is.

Anonymous said...

Fish per trip? Per tow? I know there is a formula I was asking what it was.

Wiglaf said...

The model must include the vessel specific catch and therefore is protected from the general public, proprietary bullshit.

What you see is the number of actual total fish caught during the given observations. The Mar Pacifico caught an average of 21 Chinook per tow for those 15 observed tows. If we knew the target species caught in those tows and the total for the season, we could extrapolate the total seasonal catch of Chinook for the Mar Pacifico. There is probably a fudge factor multiplier estimating error. In other words, we don't have evidence that is solid, ground truthed fact. But we do know that observed catches are cleaner than the unobserved catches, so we presume the actual catches are way out there beyond acceptability. That's they way the drag fleet likes it. See no evil.