From a concerned fisherman, mining the NMFS database:
"It’s a close race to see who can kill the most Chinook salmon in the GOA. As of today the Golden Fleece and the Vaerdal are neck and neck. 1123 Chinook for Golden Fleece and 1099 for Vaerdal including monumental effort of 574 Chinook on the last trip dated 4/13. Curious that the Chinook counts are the highest on Catcher/Processors that are chasing mostly arrowtooth and some sole in the GOA and not the pollock trawlers that get so much press. Extended trips with high observer sampling of 20-30 tows per trip. Then they come in to the Majdic dock in Kodiak and unload into freezer vans and ship the money south. There has got to be a better way!"
"The Chinook bycatch is now 8,811 fish on the count or 35% of the 25,000 cap."
But the cap only applies to pelagic pollock trawling!
Keep yer flippers wet.
3 comments:
Why does it matter what the cap is when the data for the catcher vessels is rigged? The data is way behind in keeping up with what the staggers are really doing. They cooperate to only take observers to clean areas. When they fish without an observer they are doing high volumes with unknown amounts of by catch. Above what is acceptable for the survival of Halibut easily.
Wrong. These two boats are observed all the time. This is the first time we have been able to see how dirty the drags for these two are, though we have always guessed it to be so from crew reports and where they have been obsreved towing. One hndred percent observed may stll let some of the tows escape notice, but mostly this is a picture of their dirty fishing. The big gaming occurs on unobserved and partially observed draggers. Since restructuring of the observer program, that means most GOA draggers are free to game the system.
Whatever. Unobserved catcher vessels continue to be the problem because they take more than is reported. Good luck.
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