Tholepin

Trawlers Want Rewards for Behaving Badly

2012-02-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

---
In another piece of outstanding journalism, Andrew Jensen cuts through the fog of the NPFMC and NOAA to reveal what is going on with bycatch controls foot dragging and much more. Here it is in his words.:Alaska Journal of Commerce.

Keep yer flippers wet.

NPFMC Lays the Groundwork for Failure to Move on Bycatch

2012-02-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

If you follow the proceedings of the faux judiciary-like process the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council uses in order to appear to be sufficiently respectful of its responsibilities to the fisheries it 'manages,' you can often see them telegraph their punches, and reassure their various supporters. So it was this last meeting. The movement to do nothing in regard to the criminal bycatch of high value species (among others) by the drag industry became clear when Chris Oliver made an (out of focus) YouTube video touting the Council's concern over bycatch but weaseling about how much it was going to cost draggers. Talking out of both sides of your mouth, Mr. Oliver, especially when it is put on video tape is never a good idea. Crying about how cutting bycatch will cost the Kodiak draggers ten million dollars in lost revenues while not addressing the 4.4 million pounds of halibut waste at a current ex-vessel value of seven dollars a pound or 30 million dollars lost to the longliners, commercial charterers, sportsfishermen, and subsistence users is negligence, written large. Little mention is made of the fact that some draggers are able to avoid much halibut bycatch and others are filthy fishers. The Scientific and Statistical Committee finally spoke up chastising the Council process by admitting that making decisions affecting the health of the Gulf of Alaska based on, not just poor information as to observed catch, but purposefully gamed information, is a grave error. Kudos to the SSC for having more courage than we expected them to have and by taking back some of the high ground to which the scientific community is supposed to adhere.

Maybe the science community is finally seeing the need to come clean at the Federal level in light of the way the State of Alaska science community is being co-opted by this current twisted administration bound to develop all resources at whatever cost. " A new, Orwellian policy requires scientists to espouse only the state's official position, as dictated by Parnell and his closest advisors" Rick Sinnott. Governor Parnell made that very plain when explaining that having conservation in the mission statement for the Department of Natural Resources wasn't necessary as it was already implied, and then having Cora Campbell appoint Doug Vincent-Lang to replace indicted Corey Rossi as head of the Alaska's Division of Wildlife Conservation. Cora Campbell shows her true colors (or is she a Petersberg cameleon?) by voting with the outside interests on the Council to up the number of king salmon allowed to be taken by bottom trawls. Why are we surprised? Parnell was originally appointed to the Governor's job by Sara Palin, a self serving no brainer if there ever was one. A no brainer perhaps, but there is much craft in witchcraft.

It appears that the number of Alaskans on the Council who remain concerned over the health of our fisheries is now three: Fields, Cotton, and Hull. Sean Parnell is wrong; CONSERVATION of our resources is not to be simply implied, it hast to be written large. Conservation has to be first. If our kids are going to inherit an Alaska worth living in, we have to think ahead. But short term development goals are all that are important to Parnell, 'and the devil take the hindmost.' Out of one side of Parnell's mouth comes states rights dogma and rhetoric, with such ilk as Vincent-Lang as spokesman, thus assuring the rabble of the railbelt will blindly follow. (The True Believer, Eric Hoffer) Out of the other side of his mouth Parnell blows sweet kisses to foreign backers of the Pebble mine, Wash-Ore trawl interests in the GOA and BSAI, foreign fish processor interests who need cheap fish for profits, and finally his favorite of favorites, Big Oil, who he argues will loves us more and share more of our wealth with us if we give it to them for less.

The Wash-Ore boys were probably right. Some Alaskan interests represented on the Council were perhaps making a wiggle to free Alaska from colonial status but with a little help from their friends, the Parnell administration has sided with the big money to move the Council back from the precipice of conservation and healthy management to development at all cost. Wasting high value species (not to mention all the other waste) in order to supply masses of cheap fish for processor profits is what is important. Now all the draggers will be able to afford to have a new copper roof.

Keep yer flippers wet.

NMFS Pleased With Court Ruling Re: Sealions

2012-01-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

---
"We are certainly most sympathetic to the plight of fishermen in these trying times," Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director Doug DeMaster added. "A healthy ecosystem is in the long-term interest of fishermen, who depend more than most industries on natural resources. We are looking forward to working with our partners and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to maintain healthy, robust ecosystems for the long-term economic benefit of fishers in Alaska."

Perhaps. As a sealion, I am pleased, but the reality is that industry has too much sway over the decisions regarding the protection of the ecosystem and that threatens all of us in fishing for the long haul. For ecosystem protection, the extreme bycatch of draggers in the GOA and elsewhere must be reined in, period. Were it so easy to protect the resources...ha!...when the NPFMC refuses to protect those species deemed Prohibited Species like halibut, king salmon and crab. 'Best science' becomes a club to slug us over the head with when we demand protection and the draggers cry foul over not having enough good data and then drag their feet when good data collection is suggested. Catch -22.

Keep yer flipper wet.

Salmon Processors Dump MSC Certification

2012-01-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

---
Read more.

Maybe the processors are fed up with MSC's Buy a Certificate on Sustainable Seafood Scam? Afterall, they certified filthy flatfish for a price. Or the price is just too high? Or is it the coming storm of issues with hatchery fish. The big processors love hatchery fish. Always something new to worry about.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Let's Talk Halibut Prohibited Species Bycatch

2012-01-16T07:32:00.000-08:00

----
Wiglaf has made some strong statements in the past couple of years regarding trawl bycatch. For a New Year Review, let's consider some Take Away Messages from 'official sources.' These are the same sources that accuse Tholepin of being unreliable. Go figure.

Take Away Message: Too much halibut bycatch.

IPHC: "The existing GOA Prohibited Species Cap (PSC) limits have been in place for trawl fisheries since 1986 and for fixed gear fisheries since 1996. The Commission staff believes that these limits were based on inadequate data, that monitoring of both historical and current bycatch mortality is similarly inadequate, and that the PSC limit for trawl fisheries should be reduced as a precautionary measure until the improved observer procedures are implemented, at which time the estimated bycatch mortaality levels can be re-evaluated to the context of halibut stock dynamics." IPHC

Take Away Message: Statistics regarding bycatch are NOT reliable.

NMFS: "The current federal groundfish observer program in Alaska is structured by vessel size. As such, groundfish vessels less than 60’ are not required to carry observers; vessels 60’ – 125’ length overall(LOA) are required to carry and pay for their own observers 30 percent of their fishing days, regardless of gear type or target fishery; vessels greater than 125’ LOA are required to carry observers 100 percent of the time. Vessels in the 30 percent coverage category select when to carry observers and are constrained in this self-selection by regulatory requirements for quarterly coverage levels. The two size categories with less than 100 percent observer coverage comprise the majority of vessels fishing in the GOA and out of ports other than Dutch Harbor and Akutan in the BSAI.

“Observers estimate total catch for a portion of hauls or sets, and sample hauls or sets for species composition, including PSC. These data are extrapolated in the Alaska Region Catch Accounting System (CAS) to make estimates of total PSC halibut catch on both observed and unobserved vessels. Observer data are assumed to be representative of the activity of all vessels and are used to estimate total halibut PSC. The ratio estimator is derived from a set of covariates that match both observer and groundfish landing/production information. A detailed description of this process is presented in Cahalan et al. (2010).

Regulations governing observer deployment (i.e., observer coverage requirements) introduces the potential of bias in observer data by using a non-random deployment model which may facilitate nonrepresentative fishing. Given the use of observer data in CAS, and the subsequent use of CAS estimation in stock assessments and quota management, this issue can undermine the data used to manage halibut PSC (among other species) in the North Pacific groundfish fisheries. In response to these issues, the Council took action at its October 2010 meeting to recommend that NMFS restructure the observer program to address multiple issues with the current program, including bias (NPFM 2010). The recommended restructuring preferred alternative provides NMFS with flexibility to place observers onboard vessel using accepted statistical practices so that coverage gaps and vessel-trip selection bias is addressed.” NMFS.

Take Away Message: We are hurting the halibut biomass, its reproductive potential, and the future of all halibut fisheries.

NMFS: The impacts of reducing halibut PSC limits for groundfish target fisheries does not simply reallocate that reduced halibut mortality amounts to directed fishery halibut users. While halibut PSC limits are often closely approached in the GOA groundfish fisheries, these removals are known imprecisely. While all halibut mortality sources are taken into account when commercial IFQ catch limits (and combined catch limits under the proposed Halibut Catch Sharing Plan (CSP)) are set, the negative impacts of these removals on lost spawning biomass and lost yield are not prevented. Incidental catches of halibut result ina decline in the halibut standing stock biomass, reduced reproductive potential of the halibut stock, and reduced short- and long-term halibut yields to the directed hook-and-line fisheries and the guided sport sector in Area 2C and 3A under the proposed CSP.

A reciprocal function of the Take Away Message is the Red Face Test:

1. NMFS: “The GOA groundfish fishery has an adverse impact on Pacific halibut through direct mortality due to prohibited species catch. Under the status quo, Pacific halibut are a prohibited species and it is incumbent upon fishermen, under the regulations, to avoid catching them. The Groundfish Programmatic EIS considered impacts of the fisheries on the halibut population, reproductive success, and habitat, and concluded that it is unlikely that groundfish fishing has indirect impacts on these aspects of Pacific halibut sustainability.” http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/npfmc/PDFdocuments/halibut/HalibutPSCLimit911_exsum.pdf

Wiglaf: Red Face Test Fail! This simply does not fit with what the IPHC has stated in the first paragraph. Trawling has severe effects upon the viability of halibut as a fishery resource. Since the observer system produces unreliable data regarding bycatch in general, how does NMFS get away with determining that: “it is unlikely that groundfish fishing has indirect impacts on these aspects of Pacific halibut sustainability.”

2. NMFS: The groundfish fisheries also incidentally catches halibut prey species, including euphausiids, herring, sand lance, capelin, smelt, pollock, sablefish, cod, rockfishes, octopus, crabs, and clams, however the catches of these prey species are very small relative to the overall populations of these species. Thus, groundfish fishing activities are considered to have minimal and temporary effects on prey availability for halibut.” http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/npfmc/PDFdocuments/halibut/HalibutPSCLimit911_exsum.pdf

Wiglaf: Red Face Test Fail! Welcome to the zone of great unknowns. <If >;” the proportional catches of prey species are small” … we can’t know that based upon the admission that: “Given the use of observer data in CAS, and the subsequent use of CAS estimation in stock assessments and quota management, this issue can undermine the data used to manage halibut PSC (among other species) in the North Pacific groundfish fisheries.” Also, it is likely that evidence of catches of many very small and fragile prey species may be missing from recovered trawls because they break up and are washed out of the drags. That these prey species are important is obvious. Plenty of trawl crew have reportedly seen large numbers of small prey species washing out of cod ends upon recovery. To state that trawls don’t have an important effect on prey species is at best wishful thinking and at worst a lie. If a prey species dies in the trawl but is washed away with no one to see it, did it exist?

Keep Yer Flippers Wet

MCManman and Keaton Conspire to Confuse Less Careful Readers

2011-12-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

On page six and seven of December's 2011 Pacific Fishing Magazine's Don McManman starts a twisted apology (probably mostly to advertisers) about having passed on information Wiglaf pulled from official NMFS numbers (although McManman seems to confuse Wiglaf and Medred). Josh Keaton of NMFS also weighs in to twist Wiglaf''s flippers over the posting. Admittedly, Wiglaf has been pretty hard on NMFS for not protecting the resources of the GOA. McManman even includes some palaver from Merrick Burden, of MCA, a wholly owned and operated extension of the draggers and processors serving as a thinly guised propaganda service to promote DP interests. Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother to respond, but since this is a clumsy attempt to gut our credibility, here goes. I do appreciate that this need to fill two pages in Pathetic Fishing means we hare having some effect, or no one would mention us.

No projections of the Alaska Beauty's catch was made by Wiglaf. Straight off NMFS's report. No application to the fleet was made by Wiglaf; the Alaska Beauty is regularly dirty, owns no IFQ halibut and so is apparently disinterested in taking care of that resource. (Don't you love the way Keaton apologizes for the Alaska Beauty?) We have to wonder though, what happens when Alaska Beauty doesn't have an observer aboard. Keaton says one observed bad tow, NMFS records show there were five. NMFS numbers: 43% of his catch of cod was PSC halibut. Beauty, eh? A black mark on Alaska to be sure.

The fleet-wide catch was officially extrapolated with an approved NMFS model by NMFS number crunchers and published as such. That they adjust these numbers regularly as they feel the pressure by the industry to deflate them or find errors in their methods (are there many?) should be our concern, but we publish as the information surfaces.

24 September 2011

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car240_psc_halibut.csv
This link has weekly bycatch rates/mortality by area and gear type. (Thanks, GF)

As far as to what Craig Medred says (we saw the error in his report), we have little care. Medred is devoutly anti-commercial fishing, and so is hardly an ally, except that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" occasionally makes him useful. Nobody, after all, informed of the horrific bycatch waste in the Gulf of Alaska fails to flinch. And while it is true we all have bycatch, whether pot, longline, seine, troll, jig, gillnet; the fact remains that trawl bycatch is beyond what anybody should tolerate, and while we argue, trawlers are busily degrading the GOA, its habitat and ocean inhabitants. NMFS is comfortable with its own models and sincerely does not have the will to change the modus operandi of GOA trawling. Some say they sincerely don't care. Too much trouble and too much well financed opposition with no political backbone in DC to back them up. Fisheries science is up for sale. Wake up.

"At times the GOA trawl fleet seems more intent on avoiding halibut (PSC bycatch) than actually catching its target species. The fleet voluntarily stood down for three weeks in September because of high (observed) halibut bycatch." Don McManman says. Oh, Don, come on, you are not really that simple are you? They had damn well better be careful. If they exceed the PSC they will be forcibly shut down by Federal law. Their behavior is called self interested self preservation. McManman kisses on...

"The GOA trawl fleet also voluntarily took on 100 percent observer coverage---paid for out of their own pockets---to ensure an accurate and timely count of halibut bycatch." Really? Don, they didn't do that out of the goodness of their hearts, it is called CYA. A PR ploy that worked on you and didn't cover anymore time than they needed it to, operating as an informal co-op. Part of this was to stopper their 'pirate' or sloppy skippers who can't avoid bycatch because they are too unskilled or impaired. It was also a demonstration of what they could do if we give them the Gulf as IFQ.

Years ago, Al Burch said we had to hang together as commercial fishermen or the greenies and the tree huggers and PETA would hang us all separately. It is a simple argument that has appeal if you are basically distrustful or paranoid, but not if you are more willing take a chance with honesty with the fish consuming public. It is the public's ocean. We need to clear the air, fish as cleanly as we can and change how we catch fish if we need. If dragging is unable to clean up its act, it needs to go the way of the dinosaurs...extinct. That restricting trawlers might affect Pacific Fishing's bottom line, or anyone else's, is meaningless in the long run, and that is what we care about, the future of fishing. We look east of us and see it is mostly gone or a shadow of its former health/wealth. We don't want to look back at the good old days. We want them from here on into the future. You got a problem with that?

Bycatch is an emotional issue, you say? Damn right. To see the future swept away by the lust for profits, to see the passive response of NMFS and the NPFMC to such criminality of wasting this year 1829 metric tons of halibut. One metric ton is 1000 kilograms, so a metric ton is roughly 2205 pounds, so 1829 X 2205 = 4,032,945 pounds. Check that Don. No bullshit.

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car120_goa.pdf

This is straight off the internet. Try it, you'll like it. And if what we believe is true, this is a fraction compared with what is really being killed off as bycatch in the Gulf. 100% observed trawling for an entire year will get us some ground-truthing of what the real cost to the resource is for complacency over trawl bycatch.

Journalists are dependent on economics to survive. Fishing magazines (all small magazines) are under stress. They need every advertising dime they can garner. The smaller the outfit the more dependent they are on their advertisers. Advertisers hate controversy. It is hard on the bottom line. So most journalists are not very independent, they depend on advertising dollars for their daily bread. Bloggers are not dependent on cash made from their journalism. They can speak the truth as they see fit without the compromise of fearing offending groups (except for violent threats). The blog is a leveler. Wiglaf is saying nothing that hasn't been said before on the docks, but for the first time, you can read it out loud and online. This news can get beyond the shorelines of this little fish town. That shakes things up.

Last. Anonymity is for self protection. What's a name, anyway? Call me Wiglaf. Judge the argument. If you want to get a hold of me, use the comment link, but otherwise don't waste my time.

Keep your flippers wet.

Proposal: 100% Observer Coverage an All GOA Trawl Vessels for One Year

2011-12-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

---

GOA GROUNDFISH TRAWL SUBSECTOR OBSERVER PROPOSAL

Submitted Repeatedly for Six Years

on the Official Record of NPFMC/NOAA Fisheries

D-3 Groundfish Issues and D-5 Staff Tasking-Requesting Placement on the Agenda

Applying National Standards:

NS #1 Issues of rebuilding, optimum yielding, preventing overfishing

NS #2 Best science and providing most current, comprehensive information

NS #3 Close coordinated management

NS #7 Minimize costs (damaged stocks, wasted fuel, etc.)

NS #8 Sustained community participation

NS #9 Minimize bycatch and mortality on non-target species. For multispecies management to maximize net national benefits from Kodiak fisheries

Name of Proposer: Ludger W. Dochtermann

Date: (orig. June 1, 2005) December 7, 2011

Brief Statement of Proposal:

Full (100%) Observer Coverage on All Gulf of Alaska Trawl Vessels for the Year 2012, and once in every 3 years, thereafter. By "Year 2012," I mean "year-1 deployment" - i.e., before any further Rationalization or Catch Share regulations are promulgated. So, inherent in this proposal is a halt to further action until the best (adequate) scientific data is made available.

Objectives of Proposal (What is the problem?):

To accurately evaluate the trawl fishery subsector's entire catch performance regarding the bycatch of non-targeted species and the on-board management conduct of the fishery's prosecution. There us a serious need to have years of full knowledge regarding bycatch for several reasons, not the least of which is for comparison with other years of reduced coverage where the Nation relies upon self-reporting during non-observer hauls.

Need and Justification for Council Action (Why can't the problem be resolved through other channels?):

Due to the nature of the extraordinary value of bycatch-often exceeding the value of targeted species, and due to the nature of massive discards when incidents of "bad hauls" occur, NOAA Fisheries and the Council need a more accurate base, of first data year statistics. Absent the presence of constant recording cameras and other means of improving data collection-and given the need for human confirmation of such 'remote sensing' were it to occur-the 2012 fishery would be a first start in accurate measurement.

Human behavior, swayed by overwhelming economic rewards and absent effective comparison data and enforcement, demands that NOAA base its decisions on more accurate data, and confirm that said behavior is not incorrectly reported when observer coverage is not at 100%. The Council and NOAA are also aware of the uselessness of GOA bycatch data. The OMB needs to review Compliance with Data Quality Act in the self-reporting system.

The recent submittal of pictures of tanner crab bycatch in the Kodiak groundfishery at the June 2009 session clearly demonstrates the need for 100% observer coverage, full time for one base year. The pictures from tholepin.blogspot.com simply reinforce this message. While some have historically considered Bering Sea crab pod encounters to be rare, true or not, around Kodiak, trawlers do fish shallow bays and other grounds that increase the likelihood of pod encounters or are simply dragging through crab abundantly concentrated on the ocean floor.

Foreseeable Impacts of Proposal (Who wins, who loses?):

The program would arguably be costly and operationally inconvenient to many vessels, however government could cover much of the costs in return for the knowledge gained. For the cost of not having full and complete knowledge-at least every 3 years, and at least once in 2012-before creating any further arbitrary resource allocation (property rights shifting) regulations (such as rationalization schemes) may be a grave loss to society and regional economies as heavy impact, intense methods of fishing, i.e. hard on bottom trawling, proceed unabated and unwatched.

The question of 'who loses' has been answered by the profound losses suffered by crab and halibut fishermen unless a 100% observer program for one base year is put in place. Considering that Kodiak was once the 'king crab capital of the world' and its restoration continues to be severely harmed by trawl subsector bycatch incidents, the Council needs this base year to analyze such comparable loses.

The question of 'who wins and who loses' is also moot under the logic that the Public resource is an invaluable asset for the Nation, and no one loses when we all know what are the true conditions of the prosecution of such fisheries. Everyone wins when regulations are based on the best data, and when they follow the National Standards in the Magnuson-Stevens and Sustainable Fisheries Acts, in their spirit and intent-especially when the regulatory process proceeds on science, not politics and greed.

Are there alternative solutions? If so, what are they and why do you consider your proposal the best way of solving the problem?:

There is another means of keeping an eye on the prosecution of the fishery, but the cost of having numerous Coast Guard vessels on site, around the clock, along with random boarding fair observer coverage would be much higher than instituting a full coverage year stratification program that operates only once every 3 years.

Supportive Data and Other Information (What data are available and where can they be found?:

This is a complex matter, as NOAA has not had adequate budgets for better research. But the conduct of the trawl fishery and the witnessing of its highly destructive prosecution are well known among NOAA personnel, Alaskan communities, and fishing crews. The Council and NOAA have greater insight on data collection and statistical need, and that could all come out during discussion of this proposal were the Council to specifically request NOAA to go forward with 100% observer coverage in 2012 (or 2013).

I ask you to please take this into discussion on Groundfish Issues, and to make your motion for prioritization of a 100% observer coverage Year 1 deployment, specifically in the GOA trawl sector.

Signature:

Ludger W. Dochtermann, F/V North Point, F/V Stormbird- Kodiak, Alaska

Unaccounted for Halibut Mortality Explained?

2011-12-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

---
Wiglaf,

The announcement by the IPHC that halibut predicted by the stock model have gone missing in following years has led me to think about where they may have gone. When Doug Hoedel was on the NPFMC (and had a huge halibut PSC problem while trawling cod), he said, at an informal meeting in Kodiak, that trawlers needed 8,000 metric tons of halibut for their bycatch needs. Later, at another meeting, Julie Bonney of GFDB repeated the same number. Now I wonder how they both came up with that specific number?

Most people familiar with this fishery realize that the present 2,000 metric ton PSC cap on Gulf trawlers is nearly meaningless due to gaming of the observer program, potential sampling problems, and industry involvement in the generating of bycatch numbers that appear to always lead to reductions. Could it be that the 8,000 metric tons (17,600,000 pounds) of halibut bycatch desired by the GOA trawler is closer to the actual number that they know they catch? If it is true, 6,000 metric tons (13,200,000 pounds) of mortality would be missing from the IPHC management model each year from this one fishery in the Gulf of Alaska. Each year the model would recommend a directed catch that was substantially too high. The next year's survey and directed fishery CPUE data would see this but the model would produce a new harvest goal that was still wrong due to the unaccounted for mortality.

Unaccounted for bycatch leads to poor modelling by stock managers.

I would recommend to IPHC director Bruce Leaman that his staff retrospectively run the model calculations with 8,000 metric tons of gulf trawl bycatch to see if the model predictions are corrected. Knowing the magnitude of the "missing" halibut would be a good start to finding them.

Graybeard

Almost Four Tenths of One Percent Pays Draggers Big Dividends

2011-11-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

---
Laine Welch reports all over the 'net that draggers destruction and waste equal warm and delicious fuzzies for the poor and indigent. "Alaska food banks are the beneficiaries of fish taken as bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska thanks to Kodiak fishermen and local processors." And all this positive spin for 3.7 tenths of one percent of the waste of halibut alone. The story goes on to state that 5000 pounds of halibut and chinook bycatch were donated to Kodiak and 10,000 pounds of halibut and salmon bycatch were donated to Anchorage; the rest of the 4.02 million pounds of halibut and the 20, 983 king salmon were destroyed, wasted and lost. No one knows how many kilotons of other species, not named or counted were destroyed, since they don't have name recognition or official value to make it into the NMFS statistical accounts.

For at least the past two weeks very positive news stories have circulated warm fuzzies, making it seem that bycatch has a valuable other side. Contrarily, the magnitude of the outrageous waste and destruction of the public's resources by a small number of trawlers (about 40) has been neglected by the news media, who, lazy and ill informed, take the easy path and report the most simplistic news story. Shame on Laine Welch and all the simpletons who picked up this story. The painful truth remains untold, except maybe here. They don't even need thirty pieces of silver to sell out the Gulf of Alaska, 3.7 tenths of one percent of their waste is enough.

If we make those donated pounds into meals, we get (at 1/2 pound of donated bycatch per meal), about 30,000 meals. Wow, that is a lot of food for the poor. But what remains untold is that at least 7,908,000 meals are dumped and that is just counting this year's reported halibut PSC. Nevermind the salmon, cod, crab, and everything else.

Picture removed by Google.

Question: Why does a web host or blogging service provider get DMCA takedown notices?
Answer: Many copyright claimants are making complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Section 512(c)m a safe-harbor for hosts of "Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users." This safe harbors give providers immunity from liability for users' possible copyright infringement -- if they "expeditiously" remove material when they get complaints. Whether or not the provider would have been liable for infringement by materials its users post, the provider can avoid the possibility of a lawsuit for money damages by following the DMCA's takedown procedure when it gets a complaint. The person whose information was removed can file a counter-notification if he or she believes the complaint was erroneous.

Point. The waste of bycatch in the GOA can not be compensated for by some half ass program to feed poor people (as nice as that is) when the real story is the wholesale destruction of tens of millions of pounds of fish in the GOA. Some of these fish are not valued (like Kodiak and Anchorage's poor?), but they play an important role in the health of the Gulf of Alaska. 3.7 tenths of one percent is all that the draggers need to donate of make a positive spin in the media.

As far as keeping all these fish and feeding the masses, think again, most of the halibut wasted by draggers are very small. You can see them sorted into totes for grinding at our local canneries. Six inches long. Total waste. GroundupFish Data Bunk and friends claim small halibut don't count. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Will Alaska wake up and see the real toll before it is too late for the Gulf? Will the NPFMC do its legal duty to the people of the USA and Alaska and protect these resources? Or will the spin specialists like the Ground(up)fish Data Bank and the 'pugh boys' on GOA draggers destroy one of the last great fishery resources left in the world.
BTW, I hear that NMFS says Wiglaf's figures are not accurate; well of course not, he gets them from NMFS on the web, and NMFS changes them constantly, especially when AGData Bunk calls them, so go figure. And they impugne Wiggy's credibility? Look, almost all NMFS figures are extrapolations based upon few (and far between), skewed and inaccurate observations. If NMFS would become transparent, Wiggy would be forced to get his flippers off this keyboard. He can't wait.

But until that day, Keep Your Flippers Wet,

Tanner Crab Quota Cut, NMFS Drags Feet on Regulations, Trawlers Drag on Tanners

2011-11-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2010 data show how devastating trawler hauls on tanners can be.

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:

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.

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.

Hammer, Hammer, Hammer the Kings; Trawl Away, Drag Away, Throw Away the Kings

2011-10-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Obviously, the draggers don't feel any compunction about dragging away (and throwing away) Alaska's threatened stocks of king salmon. Although the take is half of last week's, it is still an outrage.

No cap is yet in place for Kings. Although the NPFMC has passed a 25,000 cap of Kings, it does not apply to this year's catch. Kiss your King salmon good bye!
http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car120_goa.pdf

That the Golden Fleece doesn't lead the worst offenders is surprising. But then they specialize in destroying tanner crab. The Kodiak vessel Caravelle continues her reign as a worst offender in halibut and king salmon. O'Donnell has been heard to claim he doesn't alter his behavior in the face of observers. If true, he is either an especially dirty dragger, or the rest of the fleet is gaming the hell out of their observer coverage. Come to think of it, where is the rest of the fleet? Unobserved!
http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm

KYFW

More Than 5200 Chinook Wasted By GOA Trawlers Just This Week

2011-10-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

-
In a switch from wasting at least five million dollars worth of halibut last week, GOA trawlers hammered away on the king salmon, a species widely regarded as suffering from steady declines. Like halibut, the prevalent attitude of "the sooner they're gone, the sooner we can have our way with the GOA," is expressed by those draggers having no stake in the PSC resources.

Source.

We know from past observations that the Alaska Beauty is particularly dirty, so it is interesting that they have only one observation here. This is an example of gaming. Looks like the Walter N with double the observer coverage knows how to fish relatively cleanly. How about: reward the clean boats with a high proportion of the quota, when it comes to that? Since the practice has been to fish for history so they get the biggest share of the Gulf, turn this around and reward the cleanest boats....what a crazy idea, because now the rewards go to the pigs. http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm

Picture removed by Google.

KYFW...

Trawlers Smash Halibut, Wasted PSC Exceeds 700,000 Pounds NMFS Reports

2011-10-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

-
Week ending October 8, 2011 makes last week's halibut PSC look like a warmup. Interestingly, the percentage rate of halibut prohibited species catch (PSC) has diminished, while the actual PSC of halibut has soared to over three times last week's PSC. Abstrusive statistics are part and parcel of NMFS's 'public process' and 'openness.' But the occultive practices fail to conceal that pelagic trawling is used on the bottom to catch pollock and the Chinook which feed with them. Trawl slaughter of Chinook takes a sharp upswing, at 2445 fish wasted.

Source:http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car120_goa.pdf

KYFW

Getting Wasted: The Tragedy Continues (photos censored)

2011-10-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

The pictures which were here were anonymously donated to someone who gave them to someone who gave them to Wiglaf for the tholepin blog. These photos of illegal activity have since been claimed by the skipper of that vessel who filed with the Google blogging service and they have since been taken down by Google. This is part of a larger conspiracy by the trawling fleet cooperative to limit their exposure to the public for the secret damages they are doing to the Gulf of Alaska. Personal threats are received regularly here against Wiglaf and others suspected of being him/her. Ask not what the Gulf of Alaska can do for you, ask what you can do for the Gulf of Alaska. In the future always save anything you find of interest here and repost elsewhere. These supposed copyright infringement claims do not have to be substantiated for Google to take them down. We do not blame Google. They are simply covering their ass. Blogs are the last potential for freedom of the press. But freedom of press in America is an illusion after all. wt

Picture removed by Google.

Remember, this is in metric tons. So 99 X 2200 = 217,800 pounds X $7 = $1,525,600 in ex-vessel value, last week. http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car120_goa.pdf

Of special interest, while Miss Leona whores through the cod, Alliance is heavily observed and apparently knows how to trawl. Elizabeth F meanwhile sets the standard for stewardship. .http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm

KYFW.

Halibut Waste Rises as Draggers Hammer Cod and NPFMC Fails Again

2011-10-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

Here are this week's Dirty Dozen Draggers placed here to celebrate the NPFMC's failure to control waste in the GOA. In the right column is the percentage of halibut PSC as compared to the catch. Ironically the Alaska Beauty is the dirtiest dragger this week with fully 43 percent of their 'cod catch' halibut PSC. No reasonable country or state would tolerate this kind of resource waste. Other draggers on this list show they can control their PSC, at least some of the time. Source. We will publish the NPFMC motion and vote when it becomes available.

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car120_goa.pdf
104 X 2200 = 228,800 pounds of halibut wasted by draggers just last week. Value? In cash terms to longliners, about one million six hundred thousand dollars ($1,601,600). In lost reproductive potential, in lost growth potential, in long term resource damage; all unknowns...but far in excess of the cash value lost. All in one week. Are we sure that is the full extent of the damage? Not at all, as the observer program is badly flawed. Well what about the report that just came out show that Alaska's bycatch was so much lower than the rest of the country? Totally misleading and released in a timely way to bolster dragger arguments before the NPFMC that they are so good and righteous...but the fact is that the bycatch in Alaska is a great unknown due to the misleading character of the posits in the extrapolations of a badly flawed observer system. Wouldn't you think the media in Alaska would examine this stuff? Wouldn't you think they might look deeper than a feel good press release by NMFS? Why would they? There is no more reward for real investigative journalism than for the embrace of press releases, that you don't have to rewrite for a public which remains largely uninformed. The preceding article here regarding faulty red king crab science is an indication of how easily twisted the shaky science is in institutions where uncomfortable findings are suppressed and independent thinking scientists are marginalized.

KYFW,

NPFMC Should Protect Halibut Stock by Rolling Back Trawler PSC

2011-09-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

---
http://www.alaskajournal.com/Alaska-Journal-of-Commerce/September-2011/Halibut-bycatch-heads-menu-for-council-in-Dutch-Harbor/ by Andrew Jensen, Alaska Journal of Commerce

"Both commercial and charter sectors have pointed to bycatch of halibut in the Gulf by trawlers as a contributing factor to declines in exploitable biomass.

"Unlike the regulatory process over years to craft and then draft the halibut CSP, the action can take effect as soon as 2012 as part of the regular quota process for groundfish if the council chooses to reduce halibut bycatch in the Gulf.

"The trawl sector, between the deepwater and shallow water fisheries, may take up to 2,000 metric tons, or 4.4 million pounds, of halibut as it prosecutes the Pacific cod, pollock, rockfish, arrowtooth flounder, rex sole and other groundfish fisheries.

"The hook-and-line sector is allowed to take up to 300 metric tons, or 661,000 pounds, of halibut each year. When the caps are reached for a sector or for a season, the fishery is closed. Under current management, the hook-and-line fishery has been closed because of reaching its halibut cap just once since 2004; various trawl fisheries have been closed under status quo for every year between 2000 and 2011.

"The council is contemplating options for 5 percent, 10 percent or 15 percent reductions in the amount of halibut allocated to trawlers and longliners in the Gulf.

"Retrospective analysis of the trawl and longline fisheries under the proposed reductions in halibut allocation show potential foregone first wholesale revenue averaging anywhere from $2.32 million to $9.9 million per year.

"Analysis from biologists with the International Pacific Halibut Commission, which sets the harvest quotas for the U.S. and Canadian coasts, suggest that reduced halibut mortality from Gulf bycatch would add yield to the commercial sector on more than a pound-for-pound basis, and that female spawning biomass would benefit at more than twice the rate of any reduction in trawl bycatch.

"The IPHC analysis also stated that halibut migration was not built into the model, and therefore “downstream” effects on Southeast and Canada were likely underestimated in terms of both economic and biological benefits to the halibut sector."

Keep yer flippers wet.

110 Million Pounds of Halibut Wasted! Letters in Today to NPFMC Regarding Halibut PSC

2011-09-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

For your comments to get into the NPFMC packets, fax them to the Council by 5 PM today. Address them to the Chairman, Eric A. Olson. Maximum consideration is for a 15% rollback. Considering the stress the halibut stock is showing and the fact that draggers have been killing up to 2000 metric tons of halibut every year since 1986(that's 110 million pounds of halibut wasted), isn't it about time? Most of us suspect there has been a lot more halibut taken than that, since official observations are hard to believe and we know subject to manipulation and games. The Council has little will for this and the opposition fierce, but the Alaska delegation may be able to make progress. Twenty-five years of halibut PSC waste is enough, don't you think? Do you think?

Here is the initial draft review: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/PDFdocuments/halibut/HalibutPSCLimit911.pdf.

Here is the NPFMC's Fax: 907 271 2817

Put up or shut up.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Bering Sea King Crab Headed for a Steep Decline-Incomplete Knowledge Leads To Overfishing

2011-09-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

-
As we have argued before, incomplete science, cherry picked data, bum projections, and plain old fashioned dishonesty are a problem in the North Pacific fisheries. Although our focus is the Gulf of Alaska, problems in the Bering Sea king crab fisheries demonstrate dangerous faults in fisheries management.

According to Deckboss:

"Results from this summer's eastern Bering Sea trawl survey is fueling fears of a painful cut in the catch limit for the state's most valuable crab. The estimated biomass of legal-sized male Bristol Bay red king crabs is 15,412 metric tons, down 27.8 percent from the 2010 estimate. It's the fourth consecutive year the biomass has fallen."

But faulty modelling by the State of Alaska, according to Braxton Dew, may be one of the reasons for the collapse.

Reinventing the Wheel (and Getting It Wrong)

Braxton Dew

Fisheries Research Scientist

NMFS, Ret.

Today’s crab managers and modelers have reinvented red king crab biology to assume that all adult (≥120 mm carapace length) males are capable of mating each year with multiple females. However, back in the 1950s and 1960s, fishermen, processors, and researchers knew that adult male red king crab do not molt and mate in the same year. For example:

1) Based on the results of Bering Sea tagging studies, male red king crab do not molt and mate in the same year and only about 50% of the population’s mature males move inshore to participate in mating in any given year (Fujita et al. 1973; Takeshita et al. 1990).

2) Molting males, because of profound physiological changes associated with the molting process, undergo a severe reduction in muscle mass and meat content. They are unsuitable for processing and canning from December to March (USFWS 1942; Wallace et al. 1949).

3) Newly molted males were largely absent from catches in the spring Japanese tangle-net fishery, which caught mostly old-shell, non-molting males during April-June as they moved to nearshore Bristol Bay spawning grounds (Kawasaki 1959; Miyahara and Shippen 1965).

4) Consistent with the female-predominated populations found on the spawning grounds (Dew 2008), winter-molting males remain offshore as non-participants in the migration to inshore spawning grounds (Korolev 1964; Chebanov 1965; Rodin 1970, 1990).

Meatless and Mateless

The above graphic shows that adult males molt in winter, mainly during February. Japanese research shows that meat recovery is a slow process, continuing through spring, summer, and fall. Until they regain a reasonable complement of muscle mass, it is unlikely that recently molted males can participate in mating.

Crab Cannot Be In Two Places At Once

Below is a map (from Dew, 2010) showing the Bering Sea ‘bachelor grounds’ centered on Station F6, which is more than 200 km from nearshore spawning grounds. In any given year millions of newly molted mature males can be found on these bachelor grounds, while viable old-shell males are servicing females on distant spawning grounds. During a half-century of sampling, less than 1% of the more than 12,000 mature crab collected at these stations were females; 99% were large, new-shell males. At Station F6, only a single female has been collected in 26 years of sampling. Clearly, there’s not much mating going on here. Why are these hollowed-out, relatively meatless males, far from any known spawning grounds, counted in the model as viable spawners? Clueless managers, oblivious to the reproductive implications of the molting bottleneck common to all crab species, used this same kind of counting during the years leading up to the Bristol Bay population’s ‘mysterious’ collapse in 1980-81.

Bering Sea Bachelor Grounds

All of these data and observations from Japanese, Soviet, and US researchers, indicating that Bering Sea red king crab do not molt and mate in the same year, were compiled and published in 2005 by Dew and McConnaughey for the convenience of red king crab managers and modelers. However, despite the concurrence of scientists from three nations, the information has been ignored by ADF&G’s red king crab model-maker, Dr. Jie Zheng.

In 2009 an independent review of the Zheng model by the Center for Independent Experts (CIE) recommended the following:

Assess mature male molting time. If a fraction of mature males are not capable of mating during the survey time (Dew 2008), then the current calculation of mature males available for mating (>120 mm) would be overestimated.

Dr. Zheng’s non-response to this CIE review comment, which can be found in the 2011 Crab SAFE on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) web site, is that Dew (2008) is wrong. Fair enough, but what about the work of USFWS (1942), Wallace et al. (1949), Kawasaki (1959), Korolev (1964), Chebanov (1965), Miyahara and Shippen (1965), Rodin (1970), Fujita et al. (1973), Rodin (1990), and Takeshita et al. (1990)? Unlike Dr. Zheng, these were research scientists who worked in the Bering Sea. Dr Zheng is not a research scientist but is an ADF&G biometrician, whose job it is to acknowledge reliable information and data from biological research scientists and to incorporate such into his statistical model. It is unlikely that Dr. Zheng can produce credible data that contradicts a half-century of Bering Sea findings by Japanese, US, and Soviet scientists, as discussed in Dew and McConnaughey (2005), Dew (2008), and Dew (2010).

Incomplete Knowledge Leads To Overfishing

Why does the Zheng model assume that all male red king crab greater than 120 mm CL can and do mate each and every year with 1-3 females? What about the 25-50% of the adult male population that molts in late winter (Jan-Mar), shortly before the mating season (Feb-Jul)? Counting newly molted crab as fully functional males, as is done in Dr. Zheng’s length-based model, results in a substantial (33-100%) overestimate of annual male reproductive potential. In a male-only fishery, such miscalculation can be fatal, as understood by Canadian managers who make allowance for the fact that snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) cannot participate in mating in the same year they molt (Sainte-Marie et al. 1999, 2002).

It would be interesting to know how the model’s flawed representation of king crab reproductive biology passes muster each year with the Crab Plan Team (CPT) and the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), both of which are advisory bodies whose primary duty is to prevent overfishing. If it is true that a substantial proportion of the adult male population does not participate in mating each year, then management safeguards such as MSST (Minimum Stock Size Threshold), ESB (Effective Spawning Biomass), etc. are compromised and the Bristol Bay red king crab stock is most likely overfished.

In response to recent questions about why Bering Sea red king crab abundance is declining, Dr. Zheng offered his expert opinion that “Something’s happening out there that we don’t understand.” Perhaps Dr. Zheng, along with his CPT and SSC overseers, should begin by understanding that Bering Sea red king crab males do not molt and mate in the same year.

Literature Cited

Chebanov, S. M. 1965. Biology of the king crab, Paralithodes camtschatica (Tilesius), in Bristol Bay. Soviet Fisheries Investigations in the Northeast Pacific, part 4. TINRO 53:82–84.

Dew, C.B. 2008. Red king crab mating success, sex ratio, spatial distribution, and abundance estimates as artifacts of survey timing in Bristol Bay, Alaska. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25:1618-1637. doi:10.1577/M07-038.1

Dew, C.B. 2010. Historical Perspective on Habitat Essential to Bristol Bay Red King Crab. In: G.H. Kruse, G.L. Eckert, R.J. Foy, R.N. Lipcius, B. Sainte-Marie, D.L. Stram, and D. Woodby (eds.), Biology and Management of Exploited Crab Populations under Climate Change. Alaska Sea Grant, University of Alaska Fairbanks. doi:10.4027/bmecpcc.2010.04

Dew, C. B., and R. A. McConnaughey. 2005. Did trawling on the broodstock contribute to the collapse of Alaska’s king crab? Ecological Applications 15:919–941.

Fujita, H., K. Takeshita, and K. Kawasaki. 1973. Seasonal movement of adult male king crab in the eastern Bering Sea revealed by tagging experiment. Bulletin of the Far East Fisheries Research Lab 9:89–107.

Kawasaki, S. 1959. Report on the research by Japan on the king crab in the eastern Bering Sea. International North Pacific Fisheries Commission 322(1):1–8, Vancouver, B.C.

Korolev, N. G. 1964. The biology and commercial exploitation of the king crab, Paralithodes camtschatica (Tilesius), in the southeastern Bering Sea, Soviet Fisheries Investigations in the Northeast Pacific, part 2. TINRO 49:102–108.

Miyahara, T., and H. H. Shippen. 1965. Preliminary report of the effect of varying levels of fishing on eastern Bering Sea king crabs, Paralithodes camtschatica (Tilesius). Rapports et Proce`s-Verbaux des Reunions, Conseil Permanent International pour l’Exploration de la Mer 156:51–58.

Rodin, V. E. 1970. Some data on the distribution of king crab, Paralithodes camtschatica (Tilesius), in the southeastern Bering Sea, Soviet Fisheries Investigations in theNortheast Pacific, part 5. TINRO 72:143–148.

Rodin, V. E. 1990. Population biology of the king crab, Paralithodes camtschatica Tilesius, in the north Pacific ocean. Pages 133–144 in Proceedings of the International Symposium on King and Tanner Crabs. University of Alaska Sea Grant Program, Report AK-SG-90-04, Fairbanks.

Sainte-Marie, B., J.-M. Sevigny, and M. Carpentier. 2002. Interannual variability of sperm reserves and fecundity of primiparous females of the snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) in relation to sex ratio. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 59:1932–1940.

Sainte-Marie, B., N. Urbani, J.-M. Sevigny, F. Hazel, and U. Kuhnlein. 1999. Multiple choice criteria and the dynamics of assortive mating during the first breeding season of female snow crab, Chionoecetes opilio (Brachyura, Majidae). Marine Ecology Progress Series 181:141–153.

Takeshita, K., H. Fujita, and S. Matsuura. 1990. A note on population structure in the eastern Bering Sea adult red king crab, Paralithodes camtschatica. Pages 427–433 in Proceedings of the International Symposium on King and Tanner Crabs. University of Alaska Sea Grant College Program, Report AK-SG-90-04, Fairbanks.

USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). 1942. Report of the Alaska crab investigation. Fishery Market News 4(5a).

Wallace, M. M., C. J. Pertuit, and A. H. Hvatum. 1949. Contributions to the biology of the king crab, Paralithodes camtschatica (Tilesius). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fishery Leaflet 340.

Keep yer flippers wet.

They Can Keep Raping the Ocean...

2011-09-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

"When are people going to realize that allowing the trawl fishery 2300 metric tons of halibut bycatch per year (tossed back dead, average weight of each fish 4-5 pounds) is truly the problem? They are killing off the baby halibut. That is why we have a resource issue. But as long as the big money fisheries can keep the rest of us fighting (small commercial, charter, personal use & subsistence) they can keep raping the ocean, killing everything in their paths." akdebs...reader comment Anchorage Daily News regarding Halibut Catch Sharing.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Rainy Morning Quote

2011-08-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

"95% of trawl bycatch is caught while bottom fishing, meaning Halibut. This is directly responsible for stock decline.
Don't believe me though. I'm just some anonymous dude, and I'll admit I don't have any PhD's(player hater degrees). Just a bloody cod knife I use to shank halibut out the shit shoot as they come across the conveyor." ...Anonymous post on Deckboss.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Halibut Bycatch Revisited/NPFMC to Address Halibut Bycatch

2011-08-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

Halibut PSC Waste in Percentages of Targeted Catch:
---

----
NPT is dragger speak for hard on the bottom dragging. Although we know the percentage of this bycatch, we do not know the actual bycatch numbers for the individual vessels because the target catch numbers are kept private. Look at the waste of high value halibut for the nearly worthless arrowtooth! Incredible!

We do know that to July 23, 2011, draggers have wasted 870 metric tons of halibut, or 1,914,000 pounds, or $12,153,900 at $6.35 a pound. That is 191,400 ten pounders. Horrifying waste. Of course these are probably little ping pong paddles that would grow to be big fish so the waste is exponentially higher. According to the IPHC, "approximately 1.7 pounds are lost as yield to the fishery per pound of bycatch mortality." http://www.iphc.washington.edu/publications/scirep/SciReport0078.pdf. So taking 870 metric tons of halibut is really removing 1470 metric tons from the fishery.

It is past time for the NPFMC to roll back the halibut PSC. Preliminary review is scheduled during the next meeting scheduled inconveniently at Dutch Harbor starting September 28th to October 4th. http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/Agendas/1011agenda.pdf
---

---
Letters to the NPFMC are critcally important since most concerned fishemen will not be able to fly to Dutch for personal testimony. ($482 round trip from Anchorage.) Council's current range of options to review at 5, 10 and 15% reductions in the halibut PSC is far too little in an already almost too late action. Forward rolling reductions based on halibut abundance are in order and the Council should be urged to re-evaluate the range of options to take more serious action to constrain the drag fleet in its destruction of the halibut resource. With so much of the behavior of the drag fleet unobserved and shamefully secret, only the rumors of draggers wholesale halibut resource destruction surface; rumors the Council refuses to acknowledge. This conspiracy of silence is only occasionally broken as with this video:
---

or this photo:

---

Eagles feast on king salmon amidst the carnage of halibut junveniles.

If all the IFQ owners who fought the Council's moves to restrict halibut IFQ leasing would apply the same pressure on the Council, which currently appears somewhat willing to roll back the waste in the GOA, great things might be accomplished. To accept the same old defeatist line just plays into the hands of the draggers and their processor allies. As halibut quotas continue to shrink, it is clear that 5 to 15% reductions are not sufficient to control the halibut waste of the drag fleet.

Citizens, sportfishermen, charter operators, IFQ owners and subsistence fishermen must bring pressure to bear on the Council to re-evaluate the range of options for analysis to reduce the halibut PSC by the drag fleet. Productivity in the GOA depends on you.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Who Do They Think They're Kidding?

2011-07-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

NMFS continues to disguise the damaging bycatch of Prohibited Species Catch through their statistics. By protecting the catch numbers we are left to guess at the totals taken by individual vessels. But some extreme examples stand out: Vessel Specific Bycatch:
---

---
While dockside rumors say the Pacific Star has been shut out of further rockfish dragging (this quarter? this season?) due to excessive bycatch of halibut, it appears that they are not the worst offenders. And it further appears that the US Intrepid is aptly named; appears anyway, unless their observer was compromised. Without video observer confirmation, how would we know? Appears too, because observer coverage in general is spotty and inconsistent, heavy gaming of coverage is the rule and halibut PSC is a percentage of the total catch, we are not allowed to see.

Halibut PSC needs to be in numbers of fish, so we can be informed of the real destruction going on. NUMBERS OF FISH! Yes, including the little ping pong paddles that the draggers choose to ignore as unimportant. Im told that these are converted to what would be the 'recoverable weight,' so it heavily skews and belittles the loss to the halibut resource.

Since when is killing off nurseries an acceptable practice? (Which NMFS allowed for king crab in 'cod alley). If we could see the true numbers of halibut being killed, not some craftily abstracted numbers, the decline in halibut abundance in the GOA and elsewhere would no longer be a "mystery."
---

---

How many halibut is seven tons of ping pong paddle halibut, the future? 15,400 one pounders? But the recoverable weight of a one pound live halibut can only be at best maybe 9 ounces, so go figure---27,400 individual ping pong halibut. See how it adds up? What the hell does 2000 mt of small hallibut amount to in actual numbers?

"I have seen the future, brother, it is murder." L. Cohen

Keep yer flippers wet.

Higher quotas spawn need for cleaner groundfish fishing

2011-06-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

So says the Bristol bay Times:

http://thebristolbaytimes.com/article/1125higher_quotas_spawn_need_for_cleaner

Keep yer flippers wet.

Balsiger Is Compromised

2011-06-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

About that vote to increase the GOA king salmon bycatch cap...

"Balsiger's enthusiasm over the final package — he called it a "fabulous step" — was a sharp contrast against Campbell's disappointment and raised a few eyebrows in the room because Balsiger's wife, Heather McCarty, has repeatedly lobbied the council on behalf of Kodiak processor Pacific Seafoods for the least restrictive cap possible."

Good journalism here: http://alaskajournal.com/stories/061711/fis_gccsa.shtml

Balsiger should immediately resign. He should have recused himself. Who can doubt the Council's corrupted condition with such behavior? Where is Eric Schwaab's leadership. Jane Lubchenko? So they approve of this kind of behavior by their caporegimes?

NMFS...No More Fish Sorry.

Keep yer flippers wet.

NPFMC Votes Hard Cap on King Salmon

2011-06-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Does NOAA/NMFS Care About King Salmon Bycatch?

2011-06-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

News Update:

"Chinook bycatch: The industry is making a concerted pitch to increase the cap to 30,000. The AP selected a 30,000 cap over the preferred alternative but a strong minority report will help neutralize the AP’s effect.

"Eric Olson is not here because of a family emergency so Alaska is missing a key vote. The swing vote is NOAA's Jim Balsiger."

Or Dan Hull, who is unconvinced that 22,500 give the draggers enough kings as bycatch in the GOA.

Keep yer flippers wet.

2011-06-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

Rumours are that recently, the Pacific Star, dragging rockfish, observer onboard, using bottom drag, nailed the halibut big time. So much halibut in fact as to piss off the other dragger because it potentially closes off some quota access. We'll see if this surfaces officially. Another example of the Rockfish Pilot Program's great potential?

With no observer aboard, the Golden Fleas has been spending a lot of time hammering away on the flats off Chiniak. Halibut boats nearby are getting lots of small halibut too, so the unobserved Golden Fleas (special exemption) must be helping reduce the abundance of small halibut in the GOA. Time to collar the secretive Golden Fleas. Unobserved solitary draggers are scarier than whole fleets, since they are more capable of secrecy.

"(ii) Amendment 80 vessels in the GOA processors. Except for the F/V GOLDEN FLEECE (USCG Documentation Number 609951), all Amendment 80 vessels, except when directed fishing for scallops using dredge gear, in the GOA must have onboard at least one NMFS-certified observer for each day that the vessel is used to harvest, receive, or process groundfish in the GOA management areas or adjacent waters open by the State of Alaska for which it adopts a Federal fishing season."

Why? Who arranged that exception, and for how much cash? Uncle Ted or Yon Dung?

State of Alaska's backbone on King salmon bycatch by GOA pollock draggers appears to be weakening. Julie and her gang have been banging out their statistical bullshit to some affect, claiming 'stranded quota' of pollock trumps King salmon damage by GOA draggers. This is a free admission that the drag fleet is incapable of controlling themselves or their bycatch. Isn't that why we have laws? 'Stranded quota' should never be an argument for allowing wasteful behavior.

Warm fuzzies and wet smoochie kisses to all the fat spinning spiders for getting the food banks involved in covering the sins of the drag fleet. This feel good program does perhaps pass on a fraction of the otherwise groundup high value bycatch to hungry people, but it diffuses the outrage at that waste, and so is an enemy of good management.

Starting in August, more fish will be delivered from the Gulf of Alaska.
"A lot of the processors who work in the Bering Sea also work in the Gulf," said Jim Harmon, Sea Share director. "They came to us earlier this year and said, 'We want to provide more fish to hunger relief, and we want to include the "prohibited species catch" we get in the Gulf pollock fishery.'"

Thieves, who give their victims' bodies to beggars, are still thieves.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Last Call for King Salmon Comments as PSC Totals Continue to Mount

2011-05-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

The June meeting of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is coming up shortly (June 6-14 in Nome), and this is your last opportunity to write a letter to the NPFMC regarding king salmon bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska.

"Written comments and materials to be included in Council meeting notebooks must be received at the Council office by 5:00 pm (Alaska Time) on TUESDAY May 31, 2011. Written and oral comments should include a statement of the source and date of information provided as well as a brief description of the background and interests of the person(s) submitting the statement. Comments can be sent by mail or fax—please do not submit comments by e-mail." Address your letters to Eric Olson, Chair, Fax 907 271 2817.

Call Governor Sean Parnell's office and voice your concern as well, as this is a state's rights issue over our fisheries. http://gov.alaska.gov/parnell/contact/email-the-governor.html

As you can see from the PSC catch information below, the GOA draggers are on schedule to exceed the proposed cap again this year. It is important that the cap on king salmon be implemented ASAP and be held to at least the 22,500 fish as listed in the Councils' preferred alternative.

Don't put it off, your input has convinced the NPFMC to begin a review of the terrible bycatch waste in the GOA by draggers, and perhaps we can sustain this forward momentum, but only through your involvement. It has been years since the NPFMC has taken a hard look at the waste of resources in the GOA. You have finally moved them. Next we'll push them to stop the killing off of our halibut by these same irresponsible draggers.

A dragger crewman's account available at: http://www.alaskacafe.blogspot.com/

Find out more about the Council's meeting agenda at :http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/Agendas/611Agenda.pdf

Listen in to the proceedings: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/audio.pdf

Keep yer flippers wet.

Halibut Bycatch by Longliners Targeting Sablefish

2011-05-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

All gear groups must be held responsible for their bycatch. The latest stats from the NMFS (http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm) reveal that the observed longliners (over 60 feet) targeting sablefish, are catching (and releasing) very large percentages of halibut.

Clipper Surprise had 64% halibut bycatch in 6 observed hauls
Clipper Epic had 61% halibut bycatch in 5 observed hauls
Baranof had 47% halibut bycatch in 8 observed hauls
Evening Star had 33% bycatch in 15 observed hauls

While longlined halibut are not killed outright, like most trawl bycatch, "...injuries are most frequently caused by improper release methods used by vessel crews. Other significant factors include the length of the soak time, which can exacerbate the mortality caused by hooking injuries and also increase the potential for amphipod predation." Soak time is an underdiscussed issue for vessels targeting halibut, as well, since long soak times are especially lethal on undersize fish, with regard to sand fleas and other predation. If the NPFMC is going to revisit PSC bycatch for trawlers, they also need to examine the unacceptable levels of bycatch by the autobaiting longline fleet, limiting soak time for halibut longlines, the impact of early halibut openings on the late season spawning halibut.

The last two issues are under the purview of the IPHC, but a good kick in the pants by the NPFMC won't hurt to help the IPHC re-examine their season timing with the changes going on in the Gulf as a result of the climatic shifts we are seeing.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Dirty Dozen Halibut Trawlers

2011-05-10T18:36:00.001-07:00

NOAA sources (http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm) show that the GOA non-pelagic draggers are continuing to damage halibut stocks at unacceptable levels. The Chellissa, bottom dragging for pollock, is thus far the worst offender, killing 31 % of her total pollock poundage in halibut. Fishing this dirty is criminal behavior. The fact so few of these drags are observed more than likely means this wastage of the halibut resource is only the tip of the iceberg.

Arrowtooth is a worthless fish, "This is the nastiest fish I have ever tasted!" (http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-flatfish-pudding-now-wal-mart-near-you), for which the highest price fish in the GOA is being wasted. Apparently draggers can make a dime off of it by delivering the bycatch of other species like cod, to support fishing arrowtooth.

The NPFMC will not consider halibut bycatch at their June meeting in Nome, but have moved to consider alternatives to push back halibut bycatch by 5, 10, or 15%. http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/npfmc/current_issues/halibut_issues/halibutPSCmotion411.pdf Obviously these proposed reductions to halibut bycatch are far too small to have any real effect on the decline of halibut and the criminal waste of this high value resource.

Chellissa dragging pollock took 31% halibut in 6 observed tows
Pacific Star dragging arrowtooth took 17% halibut in 9 observed tows
Cape Kiwanda dragging cod took 16% halibut in 3 observed tows
American No 1 dragging arrowtooth took 15% halibut in 5 observed tows
Caravelle dragging arrowtooth took 13% halibut in 7 observed tows
Ocean Alaska dragging arrowtooth took 11% halibut in 7 observed tows
Michelle Rene dragging cod took 10% halibut in 16 observed tows
Miss Sarah dragging cod took 9% halibut in 3 observed tows
Sea Mac dragging cod took 9% halibut in 13 observed tows
Vaerdal dragging rex sole took 8% halibut in 18 observed tows
Ocean Alaska dragging arrowtooth took 8% halibut in 11 observed tows
Peggy Jo dragging cod took 8% halibut in 15 observed tows

Keep yer flippers wet.

In Case You Didn't Hear…

2011-05-07T09:01:00.001-07:00

http://www.alaskanewspapers.com/article.php?article=1118federal_subsistence_board_wants_lower_salmon

“Members of the Federal Subsistence Board …voted at its May 3-4 meeting in Anchorage to recommend a hard cap of 15,000 king salmon caught as bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska Pollock fishery, and a hard cap of 50,000 chum salmon in the Bering Sea pollock fishery.”
Although the subsistence board is no friend of mine (allowing the ‘take’ of sealions by Alaska Natives) they see that the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council’s preferred alternative for the limit on king salmon bycatch is not tough enough, and represents the status quo, not an effective cutback on the waste of this resource. Final action is scheduled for June.

Keep yer flippers wet.

NOAA Halibut and Chinook Mortality Report Ending April 16th

2011-04-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

-----

NOAA Mortality Link Multiply halibut numbers times 2200lbs!

As you can clearly see, the draggers are pounding the hell out of the halibut and king salmon in these screen shots of the extrapolated observed numbers, (heavily gamed as they are). These represent, at best, hints of the destruction going on in the Gulf of Alaska. My advice: SCREAM at the agency, the governor, your senators and representatives, and the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and bring down the house. Just saying...if you want a future. Do it. Your discouragement is an ally to the draggers.

Here is the NPFMC contact information. Most important is to contact the Alaska delegation, voting members, and James Balsiger. The outsiders don't care what you say, really!

Keep yer flippers wet.

Rumors: Draggers Hammer Halibut in Pursuit of Flats

2011-04-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

__________

It seems that even as the draggers are wailing, weeping, gnashing their teeth, and licking their wounds over their apparent loss at the NPFMC regarding their excessive bycatch of king salmon, they are hammering the halibut in pursuit of their near worthless flats (flatfish). This is known in psychology as a murderous rage.

Reports are that halibut boats on particularly good fishing, are being followed by draggers working the same edge. Intentional or accidental, the damage to the halibut stocks remains at an unacceptable level.(IPHC) While Gulf of Alaska halibut fishermen see smaller and smaller halibut, and fewer of them as well, and their quotas shrink by double digits, the unconstrained drag fleet sweeps halibut into oblivion. At least 70% of the drag fleet is unobserved, the observations are skewed by carefully selecting clean areas to drag while observed. And since only 30% of the drag time is observed, only half of that really is observed since the observers are only allowed to work 12 hour days. So 15% percent observation results in the data that is projected by extrapolation (a kind of mathematical hocus pocus) to be the bycatch. This is a crime.

As one halibut fishermen was heard to say, "The end is near." Some would argue that the drag fleet feels the sooner the halibut are gone, the sooner they can do as they will with the flatfish in the Gulf. They tried it with king salmon. It happened to red king crab in the Gulf, why not the other highly valued species; once they are gone, why protect them and constrain the draggers?

Extrapolated catch of 904,00 pounds total, with 184,000 pounds taken the week ending April 9th.

Ex-vessel value of this unconscionable waste is $5,424,000 at $6 per pound.

Three times that to the consumer market! How much to the charter fleet?

How high is the true loss to productivity, to sustainability?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Belize Gets Rid of Trawlers to Preserve Fisheries' Health

2011-04-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

Belize, which has one of the most forward looking fisheries management systems in the Caribbean, has rid itself of the destructive practice of trawling. Belizean fisheries cooperatives have much sway in the way Belize handles its fisheries. We might some day do as well.

Read here.

Keep yer flippers wet.

NPFMC Constrains Trawler PSC of King Salmon!

2011-04-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

The NPFMC set a PSC hard cap of 22,500 king salmon for the Gulf of Alaska pollock fleet today as their preferred alternative for analysis in a stunning move toward enlightened and responsible resource management. There is plenty of credit to pass around, to all the groups and individuals who pushed for this new day in the management of the Gulf of Alaska. Final action is scheduled in June, so do not take off the gloves yet.

But to be fair, this could not have happened without members of the NPFMC finally recognizing their responsibility to the king salmon resource. Alaska's Governor Sean Parnell made a promise to reduce bycatch, and his choice of Fish and Game Commissioner, Cora Campbell made the successful motion. The arguments were heated, emotional, and dramatic. In the end the NPFMC voted to do the right thing. This is a huge victory for the State of Alaska toward the end of colonialism in its fishery resources; a huge victory for all the little people who have been marginalised for too long.

Read more here:

Keep yer flippers wet.

GOA Trawlers Violate Two International Treaties and Endangered Species Act

2011-03-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

The excessive trawler bycatch of at least 51,000 king salmon in the Gulf of Alaska, has triggered a "consultation" on the ESA. Likely bycatch of remaining endangered kings from rivers all down the West Coast as far away as the Merced and Sacramento Rivers is the concern. That is why there has been so much foot dragging over genetic analysis by the agencies. It might expose some real problems.

Bycatch of treaty kings from Canada and the IPHC finally confessing that trawler bycatch is dangerous to the halibut resource (see story below), indicts Gulf of Alaska trawlers for violating two international treaties. Will NOAA continue to back this group against the good health of our fisheries? The US is famous for breaking treaties with its aboriginal peoples, how about with Canada? How about the Endangered Species Act? The agencies made some provisions to control trawling after they (and others) practiced genocide on my species.

Keep yer flippers wet.

IPHC: Halibut PSC limits were based on inadequate data.

2011-03-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

"The existing GOA Prohibited Species Cap (PSC) limits have been in place for trawl fisheries since 1986 and for fixed gear fisheries since 1996."

"Monitoring of both historical and current bycatch mortality is inadequate, and the PSC limit for trawl fisheries should be reduced as a precautionary measure until the improved observer procedures are implemented, at which time the estimated bycatch mortality levels can be re-evaluated in the context of halibut stock dynamics." http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/npfmc/current_issues/halibut_issues/IPHC_PSCdiscpaper311.pdf

This has been an open secret for fifty years, as far as domestic trawling in the Gulf of Alaska is concerned. We know it. We have plenty of living witnesses. But few have had the balls to make it public. That rare video tape that you find on this blog illustrates the point that lies and deception have ruled the day. Money does indeed talk. So when the stodgy folks at the IPHC finally come clean and say that trawling on halibut stocks threatens the survival of those stocks, well, take heart. I smell change in the air. Or am I down wind of the haulout?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Hitting the Kings Again

2011-03-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Until tomorrow...

NMFS Prohibits Directed Fishing for Pollock in Statistical Area 620 in the Gulf of Alaska

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is prohibiting directed fishing for pollock in Statistical Area 620 (between 154 degrees and 159 degrees W. longitudes) in the Gulf of Alaska, effective 12 noon, Alaska local time, March 22, 2011, according to James W. Balsiger, Administrator, Alaska Region, NMFS.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Top Deadliest PSC Bycatch Through March 12 (Revised)

2011-03-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

Through March 16, here are the dirtiest boats in the Gulf of Alaska in regard to observed bycatch. What is not seen remains secret. (This is revised, as raw data did not accurately represent the catches. W.)

Longliners targeting cod:

Kjevolja 5.38% bycatch of halibut in 117 observed hauls
Blue North 6.12% bycatch of halibut in 90 observed hauls
Beauty Bay 9.31% bycatch of halibut in 49 observed hauls
Zenith 4.39% bycatch in 73 observed hauls

Unless these vessels are hand releasing the halibut, substantial damage to the halibut occurs with strippers or crucifiers and therefore an unacceptable high mortality damages the resource.

Non-pelagic trawlers targeting cod or 'bottom' pollock:

Chellissa 311 kg per metric ton of pollock or 31% bycatch of halibut
Cape Kiwanda 160 kg per metric ton of cod or 16% bycatch of halibut
Michelle Rene 103 kg per metric ton of cod or 10% bycatch of halibut

These are hard on the bottom draggers, the halibut mortality is very high. But remember, this is only a snapshot since there are few observations here, data distortion occurs. It might be lower or a helluva lot higher. No one is there to bear witness.

Non-pelagic trawlers targeting cod or pollock:

Legacy bycatch of 134 kings
Pacific Star bycatch of 67 kings
Gold Rush bycatch of 22 kings
For all observed bottom trawls so far---236 kings

Hard on the bottom (non pelagic) trawlers kill kings too. These kings are dead, they do not survive the trip to the deck. These are actual numbers, not percentages. Read it and weep.

Pelagic trawlers targeting pollock:

Caravelle bycatch of 67 kings
Hickory Wind bycatch of 62 kings
Leslie Lee bycatch of 50 kings
For all observed pelagic trawls so far---280 kings

These kings most likely are sluiced into the fish hold along with the targeted species and end up sorted out at the processing plant...quite dead.

Evidence that pelagic does not mean 'off the bottom:'

Mar Pacifico 35 kg of halibut per metric ton of cod, supposedly pelagic trawling. Definitions for pelagic and non-pelagic need tightening. Currently they are pretty much unenforceable and meaningless. He was as they say, 'kissing the bottom.' Lots of bottom kissing in trawling, apparently.

Watch for the king salmon bycatch to sky rocket during the 'C' and 'D' seasons. 'D' stands for deadly, when it comes to king salmon bycatch.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Bycatch Information Restored at NOAA

2011-03-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Although still reading in green that the data is unavailable, the Bycatch Rate Data is again available at http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/pscinfo.htm. To make much sense of it, use your skills at Excel data sorting to hone in on the information you need.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Rumor has it...

2011-03-04T17:01:00.000-08:00

Crew report catches of over 150,000 pounds of eulachon and squid in the Shelikof when the target is pollock. This was observed. No wonder they are getting kings! Easy to forget that the destruction of these forage species means the destruction of the food sources for the more 'valuable' fish. We'll see what we can dig out of the NMFS bycatch stats. But it is shortsighted and stupid to ignore the wholesale destruction of forage fish. They call it ECOLOGY.
Out at Dutch, draggers are seen to come into the dock to pump off. After the catch is sorted ashore, the plant pumps a deckload of herring back onto the dragger for dumping at sea.
Crewman Johnny Eastcoaster, looking for work, comments that he is seeing some dislike of draggers by the rest of the Kodiak fishing fleet. Admits that dragging back home off Cape Cod has meant there is nothing left to catch. Says you have to go offshore 200 miles to find a decent fish. Just saying...
"It can't happen here," Frank Zappa.

Keep 'em wet.

King Salmon Bycatch Motion

2011-02-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/current_issues/bycatch/GOAchinookbycatchMotion211.pdf

AIS snapshot taken at 10:15 AM February 22, 2011.

Trawling for pollock off Karluk River where king salmon escapement goals continue to fail. We are assured that the pollock dragging has little to do with it. But with the drag fleet so close to the river and so concentrated, we have to wonder.

King salmon bycatch projections and conjurations will be available in ten days or so, here:

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2011/car120_goa.pdf

This is the same general area where the joint ventures back in the 1980s killed off thousands of sealions, mostly females and junveniles. Too much money interferred with controls, like now with king salmon.

Keep yer flippers wet.

"Council keeps Gulf chinook restrictions on fast track"

2011-02-12T18:18:00.000-08:00

Read the full story here: Alaska Journal of Commerce.

Sounds like Larry, Moe, and Julie are at it again. Pretty effective, though, for stooges.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Rumor and Reality: Conviction Brings Little Pain

2011-02-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

We told you so...as reported here,

"Dateline: Monday, October 12, 2009"

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

"So now the argument is arising (Bob Krueger on KMXT) that the pictures posted on this site and other places are not identified because they are not really of tanners scooped up by a Kodiak trawler, but of an ADF&G survey vessel's deck shot. Not! The reason is to protect the informants, the photographers, from reparations, i.e., REVENGE. Besides it would be best if the draggers policed their own and exposed these ugly guys for the rogues that they are...enemies of the people and all that. Too much to expect?

I asked somebody why the landlord of the vessel(s) in question don't get rid of the dirty skipper, and the answer came back...'They make him too much money.' So if there is a GOOD, that's it. This rogue makes his handler too much money. The BAD is this vessel is operated without any conscience at all for the health of the ocean in general, health of the resource in particular, and the future of everyone of us who depends on the bounty of Kodiak's ocean resources to provide us with the life that we all love. The UGLY is the barrage of lies and deceptions which have become second nature to some people in order to protect their incomes while eroding our precious resources. UGLY is the fact that they do not appear to recognize their own lies. UGLY is the totes of halibut ping pong paddles I saw at the cannery; at the codends of spilled yelloweyes; the waste of the incredible numbers of king salmon. UGLY too is the foot dragging of our managers and protection people who, I have learned, know perfectly well what is going on and turn away from it. 'No hard evidence.' 'Unsubstantiated rumor.' Et cetera.

Could the stories we hear be only about one or two of these draggers? Selling cod bycatch to jig boats? Sixteen hours to clean up a haul of tanners in the Sand Box? Dumping a codend of small halibut in Marmot this summer? Dumping a codend and deck load of flats in front of APS this month? Where the hell is enforcement? Where the hell are the 'good guy' draggers who could pressure for this guy to STOP? Hmmm...they must be dirty too...the only possible conclusion.

I am not convinced draggers can fish clean. But I do know that I won't ever be convinced unless they stop swimming in the same UGLY school as the dirty ones."

Dateline: Today

Jeffrey Eugene Scott, of Kodiak, recently convicted of threatening a fisheries observer, is the same skipper who pled guilty to dumping seventy-five tons of flatfish into the Kodiak Harbor, as reported in the paragraph above. Misdemeanors? How about the hillbilly heroin, the cocaine, the weed smoked openly on deck in plain view of everyone at the cannery? Enforcement didn't drug test? Why not? His out of control, out of his mind behavior wasn't cause? Look at his record. Anyway, point is, the rumors are turning out to be reality (Is that news?). The drag fleet is not lilly white (Is that news?). They protect each other's backs regardless of the facts, and apparently prefer to be hung together rather than come clean.

Thank you to enforcement for this conviction.
Thank you to the courageous observer (good observers are out there and scare the hell out of these pirates).
But No thanks to the justice system who puts this criminal right back into the fleet.
And No thanks to the trawler owner who ignores criminal behavior in order to make a profit. (Why not turn Scott in for that sale of cod bycatch to the jigger, or the Tanner crab deckload? Because he has secrets on you!)

Seventy five tons of flatfish wasted? A drop in the bucket for what our trawlers waste every year. And misdemeanors for that, if convicted, then a slap on the wrist 'and go back jack and do it again.'

Remember: MSC certifies flatfish as sustainable, too!

Keep yer flippers wet.

Do You Believe Everythng You Hear?

2011-01-16T13:57:00.000-08:00

Regarding the damage that draggers and their supporters, the processors, wreak on our Gulf of Alaska resources, perhaps we should review some evidence:

Eye witness accounts abound about the wasteful practices of the drag fleet. Since draggers themselves believe they should hang together so as to present a united front, we must unfortunately condemn the whole lot. Stories, each unique, told by credible witnesses, recount deckloads of mangled crab, codends full of bloated yelloweye rockfish, ping pong paddle halibut shoveled dead out the 'shit chute,' observer tows made on known sterile grounds, observers not doing their jobs but smoking a joint on duty while in the galley, falsified observer record keeping, hungry crewmen quiting a good paying boat in disgust over Tanner crab hauls south of Ugak Island, draggers selling their cod bycatch to a jig boat, sea lions shot on deck after they have survived the extra drowning time at the end of tows; hundreds killed in the JV bad old days. No, not every story is perfectly accurate, but there are just too many to be discounted. 'Believe it , mon.'
Blind eyed mismanagement based on 'scientific evidence' while acknowledging that the evidence is flawed, fixed, poor, mixed, or missing. Relying on the 'groundupfish data bunk' for information; a self described, self serving, propaganda wing of the Whitefish Trawlers, formerly the Alaska Draggers Association. Profound foot dragging by management for observational coverage of fishing operations in the GOA, including electronic (which at the least might show observers doing/not doing their jobs), burying the observers with sampling work which impinges on their ability to do the bycatch observation so important to sustainability. Excellent scientific evidence is the best, but some reasonable effort must be made to gather it. Obstruction of evidence gathering is unconscionable.
'We base decisions on the best available science.' That sounds so good, but the available science is not the best, in fact the data is 'gamed' heavily. Projections on bycatch of the unobserved fleet are little more than raw speculation, since the when and where tows are observed are controlled by the captain of the dragger. This 'gamed' data is then plowed into the statistics as though it were good science and management decisions are based upon it. Were we to build bridges or airplanes so, the folly of such 'best available science' would be more clearly grounded. The outcomes of this poor methodology is becoming evident as the stocks of king crab have already collapsed, Tanners struggle to recover, king salmon staggers below escapement goals, and halibut numbers decline. Unless the way we do business in the Gulf of Alaska changes, expect a dismal future.
The corporate tentacles reach far, from political influence which appoints the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Board of Fish. There is no attempt to isolate these movers and shakers from the money that is made exploiting the GOA. In a further attempt to obfuscate the truth, outfits like the Marine Stewardship Council and Marine Conservation Alliance are created for and supported by corporate industry to make us feel good about the 'responsible corporate citizens' who are making a killing off the public resource. Anytime Unilever and World Wildlife Fund get in bed together, the offspring is bound to be twisted.

So, do you believe everything you hear? Well, you better not. But the truth is out there. It is not easy, pleasant, or comfortable. But as adults in a democratic society, we'd better wake up and demand that we get better representation on our management councils, and stop letting industry control the group think.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Processors and Trawlers Squash Cod Price

2011-01-03T13:32:00.000-08:00

Because of the squashed quality and the mass quantity of trawler cod mush, rumor has the posted price of all cod, dragged, longline, pot, and jig down to an incredible 25/35 cents a pound 24 inch split, ex-vessel. I see Europe and the East Coast looking and laughing at us, colonial Alaska, nothing ever changes. Major processors set the price. Congress, NPFMC and the State give carte blanche to big industry; trawlers are in bed with processors, and small players are either legislated out or crushed out by big players. Alaska's natural resources are given away at ten cents on the dollar to mostly foreign owned corporations...this is basic colonialism. Alaska is a state in name only.

This ad is from Cabelas' website. That's $16 a pound! Recovery isn't nearly that of halibut, but 35 cents a pound to fishermen? Even at 20% recovery, $1 a pound would be more reasonable for cod. But why would processors pay more when they get cod for next to nothing en mass from draggers. Who is talking quality product here?

Let's see...45,524 metric tons of GOA cod TAC, or around 100 million pounds. Conveniently decimal. At .35 a pound ex-vessel means 35 million dollars gross. For every 10 cents the processors short us on our cod, they short us 10 million dollars! Short the community 10 million dollars for every dime. Outrageous! What about that, Louise?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Happy New Year and Rumor Has It...

2010-12-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

The danger of rumors is, of course, they may be false or purposely used as disinformation to manipulate various groups. In keeping with Wiglaf's policy of NOT promoting untruths, we withdraw this PVOA/FVOA rumor. However, the bottom line remains, dragger bycatch of halibut is intolerable, unconscionable, and unsustainable. To hammer on and kill the halibut ($6 per pound) while pursuing worthless flounders (.04 per pound) for the relatively valuable (.24 to .35 per pound) 20% bycatch of cod, which shouldn't be allowed anyway, but is, in hopes of "developing a flatfish fishery," remains bullshit. Whoever said the Russian oligarchs were so corrupt has never looked at Alaskan fishery politics...the last stronghold of real pirates.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Stikine, Taku king forecasts too low for gillnet opening

2010-12-27T16:09:00.000-08:00

According to KFSK-FM (Petersburg), there again won't be a commercial king salmon gillnetting season for the Stikine and Taku rivers next May. Alaska Fish and Game has released its pre-season forecasts for the rivers, and the predicted returns won't be high enough to support a commercial harvest. The forecasts are large enough, however, for liberalized sport fishing limits (to be announced in spring). One department official says the expected low returns are likely the result of large escapements in previous years producing crowded stream conditions for young salmon, but that the trend is looking up. Listen to much, much more at APRN.
Thanks to Alaska Dispatch for the "heads up."

So while Kodiak Draggers' reported king salmon catch goes ballistic, fisheries around Alaska close for lack of fish. Who'd a thought? But Southeast Alaskans pretend that what happens in the Gulf of Alaska doesn't affect them. Unconstrained halibut and king salmon bycatch is part of the reason why their halibut catch has been in such dramatic decline, yet they fail to engage in the politics of bycatch control because trawling is essentially closed in SE. We can only hope they wake up. Ecology means we are all part of one thing, afterall.

Make your New Year's resolution to write a letter, make a call, or attend the North Pacific Fisheries Managment Council in Seattle January 31 through February 8, 2011 or the Alaska Board of Fish in Kodiak January 11 through 14 and tell our managers to stop the excessive and uncontrolled bycatch of our precious fisheries resources by unrestrained and unobserved draggers. Letters to the BOF deadline is tomorrow, the 28th.

Keep your flippers thawed.

Anonymous comment:

2010-12-14T21:29:00.000-08:00

Those "ping pong paddle" size halibut are soon to be commercially viable. They have survived to a size where they are subject to little natural predation. The draggers are their biggest predator.

As Wiglaf points out, the idiot from the rebadged AK draggers Assoc is confessing that their bycatch, measured in tons, is actually many times worse.

What is the value of all those halibut, salmon, crab and don't forget all the wasted small cod and pollock to all fishermen, processing workers and everyone who depends on local landing tax revenue?

Back in '97 the Canucks showed the NPFMC how to drastically reduce bycatch AND catch all your trawl allowable catches. The NPFMC wasn't and isn't interested.

NPFMC Considers Chinook Bycatch Options and Peeks at Halibut PSC

2010-12-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

In the meeting that is currently underway in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council has voted to move expeditiously to control Chinook bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska. Chair Eric Olson framed the crux of the problem as he compared bycatch rates of Chinook in the Bering Sea to those in the GOA, where they are "many orders of magnitude higher."

Council voted to, among other things, to have staff report on a suite of regulatory options to include:

full retention of salmon by draggers so a true accounting becomes possible
hard caps on Chinook bycatch,
observer coverage on Super 8s (under 60 ft vessels)
mandatory salmon bycatch control cooperatives

It was clear in testimony that Chinook populations are in trouble and trawler bycatch is egregious. The same old apologists dragged their feet and attempted to slow action on Chinook, but they did not come out and block Council action. Final motion passed without opposition. Cora Campbell made the motion.

Groundfish report:

Interestingly, Duncan Fields was the only member of the NPFMC who objected to the extremely high rates of halibut PSC allowed in the GOA groundfish specifications for this next year. Although it sometimes appears the Council is responsive to the resource, only money moves the majority. With halibut collapsing, Cora Campbell voted with all others on the Council to approve GOA groundfish specs including 2000 metric tons of halibut waste. Only Fields stood firm against this.

Speaking of halibut:

Bob Krueger, president of the Whitefish Trawlers Association, in his testimony, blames halibut fishermen and the IPHC for the draggers waste of 4.4 million pounds of halibut. Pretzel logic? He also stated that draggers kill mostly 'ping pong paddle' size halibut, which are too weak to out swim the trawls, and not commercially valuable fish anyway. Go figure. Like killing off the nurseries is not as bad as killing off the adults? Destroying fish before they reach spawning age is not a sound idea, Bob. If they are only one pounders, we calculate that the trawlers are really wasting at least ten times that much fish...an incredible 44 million pounds of 32 inch halibut, if they were to mature to minimum legal size!

"Agenda Item D-1(b) GOA Halibut PSC Limits
---
Council Motion
---
In recent years, the directed halibut catch limits in the GOA regulatory areas 2C, 3A and 3B have declined steadily, and the recommended catch limits for 2011 are almost 30% lower than in 2010. Growth rates of halibut remain very low and size at age has been declining; much of the total biomass is made up of smaller fish that are more vulnerable than larger fish to trawl gear. In addition, evidence of west to east migration of halibut within a coast wide stock may have implications for the impacts of halibut bycatch on stock assessment, and directed fishing opportunities. These factors raise concerns about the current halibut PSC limits in the GOA, and the effect this bycatch has on the directed fishing opportunities, as well as the productivity of the stock.
---
At this time the Council has not selected a specific process for considering changes to the GOA halibut PSC limits. Although the Council believes that an evaluation of the current halibut PSC limits is warranted, additional information about the condition of halibut stocks, the effects of bycatch reduction, and other fishery factors is necessary. Therefore, the Council directs staff to provide information on the following topics:
---
1. The effect of reducing bycatch limits in the GOA on the exploitable biomass available to the directed fisheries, over an appropriate time period; this includes the effects of migration on downstream users. (i.e. what is the effect of a 100mt reduction in bycatch over a 5 year period?).
2. The recent changes in IPHC stock assessment methods, harvest policies, and catch limit setting on directed halibut fisheries.
3. Changes to Federal fishery management programs and halibut PSC apportionments that begin in 2012 that are relevant to the use of halibut PSC.
4. Possible causes of low growth rates and the effects on future exploitable biomass and spawning biomass.
---
The Council further requests the IPHC to provide the appropriate scientific expertise and information to assist the Council."

At first blush, we thought the Council had made progress on these two issues of wanton waste of fisheries resources, but in retrospect, this is a weak and ineffectual response. The Council works at glacial speed, so interested parties need to keep the pressure up for at least two more meetings before we might see any progress on Chinook and halibut prohibited species catch and the resultant damage to these important resources that affect so many peoples lives. Uncle Ted used to say this was the best fisheries council in the USA. So sad. Please call your representative, your senator, your governor, whomever you determine can give feedback to the council about the horrible waste that is going on in the gulf to support these few draggers at the expense of the rest of us.

In any case, keep yer flippers wet.

Alaska Governor Parnell Promises to Reduce Bycatch

2010-12-07T15:29:00.000-08:00

JUNEAU, Alaska - Jan. 20 - Following is the prepared text of Gov. Sean Parnell’s (R) 2010 state of the state address:

"Now to fishing. Alaskans are proud of our fishing traditions and heritage. Control of our seafood resources was one of the original drivers behind Alaska’s push for statehood. Today, we budget for better scientific data and work to reduce bycatch to ensure continued abundance for all Alaskans. "

Now is the time to call Govenor Parnell and tell him you are counting on him to be true to his promises. Chinook, halibut, crab. Seriously. Here is his number: 907 465 3500. Just do it.

It will make a difference.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Canadian Dragger Youtubes Worth Watching

2010-12-05T13:51:00.000-08:00

These Canadian YouTube videos have application to US fisheries as well. Basically the same political influence in Canada apply as in the US and Alaska; big money against good sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvwUeZirCe0&feature=related

"Trawlers continue to destroy the world's ocean and fishes while those responsible become multi-millionaires. Too bad such horrible marine environmental crimes still continue while those responsible get richer and richer. Thanks Martin Willison for your efforts to stop this terrible madness."

Thanks to Reel Knotty for posting on Sportfishingbc.com website, where I borrowed this.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Mismanaged PSC Destroys Legal Halibut Quota

2010-12-02T23:47:00.001-08:00

International Pacific Halibut Commission reports staff recommended cuts of 47% in Southeast Alaska's area 2B, 28% in area 3A, and 24% in 3B.

As we earlier predicted, the unwillingness of the NPFMC to rein in the Gulf of Alaska trawlers has led to the devastation of the legal halibut longline quota. The kill 'em off strategy of the GOA trawl fleet is being effective. If the legal quotas on PSC species (crab, salmon, halibut) can be driven down far enough, there won't be any viable opposition left to the complete dominance of the trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska. Once these most valuable species are removed, less than forty drag boats will own the Gulf of Alaska and the other thousands of fishermen can apply for food stamps or for a job at Walmart. Meanwhile the spineless North Pacific Fisheries Mismanagement Council makes shallow and ineffective regulations too little and too late to save the larger and economically more important fleet and thereby spells doom to coastal communities bordering the Gulf. There is the smell of bankruptcy in the wind. First crab, then king salmon and now halibut.

Three things are leading us to the end of halibut as a healthy species:

Unknown and uncounted mortality. Poorly covered and heavily gamed trawler observations leave a huge data gap in numbers of tons of halibut that are destroyed each year by trawling. Halibut PSC is out of control. The NPFMC continues to delay movement at the cost of the resource...which is not new. As the Kodiak fleet of trawlers ups their horsepower, the numbers of large halibut killed continues to rise. Forget the official numbers, they are and have been adjusted to a comfortable level, or are just plain wrong.
Crucification of halibut by codfishing longliners. Hook strippers or crucifiers maim and kill uncounted numbers of halibut every cod season when they rip out the hook, tearing off much of the halibut's jaw; sometimes the whole face. Delusional thinking is not confined to trawlers in regard to ethics and conservation of fish species. Ethical fishing, unfortunately, like a lot of things in life, is based on economics. "How much will it cost me to be ethical? If it is too much, I can't afford to be ethical." We hear this argument openly used in one form or another at every NPFMC and Alaska Board of Fish meeting, where it nearly always wins! If we are to have healthy fisheries in the future, ethical conservation behavior must be priority ONE.
Destruction of the large breeder fish. Killing the big halibut MOTHER fish is destroying the most capable breeders, with the healthiest eggs. Never mind what the IPHC says, they will eventually admit it's true. The very large halibut spawn more healthy eggs that result in more live larvae in the water with greater survivability and yet are the target of both sport and commercial fishermen; trophy or cash, the mistake remains a crucial problem for a healthy halibut resource.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Fox in the Chicken Coop

2010-11-30T14:40:00.001-08:00

Have you ever wondered why so many of these NMFS papers reflect spun data and favor the draggers? The credits of authorship of the Chinook PSC paper tells part of the story. The Fox is advising the Chickens.

On the last page of the paper it reads:

"13 Preparers
November 2010 update:
Diana Evans, NPFMC
Mike Fey, AKFIN

"Other contributors:
Sally Bibb, NMFS, Alaska Region
*Julie Bonney, Groundupfish Databunk (dragger mouthpiece extraordinaire)
Melanie Brown, NMFS, Alaska Region
Mary Furuness, NMFS, Alaska Region
Mary Grady, NMFS Alaska Region
Jeannie Heltzel, NPFMC
Josh Keaton, NMFS, Alaska Region
Martin Loefflad, NMFS, AFSC
John Olson, NMFS Alaska Region
Diana Stram, NPFMC"

FOR PETE'S SAKE! There is no independent data from that quarter! NMFS has so little credibility, why would they squander it with DATABUNK?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Of Chinook and 800 Pound Gorillas

2010-11-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

A large proportion of the at least 60,000 Prohibited Species Catch of Chinook in the Gulf of Alaska are likely to be Treaty Chinook from the rivers of British Columbia, or perhaps the Pacific Northwest or even the Sacramento River, in California. The responsible agency (NMFS) has been remiss in not requiring full retention and genetic sampling of all Chinook PSC in the GOA to determine their origin. What little trial sampling that has been done is well buried in some archive somewhere. More important than Kodiak's Karluk or the Aiakulik, whose run failures are catastrophic, these migrating salmon from elsewhere are the 8oo pound gorilla in the room. 'Outside' interests may be able to help outraged Alaskans finally control the rampant and irresponsible dragger PSC bycatch waste. Help! Call and write your representatives in Victoria, Ottawa, Olympia, Salem, Sacramento, and DC today! Awaken your 800 pound gorilla and get him fighting for all of us.

And keep yer flippers wet.

NPFMC Meets December 8-14, Make Your Voice Heard

2010-11-15T08:04:00.000-08:00

If you have been following the egregious Prohibited Species Catch by Gulf of Alaska trawlers of Chinook salmon then this meeting is for you. Attend by Webinar if you can not attend in person, but most importantly, let the NPFMC hear from you in writing regarding the wholesale destruction of the Chinook salmon resource by GOA trawlers. Trawlers in the GOA take ten times as many Chinook in proportion to pollock as do the trawlers in the Bering Sea, yet there is no cap, no limit, no attempts by management for restraint in the Gulf of Alaska.

NPFMC website: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/default.htm

"Written comments and materials to be included in Council meeting notebooks must be received at the Council office by 5:00 pm (Alaska Time) on TUESDAY November 30, 2010. Written and oral comments should include a statement of the source and date of information provided as well as a brief description of the background and interests of the person(s) submitting the statement. Comments can be sent by mail or fax—please do not submit comments by e-mail." (courtesy of NPFMC)

"The following points may be useful in composing your letter:
• The Council has taken action to control the bycatch of Chinook salmon in the Bering Sea by placing a ‘cap’ on the number of Chinooks allowed to be taken. However, the Council has taken no action in the Gulf of Alaska.
• The rate of Chinook bycatch (salmon per ton of groundfish) is over 10 times that taken in the Bering Sea.
• Subsistence, sport and commercial salmon fishermen bear the conservation responsibility through reduced harvest. Groundfish fisheries have not been required to share that responsibility.
• Chinook stocks in Kodiak’s Karluk River have continued to decline during the years 2001- 2010. The stocks have also failed to meet escapement goals for the last four of those years. Chinook salmon on the Karluk River has been CLOSED to subsistence for the last 3 years and sport fishing for the 2009 and 2010 seasons for conservation reasons. ADF&G has recommended that the Board of Fish declare the Karluk River Chinook as a ‘Stock of concern’.
• For the commercial fishery the BOF prohibits the retention of Chinook salmon over a certain size in the outer Karluk district.
• Chinook bycatch is not particularly well estimated in the Gulf because there is not 100% observer coverage in the groundfish fisheries. Estimates are based on assumptions that observed and unobserved vessels are doing the same thing. There is sufficient reason to question those assumptions.
• Low returns of Chinook salmon to the Karluk, Aiakulik and other systems in the Gulf of Alaska have had a negative economic impact on both the guided sport and charter boat industries." (courtesy of AMCC Action Alert)

Address your letters to:
Mr. Eric Olson, Chair
North Pacific Fisheries Management Council
PO Box 103136
Anchorage, Alaska 99510
FAX: 907-271-2817

NPFMC Agenda: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/Agendas/1210Agenda.pdf

Two agenda items need your attention and comment:

C-5 GOA Chinook Salmon Bycatch (4 hrs)
Review discussion paper.

D-1 Groundfish Management (8 hrs)
(b) Review discussion paper on GOA halibut PSC.

The discussion papers regarding Chinook and halibut PSC should be available on line at the end of this week or so. Stay tuned to the NPFMC website for your copy. As always there is not a lot of time for review and comment. (This helps keep outsiders from participating in the process.)

Keep your flippers wet.

Wiglaf Unmasked...er...Not!

2010-11-09T17:28:00.000-08:00

Anchorage Daily News paper edition reported that Wiglaf of Tholepin is...some sport fisher... Not!

The Anchorage Daily News doesn't know a dingle bar from a tickler chain, so they credit some guy with the work found here. Don't get me wrong, ADN means well, but Wiglaf expresses the informed professional opinion of a relatively large group of concerned commercial fishing sealions, so no single individual can be named as the responsible author. You know what they say, all sealions look alike. We are still here and not identified. Eat yer heart out!

We remember the cod end drownings and the shootings and the woundings, and have recently received plenty of threats, so it is important that we remain anonymous.

But thanks, anyway.

Keep yer flipper's wet!

Get Ready for Rollbacks

2010-11-04T21:29:00.001-07:00

NMFS rolls back the Chinook bycatch...which is like a guy taking back the confession that he's been with his best friend's wife...not very believable.

From 59,000 down to 51,916. There you are.

When you publish a 'fact' you can't take it back. There must be some pressure to make the number crunchers recount their beans. The Alaska Ground-Up-Fish Data Bank has been busy, eh?

Are we surprised? No. This is the way the shell game works. Now you see it, now you don't.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Enemies of the GOA Resources

2010-10-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

To the left are Tanner crab caught in a Kodiak dragnet. This kind of resource waste gets a blind eye from the names listed below. Read it and weep.

I better get this out there while I have an audience. As much as I hate to say so, the voting block on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council that regularly opposes any conservation interest are the representatives:

John Henderschedt (representing processors),

Bill Tweit, (representing WDFW, but really Washington trawler/processor interests), and

Roy Hyder (representing ODFW, but really Oregon trawler/processor interests). Come on folks, follow the money!

Ed Dersham, an Alaskan sportfish seat, regularly votes against conservation if he thinks it might hurt any commercial interests. Sad case. A bitter short timer.

If you want to influence the Council, hammer these fellows, since they regularly vote for profits, against reason, and damn your grandkids anyway, for the big money.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Never Forget Draggers Mean Damage to Halibut Too!

2010-10-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.tholepin.blogspot.com/2009/10/filthy-video-of-halibut-waste.html

Keep yer flippers wet.

GOA King Salmon Destruction Continues, Agency Juggles Numbers

2010-10-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Click on report to enlarge.

The October 16 PSC catch report on King Salmon destruction by trawlers shows another 4134 King salmon caught by GOA draggers. Interestingly they add the previously killed 56,636 to this week's 4134 mortality and get 58,194...hmm...NMFS reserves the right to adjust figures based upon...the sampling data. A form of juggling, eh? The actual number should be 60,870 king salmon destroyed.

Still, even these large numbers are probably on the low side, since much gaming goes on with the trawl fleet in order to hide the damage being done to achieve their short term profits.

The December NPFMC should be a good one. Plan to attend and testify to stop this madness, or at least to see how well the Alaska Groundup Fish Data Bank can dance and juggle at the same time. The dogs and ponies are already rehearsing, we're sure.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Dirtiest Draggers in the GOA to Date

2010-10-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

By doing a sort of data provided on-line by NMFS http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2010/pscinfo.htm we can see who the dirtiest draggers are in the GOA, our area of concern. While the majority of the NPFMC refused to recognize the gaming of bycatch figures of tanner crab bycatch, and refused to close down areas of concern for tanner crab protection, the figures provided by NMFS leave us with a very dirty picture of trawling in the GOA.

Crab: Week ending 27 March 2010, FV Golden Fleece, bottom dragging cod, caught 352 tanner crab per metric ton of bottom fish in four observed tows. Were these supposedly clean 'observer tows?' What happened once the observer left?

Halibut: Week ending 11 Sept 2010, FV Dusk, bottom dragging cod, caught 2526 pounds of halibut for every 2000 pounds of groundfish in two observed tows, so about 57% catch was PSC (prohibited species catch). This is just like the video we posted here last year http://www.tholepin.blogspot.com/2009/10/filthy-video-of-halibut-waste.html
Were these supposedly clean 'observer tows?' What happened once the observer left?

Chinook: Week ending 9 October 2010, FV Michelle Rene, pelagic trawling mid water pollock, caught 2606 Chinook in one observed tow. Only one tow observed. "Get that observer off, man, this is going to look bad!" But Michelle Rene had gotten 636 Chinook in one observed tow the week before. So much for avoiding hot spots. FV Pacific Star was there too, with 601 Chinook in two observed tows.

Week ending 9 October 2010, FV Sea Mac, pelagic bottom trawling pollock caught 864 Chinook in two observed tows, while the FV Half Moon Bay caught 674 in four observed tows. Again they were pelagic bottom trawling pollock. And you thought pelagic trawls couldn't bottom trawl? Well the FV Sea Storm apparently didn't know about that (or didn't care) and while pelagic bottom trawling hammered another 1002 Chinook in those same first two weeks of October.

Remember these are the observed tows, what happens when the observer leaves is the real story...but for the NPFMC, if it isn't observed it doesn't exist.

Total count so far this year in observed Chinook waste is nearly 57 thousand fish!

No telling what the real numbers are, but you can be sure this is a fragment of the real number and accounts in large part for diminishing Chinook salmon runs in the Cook Inlet, Kodiak Island, and Alaska Peninsula regions. Other drainages in western Alaska? Probably.

Get engaged, get active, save us from the destruction that dragging brings.

Keep yer flippers wet.

The Extinction of King Salmon? A Scandalous PSC Report

2010-10-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

We are witnessing the wholesale destruction of the Alaska King Salmon. Unless the trawlers are held back the King Salmon will become extinct. Over 25,000 King Salmon in one week destroyed in the pelagic trawl fishery.

Click report to enlarge.

http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2010/car120_goa.pdf

At the last NPFMC meeting, not one dragger would admit to the killing of Tanner crab. If asked, I suppose those same perjurous characters would say that with their pelagic gear on, they never kill King Salmon either. The US Coast Guard representative had so little knowledge of the gear type that when asked if the CG could tell pelagic gear from bottom gear, he stated that it was clear in the regs that more than 20 crab on a trawler deck would constitute bottom trawl gear. Where the hell is the gear specifications that the rest of us have to comply with? If pelagic is truly pelagic, it should be illegal for it to have chafing gear as part of the net. Afterall, if you are not on bottom, why need the protection from chafe? Trawling remains a shell (game) fishery.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Fair and Balanced Overview of NPFMC Meeting

2010-10-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/101410/fis_cal.shtml

More later...

Keep yer flippers wet.

Fallacies of Trawler Arguments to Kodiak City/Borough

2010-10-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

Fallacies in the Trawler Paper Written for the Kodiak City Council:

Central Gulf of Alaska Tanner Crab Bycatch

1) FALSE: Tanner crab bycatch in the GOA trawl fisheries is not a conservation concern. Because observed bycatch is poor, gamed, and generally unreliable, arguments about the low level of bycatch percentages of total abundance are specious and a poor defense of a dirty fishing gear type. Gross data gaps on trawler bycatch of tanner crab prevent serious consideration of such arguments. More convincing is: 1) the photographic evidence coming to light of excessive bycatch of mature tanner crab, 2) the reported abundance of tanner crab in non-trawled sanctuaries, 3) the commonly heard complaints by trawler crews of waste.

2) FALSE: Closures to protect tanner crab will have adverse economic impacts. Projection of economic impact is always a crap shoot. Tanner crab protection closures in the long run most likely will result in greater legal and deliverable tanner crab catches, as well as raising the productive rate of halibut and codfish. Short term trawler deliveries and economics have the long term consequences of damage to other fisheries that in the long run will destroy the economic viability of the community. A look at the east coast fisheries clearly shows the disadvantages of short sighted management.

3) FALSE: Too many trawl closures. Actually, there are too few. With trawl impacts well known on crab grounds, many formerly productive brooding and fishing areas remain without protection from hard-on-the-bottom trawling. This is widely believed to be responsible for, or contributory to, the reduction of king crab to the status of nearly extinct, the known destruction of 2000 MT of halibut every year, more than 20 thousand Chinook salmon annually, and the crimping of the comeback of tanner crab we are discussing here. And all this is based on poor observer data. If we really knew how bad it is, we might not be so complacent to limit this widespread destruction.

4) FALSE: Crab predation by commercial groundfish, trawling is actually good for crab. This argument is closely related to the same old arguments used to put bounties on bald eagles and seals in the bad old days, and the wholesale shooting of sea lions more recently. These days will be bad old days too, in the future, especially if you buy into these arguments. Natural predation in a natural system should not be used as an argument to absolve responsible parties from the damage wrought by trawling. Pacific cod and Pacific halibut can be caught by fixed gear sectors with far fewer impacts to the environment, and have a greater economic benefit to the fishing community. To argue that trawling benefits crab production is preposterously absurd.

5) FALSE: Wait for better observer data. There is no reason to believe that future changes in observer data will change the impacts of trawling on tanner crab. We have been waiting for these many years for the Council to take action to protect the species under its prevue and responsibility. To delay action until some further action elsewhere can be considered is a poor way to be responsible for a species under duress.

6) FALSE: New science lowers mortality rate of trawl crab bycatch. Until science is peer reviewed, it must remain suspect. Hastily designed studies, unexamined, and unreviewed that are used to defend potentially damaging practices is completely irresponsible. Placards don’t prevent overboard oily bilge discharges, and they don’t stop crab and other species from being crushed and killed in cod ends. Throwing a dismembered tanner crab or dead halibut or Chinook salmon down a newly designed discharge chute is not a conservation measure, it is a travesty.

7) FALSE: Trawlers offer flexibility and innovation. The proposed closures are reasonable and prudent to protect the rebuilding of tanner crab stocks. Permanent or seasonal closures are the only way that protection of rebuilding tanner crab stocks can be reasonably assured. If stocks move across lines, perhaps the lines need expansion. If trawlers were innovative, they would petition the council to convert at least some of their high impact gear to less damaging gear such as pots or longline. Modified sweeps using bobbins simply mean the damaged species are not retrieved to the surface for observation. Juvenile pollock excluders are not catching the juveniles, but damaging them and failing to count that damage. Like modified sweeps, these innovations simply hide the real damage wrought.
_______________________________________________________
We can't blame these inventive spinning spiders for their attempts to portray trawling as a a tolerable, even benefitial gear. They have, like other purveyors of dreams and distortions, come to believe their own deceptive thinking. They have become delusional. Profitably delusional, I might add.

"A delusion is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception. In psychiatry, it is defined to be a belief that is pathological (the result of an illness or illness process) and is held despite evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, dogma, stupidity, apperception, illusion, or other effects of perception." Wikipedia.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Trawlers and Oligarchs Ramp Up PR Efforts Rant

2010-09-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

The Gulf of Alaska trawlers and their friends, (the various, mostly foreign owned, processors) are working their spin machines, sending out passive/aggressive disinformation to bamboozle the public, while fooling no one but themselves. See their latest sophomoric YouTube productions at http://www.youtube.com/user/SeaAlliance#p/u/0/mdwsJDXtnFs where they attempt to show that 'fishermen are all in this together'...NOT.

Like the seafood sustainability rubber stampers, the Marine Stewardship Council, in the blog below, Sea Alliance and its bastard parent Marine Conservation Alliance would have us believe that we are all working for the sustainable fisheries future of Alaska. Sorry to throw cold water on your warm fuzzies, but MSC, MCA and SeaAlliance are a well financed public relations arm of the trawlers and their allies, the processors, the same people who consistently exceed PSC(prohibited species catch), work so hard to avoid observer coverage, operate as a secret guild, protect their catches from scrutiny by prohibiting cameras by their crews, jerk the NPFMC around by its nose ring, and tell the whole world via their videos that they are the true conservationists of the sea. Meanwhile crab, halibut and salmon stocks continue to take major hits. Over there...Southeast Alaska buries its collective head in the sand while sectors blame each other for the steeply declining halibut stocks all the while the Gulf of Alaska trawlers (SeaAlliance and MCA's not-so-secret Daddy Warbucks) just keep killing off the future. Meanwhile the war drums are beating around the docks as the trawlers put on their face paint, girdle up their loins and prepare to do foot to mouth combat at the NPFMC meeting in Anchorage in October. Up for a vote of protection are some of the most productive crab grounds in the Gulf of Alaska, hammered repeatedly by the trawlers for flat fish. Also included are the banks on either side that are productive halibut grounds. The trawlers are counting on their allies to attend in force to get their way as usual with the NPFMC. But the problem statement this time is a real problem statement, thanks largely to Alaska leadership, Denby Lloyd. To quote the NPFMC:

"The purpose of this action is to provide additional protection to Gulf of Alaska (GOA) Tanner crab from the potential adverse effects of groundfish fisheries, in order to facilitate rebuilding of Tanner crab stocks. This would be achieved by closing areas around Kodiak Island that are important to the Tanner crab stocks. Areas would be closed to some or all groundfish fishing, depending on the vessel’s gear type or gear configuration. An alternative in the analysis would allow a vessel to be exempt from the closures if the vessel carries 100% observer coverage. This would provide the Council with a high level of confidence in the assessment of any bycatch caught in the closed area, as a basis for future management action as necessary.

"The Council formulated a problem statement in October 2009, to initiate this analysis, and revised it slightly in April 2010:
Tanner crab are a prohibited species bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) groundfish fisheries. Directed fisheries for Tanner crab in the GOA are fully allocated under the current limited entry system. No specific conservation measures exist in the GOA to address adverse interactions with Tanner crab by trawl and fixed gear sectors targeting groundfish and low observer coverage in GOA groundfish fisheries limits confidence in the assessment of Tanner crab bycatch in those fisheries, and a greater level of observer coverage in the appropriate areas may provide the Council with a higher level of confidence in the assessment of any bycatch occurring in the designated areas as a basis for future management actions as necessary. Tanner crab stocks have been rebuilding since peak fisheries occurred in the late 1970s. Specific protection measures should be advanced to facilitate stock rebuilding."

So there you have it. The crux of the problem. But MCA and SeaAlliance would have you believe it's all warm and fuzzy out here in the Gulf of Alaska. We are taking good care of the resources, using the best science (their money can buy), and are really deeply concerned about the environment, ecology, and other popular shit. But really, what they care about is their wallets, that new house they are building on the hill, and how they can game the public and the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council for another day...pay day that is...and the hell with the future. "We got to get it now, while there is still something left to get."

Trawlers killed off the shrimp and the king crab. Now they are keeping the Tanner crab down, pushing back the halibut, crimping the king salmon; fishing down the food chain to the self digesting arrow tooth flounder. Got to get it now. There is no tomorrow. Pretty soon Alaska will be just like the East Coast.

In this scenario, the trawler mouthpiece seems to say, "Spin on. Let deception and obfuscation rule, and the Devil take the hindmost."

Keep yer flippers wet.

MSC hurts the populations that are not sustainably taken.

2010-09-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Seafood stewardship questionable: experts

September 1, 2010 The world's most established fisheries certifier is failing on its promises as rapidly as it gains prominence, according the world's leading fisheries experts from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego and elsewhere.

Established in 1997 by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, one of the world's largest fish retailers, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been helping consumers eat fish "guilt-free" by certifying fisheries. Major North American grocery chains such as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and Europe's Waitrose carry seafood bearing the blue-mark label as part of their sustainability strategy.

But in an opinion piece published in the current issue of Nature, six researchers from Canada, Italy and the U.S. object to the many of the MSC's procedures and certification of certain species.

"The MSC is supposed to be a solution, but a lot of what they do has turned against biology in favour of bureaucracy," says Jennifer Jacquet, lead author and post-doctoral fellow with UBC's Sea Around Us Project.

The largest MSC-certified fishery, with an annual catch of one million tonnes, is the U.S. trawl fishery for pollock in the eastern Bering Sea. It was certified in 2005 and recommended for recertification this summer.

"Pollock has been certified despite a 64 per cent decline of the population's spawning biomass between 2004 and 2009, with no solid evidence for recovery. This has worrisome implications for possible harmful impacts on other species and fisheries besides the viability of the pollock fishery itself," says Jeremy Jackson from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. "How is that sustainable?"

Paul Dayton, also of Scripps Oceanography, and David Ainley, a biologist who works in the Antarctic, remain concerned about the recent certification of krill and the proposed certification of toothfish.

"The certification of the Ross Sea is an embarrassment as it flies in the face of existing data and denies any sense of precautionary management," says Dayton.

"We're especially concerned about the recent certification of Antarctic krill despite estimates of long-term decline and a link between krill population depletion and declining sea ice in areas sensitive to climate change," says Daniel Pauly, head of UBC's Sea Around Us Project. "The rationale for this certification is on further thin ice because the catch is destined to feed farmed fish, pigs and chicken."

Fisheries that are being heavily depleted, reliant on high-impact methods such as bottom trawling and that aren't destined for human consumption should be excluded from certification, conclude the authors, which include Sidney Holt, a founding father of fisheries science.

"The MSC should not certify fisheries that are not demonstrably sustainable, fisheries that use high-impact methods such as bottom trawling and/or fisheries that aren't destined for human consumption," says Pauly.

"The MSC needs to strengthen its commitment to its own principles in order to fulfill its promise to be 'the best environmental choice,'" says Jackson.

The authors also note that the current certification system, which relies on for-profit consultants and could cost as much as $150,000, presents a potential conflict of interest and discriminates against small-scale fisheries and fisheries from developing countries - most of which use highly-selective and sustainable techniques.

Dayton points out that "the failure of the MSC hurts the populations that are not sustainably taken and their ecosystems; it deprives the public of an opportunity to make a meaningful choice and it damages those fisheries that are well managed - this is especially important for those sustainable small-scale fisheries competing with the giants that buy certifications they have not earned."

"Unless MSC goes under major reform, there are better, more effective ways to spend the certifier's $13-million annual budget to help the oceans, such as lobbying for the elimination of harmful fisheries subsidies or establishing marine protected areas," says Jacquet.

Provided by University of British Columbia

Borrowed from http://www.physorg.com/

Thanks!

Keep yer flippers wet.

Are Sea Lions the Big Canary of Our Coal Mine?

2010-08-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

Like a fox, digging beneath the snow for mice or voles, let's dig around a bit beneath the snow job regarding sea lions in Western Alaska. I guarantee we will find more there than the smooth white surface that appears to be there and how that relates ot the Gulf of Alaska.

NOAA/NMFS is being proactive on the sea lion issue. Now let's get real, NOAA/NMFS never have been big greenies in the past. They are like the Minerals Management Service and the oil industry. They have let one helluva lot of bad things go down and have supported the big fishing industry like nobody's business (but their own). So that should be a tip off that something VERY bad is going down and we need to shake off the fog and try to see what that really is...er, too much fish is being taken from Area 543. Period. NOAA/NMFS recommends shutting it down, so the damage must be very bad indeed.
Where was NOAA/NMFS when Cod Alley was being trawled to the elimination of king crab in the southern Bering Sea? Why did they let the Kodiak NMFS boss (BO) suppress studies that clearly showed the area was crucial to king crab production. That research, as shocking as it was, is vaild; the best available science. But NOAA/NMFS turned out that research and that researcher in favor of the trawlers. So when NOAA/NMFS calls for a closure, people, the damage is already unconscionable, probably irretrievable, and irreparable.
First Lesson: Bottom trawls work best on smooth bottom. Anything else causes damage to these expensive pieces of webwork. Smooth bottom is crab bottom. If you can't trawl on smooth bottom, you can't trawl. Simple math applies. 1 + 1 = 2. Get rid of the crab that supported so many, in order for a few trawlers to support a few: 1.)a few owners who make big bucks, 2.)a few crew who make big bucks, 3.)a few processor corporations who make big bucks, 4.)and a lot of little people who make minimum wage, are supported by the general public through welfare, subsidised housing, and social support networks and by their own back breaking tenacity and labor. Don't blame these people, they are pawns like the rest of us. The City of Kodiak fell for the PR line and built a huge haulout facility for the trawlers which now rides upon the city residents and their wallets. The City of Kodiak Trawler Support Center. Bottom line? Crab had to go. And it went. You are next.
Chant jobs, jobs, jobs. Whenever the destruction of our renewable resources becomes an issue, you will invariably hear the chant, "Jobs, jobs, jobs." And if you look carefully it is always peasant jobs. Low paid, minimum wage, public dole supported jobs. Not a job that most of us would look to do. With trawling, you have a very few skilled workers and a lot of bottom of the barrel jobs. With other forms of fishing, the crews are generally more skilled, there are more crew jobs because of efficiency factors that benefit the larger community; such as crabbing, longlining, seining, gillnetting, and jigging. When you have to handle the fish individually, you require more hands and therefore hire more people. Mass caught trawler mush can be machine handled because it is intrinsically of lower quality. The trawlers require their crews primarily to sort out the halibut, king salmon and crab. When the managers of our fisheries opt for trawler caught, they opt for the lowest value for our resources, at the highest resource price.
Halibut is next. Gulf of Alaska trawlers claim they are being limited by the halibut cap of 2000 metric tons of halibut wasted bycatch per year which is constraining the wholesale destruction of the cod resource, et al. 4.4 million pounds of halibut is just not enough for the trawlers in the GOA. That's $22,000,000 exvessel value wasted as PSC. Insiders will tell you that the real trawler waste is far higher, since coverage at best is 30% of trawl time and at least some of that is incompetent observers, or lazy observers, or seasick observers who by regulation can only put in a 12 hour day. 100% observer coverage and 100 % retention of all catch is the only answer right now. Data gaps are used by the trawlers to argue for less stringent scrutiny (You can't prove we are criminals!), but that 'nobody is here to see this' is cause for concern about the wastage by those same trawlers. Where the hell is video surveilance?
On the horizon? Replacements at the NPFMC threaten to reverse progress made there in the past few meetings regarding tanner crab protection, king salmon bycatch and halibut waste reduction. Mouth pieces for the trawlers and processors have been busy whispering in the Governor's ears, twisting arms, threatening exposures. Let's face it, Sean Parnell has not yet shown the courage to stand up for the State of Alaska's best interests. DL was not in attendance at this sea lion meeting. He was replaced by CC, who is tied directly to Petersburg fishing/processor interests, and has not heretofore shown herself to have our best interests at heart. Generally speaking, SE Alaska doesn't realize the trickle down effect of trawlers destroying the Gulf, so, by and large they don't care about the rest of the state. SE long ago outlawed trawlers. Can't they see we need the same?

So all this without addressing the details of the proposed sea lion closures in area 543? Well, just because the fox hears scratching beneath the snow doesn't mean it is a mouse or vole, it could just be a weasel. The weasels are in the fine print, and between the lines of print, and in the back rooms, and behind closed doors. When NOAA/NMFS calls for closures and industry cries "jobs" you know that something is on the move; that resources are going to suffer, that history will be repeating itself, and that we are about to witness another great compromise.

Read Margaret Bauman reports, http://www.thedutchharborfisherman.com/article/1033noaa_issues_draft_groundfish_biological

Keep yer flippers damp.

Bits and Pieces: Once They're Gone, It Won't Be An Issue

2010-08-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Coming back from a longline trip, Capt. X spotted a trawler with his gear down in a IPHC listed hotspot for juvenile halibut. Capt. X knew the operator of the trawler, so he called him on the VHF. Asked what he was doing dragging in such a place, he replied, "The sooner we clean these f'ing halibut up, the sooner this place won't be off limits."

Capt. Z sets his trawl down hard, real hard, on his way in from unobserved trips regularly. His crew says he has a taste for scallops.

A midwater (pelagic) trawler was in Kiliuda Bay. Capt. Y called him on the VHF to ask why he was leaving. He relied, "I just tore the hell out of my trawl on a crab pot." Midwater crab pots should be illegal?

Why shouldn't regulations make chafing gear illegal on midwater (pelagic) trawls?

Why are the pelagic doors on the F/V Golden Fleece wear polished and why did they go through the expense of having them hardfaced if they aren't digging into the bottom on a regular basis?

(ii) Amendment 80 vessels in the GOA processors. Except for the F/V GOLDEN FLEECE (USCG Documentation Number 609951), all Amendment 80 vessels, except when directed fishing for scallops using dredge gear, in the GOA must have onboard at least one NMFS-certified observer for each day that the vessel is used to harvest, receive, or process groundfish in the GOA management areas or adjacent waters open by the State of Alaska for which it adopts a Federal fishing season. Why? Who arranged that exception, and for how much cash?

Why shouldn't "accidentally" "kissing the bottom" with "pelagic" trawl gear be just as illegal as "accidentally" setting a seine or gillnet over the line?

Why did the USCG have such an issue with using a tape measure to figure Simplified Gross Tonnage? Don't tell me that didn't come from on high. Why?

Why are simple measures to ensure our fishing future so "impossible" for our regulators?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Guest Predicts "Halibut Stock Collapse in the Near Future"

2010-07-31T12:31:00.000-07:00

"I am (name withheld). This is my history. After graduating in 1976, I worked on the Miller Freeman as a trawl gear specialist in the Bering and Chukchi Seas. In 1977, I worked as a fisheries biologist with ADF&G. I was one of the first domestic observers on Kodiak shore based trawlers, and I worked on one of the first draggers delivering food fish to shore plants. I was a deckhand on a Kodiak trawler for three years. There were very few draggers then and they were relatively small and towed modified shrimp nets. Even so I was appalled at the amount of halibut and crab we dragged up. One day as an observer we caught three thousand pounds of egged king crab females in a tow. I told my boss, Phil Rigby, about it and he said “Do not let this get out. We would not want to discourage the bottom fishing industry.” Ironically, the shrimp fleet dragged in the summer and sold pollock in the winter as bait to the crab boats. Well, soon the draggers were putting on public relations through the local newspaper reporter, Chris Blackburn. At the time I thought it was funny. But they ended up making Chris their chief lobbyist, their minister of information. Joint ventures brought more boats and more areas got dragged. There were more gear conflicts. Today those drag boats are much larger and cover more ground.

"Currently I am a commercial halibut fisherman. I bought into the IFQ program. I can hardly believe what I have seen in the last four years or so. First, the fall cod trawl disaster where millions of pounds of halibut were dragged up in the Marmot Gully. The fishing vessel Dusk had 70,000 pounds of halibut and the fishing vessel Peggy Jo had over 100,000 pounds of halibut bycatch. Then there’s the arrowtooth flounder fishery, where millions of tiny halibut are killed and spawning areas are dredged. This year, everywhere I go, I find draggers on the black cod edge. Draggers close by my gear; draggers in high concentrations of halibut with no observers. The price of black cod is so high it gives a powerful incentive to fish dirty. A friend has a picture of the dragger Walter N with deck load of black cod. They only could keep a small amount, after picking out the big black cod, they shoveled the rest over. And now in the past few years we have the super 58 foot autobaiter longline boats (no observers) trashing out the juvenile halibut.

"We have no real effective observer coverage. 30 percent? And that’s not 24 hours. The system is further manipulated by timing the tow before midnight and by the “observer tow” that’s recorded and later the dirty tow that’s not recorded. A lot of damage can be done in one day of unobserved trawling.

"What I see now is a serious decline in area 3A halibut and even more so in 3B. I would say stock collapse in the near future. Fifty years ago it was the foreign trawlers who were responsible for a huge decline in halibut, but now it is the domestic trawlers threatening our crab, salmon and halibut resources. Thousands of sport charter and commercial fishermen depend on halibut for a living. A fishery worth over $300 million in ex-vessel value this year soon to be trashed out as fodder for cheap flatfish. The IFQ program will surely collapse under the weight of loans not repaid.

"As one dragger crewman told my deckhand 'Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?'"

Keep yer flippers wet.

Alaska Journal of Commerce Reports Rockfish Decision

2010-06-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

Rockfish program signals shift in state fisheries policy

By Andrew Jensen
Alaska Journal of Commerce

"The Alaska delegation to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council signaled a shift in policy at the June meeting in Sitka. The group severed processor ties to harvesters and took steps to sharply curtail transfer and leasing of catch allocations for the Gulf of Alaska rockfish fishery.
"The six voting members from Alaska, which include Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd, represent a controlling bloc of the 11-member federal council that governs the Gulf of Alaska fishing waters.
"The Alaska delegation successfully pushed for a dramatic overhaul of the five-year rockfish pilot program scheduled to sunset after the 2011 season.
"Council member Duncan Fields of Kodiak said the "important, innovative" structural changes to the rockfish program were intended to not only shape state policy, but national policy as well by emphasizing cooperative fishing over individual fishing quotas. "

Read the complete article:
http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/062510/fis_rps.shtml

Although we've blasted the NPFMC decision regarding the halibut PSC swaps and gaming that goes on in the Rockfish Program and the observer program, we have to admit that there seems to be a change of tide coming regarding the heretofore carte blanche that the trawler industry has had with regard to decisions by the NPFMC. With the recent reappointment of Duncan Fields of Kodiak and Sam Cotten of Eagle River, it appears that their actions have the stamp of approval by the Obama Administration and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. This is good news for Alaska. For too long, the Council has acted as part of the colonial government of Alaska, setting policy and making money primarily for outside interests, both foreign and domestic, whose concern was profits at the expense of the resident Alaska fishermen and resident Alaska fish resources. I know, I know, some trawlermen are residents, some few. The decisions on rockfish and (we shall see) the preliminary moves to protect tanner crab and Chinook salmon in the Gulf of Alaska to be further addressed this fall, make it seem like for the first time in NPFMC history that protection for trawler abused stocks has taken on some urgency. Is it too late?

Those of us concerned about the GOA and the future of our communities see these moves as hopeful of a new courage on the part of Alaska NPFMC members to take up the struggle to ensure a future to our fisheries. We owe them a hearty thanks, for this latest move. We need to let the Governor know his ADFG Commissioner is doing a good job and we need to retain him. We need to let gubernatorial candidates know the management of Alaska fisheries needs to get off the colonial model. We have a helluva a long way to go. Too many of the continuing trawler fisheries are pursued for the profits of their allowable bycatch (cod, sablefish) which the NPFMC has erroneously granted them as a boon for pursuing what can only be called trash fish. The allowable take of PSC halibut, crab, and salmon should be a crime, but the the NPFMC has kept a blind eye to that economy of waste. So there is plenty to do. That we allow our wonderful natural resources to be thrown away at minimal profits to outside interests and foreign owned processors for some balance of trade scheme is an outrage. Processor linkages give away our fisheries resources without extracting their real value and block Alaskans from ever owning their own waterfront.

Alaska should act as a state and not as a colony. She needs to look after her people and her long term sustainable economic health. Her small coastal communities are not poor step-pups to the big dog Anchorage, but the tributaries of her river of economic health. Exxon, BP, Shell, and their ilk are not friends of Alaska, anymore than they have been to Louisiana, though when they are rubbing your back and shoving money down your pants, it seems like it. Same goes with Pebble Mine, the trawl fleet, and the foreign owned (outsider owned) processors. When their bellies are full (and their appetites are enormous), all their sweet promises are forgotten. Statehood wasn't the end of the fight, it was only the beginning. Until Alaska acts like a state and manages her resources like a state, we will still be a territorial colony.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Gaming Reminder: Sleight of Hand, Blinded Eye

2010-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

For some of you in the know, this reminder is unnecessary, but we have to make it for the sake of honesty. Information concerning bycatch and especially PSC (Prohibited Species Catch) of halibut, crab, and king salmon is only a best guess by the agencies. They do not include in their equation of estimation a gaming factor, but the factor exists and for some candid observers here, suspicion is that the estimated PSC catch is at least twice and perhaps four times as high as is reported. This is widely believed to be the reason for declining catches of affected species.

Advocacy groups, like the Marine Fish Conservation Network, report that 30% of the Gulf of Alaska trawl effort is observed, but they don't count gaming. The MFCN is well meaning but terribly naive. In the simplest scenario, for instance, a trawler will pick up their observer in the evening of day one, make a tow before midnight, make another after midnight, return the observer to the dock and count those two tows as two days of their required coverage. Then they have four days to fish as dirty as they please, without further concern. Most trawler skippers will tell you that such tows are done expressly for the observer, not for fish. Those wastes of time and energy are the cost of doing their dirty business. They are careful to make those tows especially clean. These tows are then extrapolated by the agencies to show the bycatch. Obviously, from such data, they show very little about what is really going on. This is why the trawl industry and their hired PR folks work hard to keep anything like video or still pictures off the internet and certainly out of our hands. Trawler crews who take pictures on deck risk dismissal, black listing, physical threats, and destruction of their cameras. This is not news in the fishing fleet here, simply the way things are done.

Think about it. This is criminal behavior. When observations come to light, it is by mistake. When pictures show up on Tholepin, it is a piercing of the careful mask of propriety the trawler industry works so hard to maintain. That the Marine Stewardship Council certifies filthy flats as sustainable is an abrogation of the public trust. These are the games people play. (Joe South, 1969, The Games People Play, trawler theme song).

Keep yer flippers wet.

Guest Blogger: New Rule: Halibut PSC Analysis

2010-06-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

"Let's say that the allowable halibut bycatch damage is overall 220 MT in the groundfish complex of rockfish and flatfish, two related serial killers of halibut. Now with only 12.5% coming out up front that is 27.5 MT savings put in the bank for halibut, not allowed as part of the trawl slaughter. That leaves 192.5 MT for prosecution of rockfish. Let's say they "use up" 92.5 MT of it (nearly 50%) to prosecute rockfish, that would leave a carry forward to the later flatfish season of 100MT. Under the 55% rule, 45% would be put in savings (not allowed for flats prosecution) so leaving 55MT which would likely get used up before flats would be shut down on that limit. With 27.5 and 45MT in the bank, that's 72.5MT out of the 220 originally, or an overall savings of around 33%, about one-third.

"That's why if it had gone the way the state and halibut fishermen wanted 25% taken out up front (the 75% rule instead of the new motion's 87.5% rule), so 55MT would be taken out first. Then say another 45% later, that is, if following 220 minus 55, equals 165, less let's say 90MT or so used for rockfish, leaving 75 MT times 45% or another 33.75MT dropped before flats are fished. The combination of 55 and 33.75 sums to 88.75, divided by the 220 original, is more like 40% halibut savings in the bank, instead of 33%. Or another way of looking at that is 88.75 less 72.5 is an additional savings of 16.25MT or 35,750 pounds, and if the small halibut in the bycatch were an average of 10 lbs, that would be 3,570 fish, which when grown to size of commercial fish in the longline halibut fishery at say 40 lbs. would be 143,000 lbs, which at $4.50 avg. would mean another $643,500 in the hands of halibut quota holders if all fished later.

"Point is that the savings are important and significant.

"Check my math."

Comment: But all this overly complex calculation reminds me of how some skippers pay crew...like when they lease or borrow for IFQ; baffle them with bullshit rather than just being truthful. Follow me here...rather than granting just enough halibut PSC bycatch needed for rockfish, the NPFMC gives them far more halibut PSC than they need so they can roll that over to filthy flatfish, because if they were to simply to give them a great pile of halibut PSC for flatfish, it would be unconscionable, too completely wrong. Then to cover their tracks (to baffle us with bullshit) they take some of the Rockfish Program halibut PSC back to show just how good they are about managing the resource. And we are supposed to feel very grateful, just like when you get a nickle back on your tax return. Wrong. The Council needs to make serious inroads into the halibut PSC allocation, not just couple of nickles. Wiglaf.

(Keep yer calculators dry.)

Rockfish Program Halibut Bycatch...Clear Concise Language?

2010-06-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

If I didn't get that Rockfish Program halibut PSC exactly right, I blame it all on the clear and concise language of the NPFMC's staff. (I think they used to work for the IRS). The following is verbatum:

"7.3 Prohibited species (halibut mortality) Allowance to the rockfish cooperative program will be based on 75 percent of the historical average usage (during the qualifying years), calculated by dividing the total number of metric tons of halibut mortality in the CGOA rockfish target fisheries during the qualifying years by the the number of years, and multiplying by 0.75. The difference between the historical average usage and the allowance provided above will remain unavailable for use.

"The halibut PSC allowance will be divided between sectors based on the relative amount of qualifying target rockfish species catch in each sector.

"Option for supplementing the last seasonal halibut apportionment for trawl gear 75 percent of any allowance of halibut PSC that has not been utilized by November 15 or after the declaration to terminate fishing will be added to the last seasonal apportionment for trawl gear, during the current fishing year. The remaining portion of any allowance will remain unavailable for use."

If you figure out what this means in regard to 87.5%, 12.5%, and 55%, let me know. Is the 87.5% a replacement for the first 75% or the second? I know it is the Council's business but you'd think they'd let the public know what they are doing, or would they? Until then, I need to get this next set. These satellite charges are killing me, and I need some reds to pay for them.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Halibut PSC Report

2010-06-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

This is important to the health of the halibut resource and might begin a process to roll back the 2000 metric tons of halibut waste in the Gulf of Alaska. Hey, it could happen. Be informed.

Here is the report: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/current_issues/halibut_issues/HalibutPSC_510.pdf

Keep yer flippers wet.

HALIBUT! Rockfish Minority Reports-NPFMC Sitka June 2010

2010-06-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

------
"Minority Report (Component 7.3): A seven member minority wanted a maximum rollover of 50% and a six member minority preferred a rollover of 30%. The Rockfish Program claims to reduce halibut bycatch and seafloor contact. The rockfish fishery has achieved these goals. However, if 100% rollover provision of unused halibut prohibited species was rolled over, it would undermine the fundamental intent of MSA (Magnuson Stevens Act) in reducing bycatch, thus something less than a 100% rollover is required. The minority believes that the majority choice of 75% is too high. Bottom trawl time and associated impacts to the habitat have significant impacts to the habitat around Kodiak Island in the fall. In order to provide some level of net benefit to the nation, a portion of halibut savings should truly be realised and left in the water. PSC allocations based on pre-program usage (should be the rule?) A 30% to 50% reduction fulfills commitments to reduce bycatch/halibut impacts while achieving program goals. Signed: Theresa Peterson, Jeff Farvour, Becca Robbins Gisclair, Chuck McCallum, Tim Evers, John Crowley."
------
"Component 16): A minority believes that a hard sunset for the entire rockfish pilot program is important. Both ten year and fifteen year sunsets were supported by the minority. The first line of the problem statement is: "The intent of this action is to retain the conservation, management, safety, and economic gains to the extent practicable..." and it is notable that the program has achieved the benefits of a rationalised fishery without giving away the 'property rights' of the fishery.

"The Rockfish Program began as a two year pilot program which was extended through an act of congress. In complying with the reauthorized MSA is has undergone fundamental changes such as no processor association. This program is part of a piece meal attempt to rationalize fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska in allocating a small rockfish fishery along with valuable secondary species. We have no idea what things will look like tens years down the line; especially with the number of Council agenda items addressing bycatch issues with crab, salmon, and halibut on the horizon. A program duration will create incentives to keep the program working so Council may choose to continue the program and the fleet will not have the expectation that the program will exist in perpetuity.

"All that is required for a limited access program to deliver the benefits of a rationalized program is that there be a meaningful quantifiable limit or a set quota on the amount of fishery resource that can be harvested. The public has zero incentive to design programs in such a way as to maximize the bottom line asset value of the resource quota. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the greater the value of the quota, the greater the negative impact on communities through higher barriers to entry into the fishery Limited program duration can serve to achieve the benefits of rationalization while delivering adequate business stability and trying to keep the barriers to new entrants lower than would otherwise be the case. Signed: Theresa Peterson, Becca Robbins Gisclair, Chuck McCallum."

Keep yer flippers wet.

Summer Time, Salmon Time

2010-06-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

While there are things here on the horizon that could use a flogging, summer time means salmon time and the information resources that support this blog are out chasing fish. News is that observers will now be required on vessels under sixty feet and we will perhaps get some better data on the bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska. There will be few surprises, however, as selective gear types will for the most part still be selective and the less selective gear (read trawls) will remain less selective. It is tragic how we have to prove gravity over and over and the disbelievers keep calling it rumor. Planning sessions are being scheduled for the implimentation of more complete observer coverage. We all must engage in steering this process so that we get the truth about what goes on out there. The days of hiding huge takes of sealions by trawlers may be over. (Did you hear about the fin whale killed in the cod end? Didn't think so.) There are no more king crab so there are no more red bags (cod ends bulging with crushed Paralithodes camtschaticus). But decks covered in king salmon and or juvenile halibut and cod ends bulging with crushed tanner crab are still happening, and being unobserved, and like the oil escaping from the BP well, "if it don't surface, it just ain't there," right? And very like the BP spill, the unified command of NMFS, the NPFMC, ADF&G, and so on, just can't get off their support of "a blind eye for the big guy"...trawlers and, for the most part, foreign owned processing interests who continue to support the gaming of the observer program. Yes, the gaming of the data, of the testimony, of the unseen catches, of the missed observations, the skewed sampling, the skipper's sleight of hand, like BP's oil spill keeps the true magnitude of the damage out of sight and out of mind. What evidence?

Things can change for the better. Keep your cameras ready (and hidden) and we will get your eye on stage to make a difference. Get engaged with the restructuring of the observer program. They won't do this again for a very long time. Your involvement will help get it right. Okay, maybe not right, but a helluva lot better. It could happen.

If you haven't read this entire blog, may I suggest you do so? What is posted here is not spoiling, needs no refrigeration, and for the most part is not time sensitive. When you are done you will be much better informed about the hidden truths about trawling and bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska.

Until later. I have to go catch fish. A sealion has to eat too, right?

Keep yer flippers wet.

"Flatfish trawlers cut bottom contact by 90%!"

2010-06-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine anyone with even half a brain to make such a statement? Well, the Marine Stewardship Council did, making them almost too preposterous. It is like an absurd comedy. Except it is an outrage. This is an act of intentional deception and truly deserves a lawsuit. MSA has indeed certified filthy flats as a sustainable fishery. By such action they have helped destroy the validity of that very word...sustainable is now most officially a greenwash word, a salesman's pitch, a perversion of truth. It would be laughable if it didn't mean now there is a stronger market potentially for flats and that trawlers will continue to trash the resources around Kodiak with hard on the bottom flat fish trawling. Crab stocks, halibut, corals, and the general benthic habitat will suffer. Until overwhelming pressure by commercial fishermen, charter fishermen, sportfishermen, and the general public are brought to bear upon our representatives in government to call a halt, these destructive practices will continue. Write your letters, friends, speak your mind while we still have some healthy resources left in the Gulf of Alaska to worry about.

Keep yer flippers wet.

$$$ MSC to Certify Filthy Flats! $$$

2010-05-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

---
News is that the Marine Stewardship Council is about to certify GOA flatfish as sustainable and green. Unbelieveable! This is an affront to common sense! Flatfish trawling in Kodiak (GOA) is dirty, dirty, dirty...the worst! Crab bottom, halibut bottom, WTF! 28% halibut death for arrowtooth delivered and this from official NMFS records as witnessed by observers! Filthy Mar Pacifico! A nearly worthless flatfish targeted to get the bycatch and in so doing destroying invaluable halibut.

In the infamous video below you can watch crew sort dead and dying halibut to keep a few flatfish. http://www.tholepin.blogspot.com/2009/10/filthy-video-of-halibut-waste.html This is exactly the kind of behavior that MSC is going to certify as sustainable and green. Unbelieveable and worthy of condemnation. Sustainable indeed. How shortsighted can they get? Don't they believe their own eyes?

Obviously this is a $green$ organization. Pay them your $green$ and they will give you anything you want! If these crooks had any conscience, it was purchased long ago. Give it up people...you are totally compromised. I see they are getting this through the door before the observer restructuring can get its legs (although I have serious doubts that we can put an end to the sophisticated gaming that will go on even if it gets restructured).

While I do not have any faith that sense and reason can trump money, let these people know that their British bullshit is just that. We need to pull down the Marine Stewardship Council as corrupt as is the Marine Conservation Alliance, where they probably get some of their money. Certainly MSC is getting their money from the same origins...trawler and processor profits off the destruction of the Gulf of Alaska and elsewhere, where dirty unsustainable fishing practices rule.

Shoot them your emails protesting the certification of GOA flatfish. Outrageous!

objections@msc.org

If you do not send them a message, you can not complain that they did not listen to you. You can be sure that the trawlers will be writing (their bosses will enforce that) as directed by the whitefish trawler association.

Keep yer bloody flippers wet.

Network Releases Report Assessing Needs for At-Sea Observers

2010-05-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

---
"The Marine Fish Conservation Network recently released Meeting the Information Demands of 21st Century Fisheries: A Needs Assessment for Fisheries Observer Programs, a report that explains the need for more federally funded at-sea observers. At-sea fisheries observers are a central pillar of the National Marine Fisheries Service's national bycatch strategy and the catch data they collect is critical to the success of efforts to end overfishing. The report shows that significant increases in funding of fisheries observer programs are needed to support the information needs of fisheries managers and it recommends other changes to expand observer coverage and maintain public access to data."

Read it at : http://www.conservefish.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=12&id=136&Itemid=332

Well, it is an okay report, but like so many things written by bystanders to the industry it is full of comfortable half truths. "Observer coverage varies widely by region and fishery, from levels of 30 to 100% in most Alaska groundfish fisheries..." Garbage in, garbage out. Too general, not accurate and completely oblivious to the gaming that goes on within the industry. Frankly, I can't worry about how messed up the other regions are, because right here in the Gulf of Alaska, things are not pretty. 30% observer coverage is a goal, is heavily gamed by players so that the data gained is distorted and inaccurate. That data ends up being used to forecast and regulate and is mostly erroneous. Huge gaps exist in the catch and bycatch data. High-grading and wastage are rampant. If a fish dies in the cod end and there is no one there to see, is it really there? Not according to the NMFS. Only occassionally does a brave soul step forward and record the waste, as has been seen here on these pages.

So Marine Fish Conservation Network, nice try, but no you didn't get it right. The system is far more broken than you can imagine. Please try again. Your brush is far too wide and general to have much use. Put a finer point on it. 100% observer coverage must be part of any real plan to manage fisheries, at least until we really know what the hell is going on out there. Make it a rolling 100% coverage. A couple years for each fishery to ground truth what is really going on. Rumor is just not admissible in court. 'They'll never kill all the buffalo." Think again.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Dirtiest Bottom Trawlers 2010...Simply Criminal

2010-04-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

***
These are samples from official prohibited species reports available on the NOAA website: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/2010/pscinfo.htm
***
Worst Non Pelagic Trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska for Halibut
No.1: Feb 6, 2010 F/V Coho fishing cod 47% bycatch of halibut, 2 observations
No.2: Mar 27, 2010 F/V Mar Pacifico fishing arrowtooth 28% halibut, 1 observation
No.3: Mar 27, 2010 F/V Golden Fleece fishing cod 24% halibut, 4 observations
No.4: Feb 6, 2010 F/V Hickory Wind fishing cod 15% halibut, 1 observation

All halibut bycatch is dead and all tanner crab too, with more tanner crab not recovered to the deck crushed by the trawl and killed. This is PSC. Prohibited Species Catch. It may not be retained and is thrown overboard. Less than 30% of trawler time has an observer on board. These observers are kept busy with sampling work and often are unaware of the bycatch. So this is only the tip of the iceberg, a hint of the destruction going on in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

Worst Trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska for Chinook
No.1: F/V US Intrepid 385 Chinook killed, 17 observations
No.2: F/V Vaerdal 311 Chinook, 20 observations
No.3: F/V Ocean Alaska 284 Chinook, 16 observations
No.4: F/V Sea Mac 245 Chinook, 5 observations
No.5: F/V Leslie Lee 227 Chinook, 8 observations
No.6: F/V Marathon 151 Chinook, 3 observations

Getting complicated here, because the latest stats by NMFS have drastically changed since last week. They must be tweaking the data to make it more palatable. Just like the sea lion data that we can't see until Balsinger launders it to make it more acceptable to the players. It is after all, a game. Like Wall Street, NMFS is playing with the numbers and the stats so things don't look as bad as they are. When the whole thing collapses, it won't matter who we blame. The deed will be done.

Keep yer flippers wet.

What Happened To The Halibut, Dad?

2010-04-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

---
Well, Child, people didn't take care of them and they were all killed. It was a sad day when the largest, most magnificent fish in the North Pacific Ocean were destroyed by men who didn't care what they caught in their trawls.

---
But, Dad, why didn't you stop them?

---
I tried, Child, but we couldn't get the rule makers to see the importance of taking care of the Ocean and the fish that we depend upon. They let too many baby halibut get killed by the trawlers and didn't see that those little fish were the future. Now all we have left are the pictures of those big flat fish. See that king crab on the wall there? That's what happened to them, too.

*** Trawl bycatch in January 2010 (note size of halibut)

The eagles are feasting on king salmon, crab legs lie scattered about.

IPHC data shows...

In the Gulf of Alaska, approximately 80% of halibut bycatch is trawl caught
Approximately 60% of GOA total halibut bycatch are U32 (under 32 inch)
This effects the resource in two ways: (see graphs below)
Loss of spawning potential (lost egg production)
Reduced yield to directed setline fishery
---------------------
http://www.iphc.washington.edu/halcom/research/sa/BycatchWorkshop/Bycatch%20Impacts.pdf

--------------------

Keep yer flippers wet.

ADF&G Excuses Trawler Bycatch of King Salmon

2010-04-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

Listen to ADF&G's Suzanne Schmidt excuse Kodiak trawler bycatch for the decline of Kodiak king salmon. It's okay, Schmidt, we are used to ADF&G representatives excusing trawler excesses.
www.kmxt.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1697&Item=2
While Kodiak trawlers might not be the only reason for king salmon decline, they are certainly contributing to the low return numbers required for escapement. So far the trawlers have taken three times the escapement goal for the Karluk or twice the Ayakulik. A limit on the amount of king salmon that trawlers can waste needs to be implimented. Remember the numbers of king salmon shown as bycatch are projections based upon very limited observation. The actual numbers of king salmon and other PSC species is likely far higher. Rumors on the waterfront are that some very high catches of king salmon have been taken on the west side and these were unobserved. We need 100% observer coverage for the GOA. King salmon caught around Kodiak Island are from all over the Pacific, so trawler bycatch around Kodiak affects the entire region. But when they are trawling right out in front of the king depleted Karluk, the conclusions seem obvious. If a man comes into the police station covered in blood and reports there has been a murder, wouldn't he be suspect, you think?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Run the Natural Gauntlet and Get Hammered in Trawl

2010-04-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

Wiggy,

"Remember that the "499,400 pounds wasted" mainly consists of sublegal halibut. These fish have run the natural gauntlet and won...only to get hammered in a trawl.
"They have made it through the most vulnerable stages of development. They are no longer subject to the high natural predation once they have reached ping pong paddle size and they would have likely made it to legal size if not for the trawlers.
"So...that 499,400 pounds represents a helluva lot more pounds and value if left trawl free. Makes the wasted value even more disgusting."

Signed,
A Fisherman

Keep yer flippers wet.

Halibut and Chinook Wasted This Week

2010-04-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

Go to www.fakr.noaa.gov/2010/car120_goa.pdf and see what the trawlers are doing to our precious resources this week. Chinooks are closed to fishing on the famous Kodiak Island rivers (not even catch and release!) but the trawlers have killed 8920 fish since the first of the year, 2049 alone just this last week! Shame and horror. Kiss the king salmon good bye on Kodiak. Thank you Kodiak pollock trawlers. Remember, the Marine Stewardship Council has certified pollock as sustainable...to hell with the king salmon! "No PSC (Prohibited Species Catch) Limits apply to salmon in the Gulf of Alaska," according to the NOAA site. Why the hell not?

The king salmon that would have returned to various southwestern Alaska rivers, would have been high priced prizes for well heeled guided sports fishermen and women. Their commercial value in southwestern Alaska is negligible. But they are hugely valuable to the tourist industry. Their looming extinction in Kodiak rivers is yet another tragedy we can chalk up to the Kodiak trawlers.

Halibut? No problem. Only a half million pounds killed so far, 499,400 pounds wasted. But the good news is only 55,000 pounds wasted last week. I am reminded that that loss of halibut should include their spawning potential. So not only have these fish been wantonly wasted, but their potential progeny have been eliminated as well.

Value of the halibut, about $2,122,450 exvessel wasted so far this year. But only $233,750 this week. Commercial fish value. Sports value, perhaps a bit more. Spawning value, priceless.

Show up at the NPFMC next week and let them know that the Prohibited Species Catch (PSC) is too high. Write a letter to the Anchorage Daily News, call your state and federal representatives, demand real change in the way the trawl industry continues to pound down our resources.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Trawler Bycatch Closes Kodiak King Salmon Fisheries

2010-03-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

The Anchorage Daily News reports that king salmon runs are failing to reach minimum escapement goals on two of the most famous king salmon rivers in Alaska.
www.adn.com/2010/03/20/1192593/poor-returns-shut-2-kodiak-king.html
This should not come as a surprise, as we have reported here that continued unobserved trawler operations in the Gulf of Alaska, the Shelikof Strait, and the Bering Sea are catching tens of thousands of king salmon every year thus depleting the spawning stocks and starving northern Alaska villages. This a perfect opportunity for the sport fishermen of the world to demand 100% observer coverage on all trawling operations in the Gulf of Alaska. While the Bering Sea is already covered, the NMFS and the NPFMC simply turn their backs on their responsibilities to the king salmon resource while allowing continued pollock trawling for giant profits. The fact is that the Kodiak pollock trawlers are out in front of the Karluk River today, cleaning out the feeder kings.

Friends should never allow friends to eat artificial crab, fillet o fish, or any other form of pollock. For whitefish, insist on hook caught fish only.

So not only are the Gulf of Alaska trawlers destroying halibut, purportedly making dirty tows on young halibut simply to destroy what they see as a resource that restricts their growth, but hammering the rising stocks of tanner crab and the depleted king crab, both with bottom trawls and with supposedly mid water or pelagic trawls. How else does X get the belly of his pelagic trawl ripped out with crab pots?

The destruction of king salmon is just another pawn in the game of trawling the Gulf of Alaska to death. Demand 100% rock solid observer data to stop the wholesale destruction of these precious resources.

Balsinger is Afraid of Public Response?

2010-03-06T13:28:00.001-08:00

Head of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service is apparently afraid to be truthful to the general public-(you)-about the status of the Steller Sea Lion. Yes, that's me and mine. Why? What kind of spin or reconsideration of the scientific facts need to be created to tell the truth?

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kial/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1619391/Local.News/Steller.Sea.Lion.BiOp.delayed

Seriously, we are grownups (some of us) and we are used to the truth (just kidding). Why does Balsinger have to prepare the 'stakeholders' and the 'scientists' anyway. Seems to me you might have that backasswards, sir, don't you mean the scientists and then the steakholders? Get the spin masters to make the right mix of science and fantasy, statistics and voodoo to placate the steakholders and the public at the same time? Sounds like the energy companies preparing an ad campaign to convince us that we have to keep going the same old way...to suck up and destroy the very world we all depend upon in order to be comfortable. FCS!

Keep yer flippers wet.

Bycatch News and Analysis-Comment

2010-03-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

Bycatch News:
Klas Stolpe, of the Juneau Empire, reports in part, that "fishery managers are still discussing the best way to measure the impact of bycatch and what it means to other harvests in the Northwest Pacific." www.juneauempire.com/stories/030410/loc_570703342.shtml

"'The issue here is, as a result of research during past years' fisheries, we have realized that halibut are moving more than we had assumed they were,' IPHC ED Bruce Leaman said. ' That has meant that impacts of bycatch are now estimated to be more extensive...than we had previously thought. Over the last decade or so, we had been thinking that bycatch was primarily local in its effect but it is more extensive than that. So that tends to make bycatch in US waters have an impact on Canadian waters.'

"The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans provides observer data to the IPHC from Canadian waters. According to the IPHC, the Canadian observer program provides a more stable fishery with less variation in its bycatch rates. Canadian trawlers, for instance, are required to have 100 percent observer coverage on board.

"In the US, observer coverage depends upon vessel size. Vessels above 125 feet are required to have 100 percent coverage. Boats between 60 and 125 feet are required to have 30 percent coverage, and observers aren't required for vessels under 60 feet.

"'The Canadians have a much better system for bycatch control where there are individual bycatch caps for each of the trawlers that are working, for example, in the trawl fishery in BC,' Leaman said. 'Where as in the US it tends to be a global cap of all of that sector. In general it is still not an individual responsibility in the US.'

"The NPFMC would like to see a progress report at the IPHCs interim November meeting, but no firm timeline has been established to define new objectives.'

"'Right now it is a work project in front of the commission staff and working with some of the agencies in the US and Canada,' Leaman said. "Not a lot has changed in terms of the trawl fisheries, but different abundances of target species have an effect on how much bycatch there is.'"

Analysis/Comment:
Fisheries managers "are still discussing the best way to measure the impact of bycatch..." Discussions have been going on for decades over bycatch. Nothing happens. American managers and their political handlers have been so concerned about competition in world markets for fish that they have thrown all caution to the wind in order to harvest as much as possible, often without considering the value of the fish they catch or the destruction to the oceans that follows using trawlers as the primary harvesters.

Bruce Leaman's statements that 'halibut move more than we thought and that impacts of trawl fleet bycatch were primarily local' point up the blatant spin doctoring of his statements or his ignorance. When an entire area, the central Gulf of Alaska, is being hammered to pieces by unconstrained trawler bycatch of course it is going to affect other areas of the North Pacific Ocean. Mr. Leaman, this is called the 'eocsystem.' The implication is that halibut destruction is perfectly acceptable as long as it stays in the central GOA. This is prima facia mismanagement and an outrage. Mr. Leaman should apologise and resign. 'Bycatch in US waters has an impact on Canadian water,' indeed. So all that matters, are Canadian waters? This is completely short sighted, uninformed, and region centric.

In regard to observer coverage and data, it is well known that observers are overworked. Asked to provide far too much junk observation and data, they are frequently off deck, off task, and/or too busy to observe what is really going on. Estimates of 50% reliability of their observations is the most common figure kicked about in discussions with experienced trawler crew. As one reliable trawler crewman told me, 'You'd be surprised how easy it was to hide things from the observer.'

That the Canadians have a much better observer program maybe the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal record of disastrous mismanagement of Canadian fisheries in general. One hundred percent observer coverage and making individual Canadian trawlers responsible for individual bycatch caps are two things that the US should copy from their Olympic hockey champion neighbors, post haste.

But don't hold your breath. "No firm timeline has been established to define new objectives" on US trawler bycatch and halibut destruction. Nothing is going to change until this preventable resource waste and destruction captures the international media's attention, or gets scrutinized by the US and Canadian's as a violation of the International Pacific Halibut Treaty.

The final ill informed remark by Mr. Leaman, "Not a lot has changed in terms of the trawl fisheries, but different abundances of target species have an affect (sic) on how much bycatch there is," reflects his ignorance of the increases in trawler horsepower, new super 58s, hull sponsoning, net size, cod end capacity, and other known and yet uncomputed factors leading to trawlers' greater ability to catch larger breeder halibut by towing the net at higher speeds, holding larger deckloads, increasing the time halibut remain out of the water or under the pressure of tons of fish pressing upon them. This has resulted in millions of pounds of halibut wanton waste. Wake up, Mr. Leaman, the time of smoke and mirrors is ending. Fishery managers must move into a new era of honest concern for the long term health of the fisheries or resign and go to work for the trawlers or the processing industry and leave fishery management to a new and hopefully more informed and transparent group of managers who will answer to the fishermen and the public of the US and Canada for these precious resources that are currently being destroyed.

Are you listening in to this, Mr. Schwaab? Ms. Lubchenco?

Keep yer flippers wet.

Some things never change.

2010-02-28T19:02:00.000-08:00

The way I first heard it, twenty or more years ago, was there was a trawler crewman who was making himself extra money selling king salmon bycatch he brought home from each fishing trip. Had 'em the freezer and if you were in the loop, you could drive to TT's trailer court and buy a nice king salmon fresh frozen, or if you were lucky, not even frozen yet!

This week, rumor has it, that trawler king salmon bycatch is high and those not thrown overboard on the grounds are making their way to the unloading docks and processor floors where workers are getting a winter protein boost from fresh winter kings that they are taking home. An outraged witness has been making trouble calling around for enforcement. Don't hold yer breath waiting for action on this. Some things never change.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Trawling is Hard Work...

2010-02-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

Overheard at a recent get together; a greenhorn crewman was explaining why he thought crewing on a trawler was such hard work...

"I average four hours a day just throwing over the halibut we catch. That's a back breaker!"

More like a heart breaker.

Keep yer flippers wet.

An Open Letter to Eric Schwaab, National Marine Fisheries Service

2010-02-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Schwaab,

Welcome to the arena. The fans are in the stands and the various challengers await you as the point man gladiator fighting for the future of American fisheries. The walls surrounding the arena contain the trap doors holding your challengers.

Out of the NE trap swaggers the tiger of resource depletion and unlimited capacity.
Out of the SE trap springs the lion of commercial and sport conflict.
Out of the S trap rushes the crocodile of habitat destruction.
Out of the SW trap lunges the cyclops of exponential development.
And out of the NW trap lumbers the great bear of gargantuan capacity and wasteful practices.

All these challengers, Mr. Schwaab, have a limitless appetite for a limited resource. They are myopic, savage, and self centered. They are concerned primarily with the moment; they lust for getting theirs now. Though I gave them individual personalities they share most of their characteristics with one another. I know them because I am a commercial fisherman too. They are both my friends and my foes. In their shortsighted pursuit of wealth now, the worst of them doom the very life they love. So in order to save them from themselves you must control them. Not crush them but bend them to your will and the will of law.

My area of concern, because I live here, is the Gulf of Alaska

The Ocean Conservancy gave the the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council an A grade in 2008. Shame on them! They don't know what they are doing. The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council has only one thing going for it...the resources in the North Pacific and Bering Sea were very abundant to start with and not enough time has gone by to extinguish them, as has happened in the Atlantic. The NPFMC has potential. But the members of that body are, for the most part, wholly owned and operated by large commerical fishing and fish processing corporations whose financial well being is dependent upon fisheries resource extraction at the highest possible rate and for the lowest possible cost. Many of those interests are foreign owned. They have little concern over the long term consequences of their actions. Of our greatest concern, the trawl fisheries in the North Pacific are conducted like a war on fish. They are apportioned a huge amount of Prohibited Species Catch, and then are not observed in the taking of that catch. In catching their targeted species they are allowed (to continue the war analogy) to bomb, pillage, loot, and destroy the the benthic habitat and non-target species found there. Just because they are not observed doesn't mean it isn't happening. The observer program is broken and has been since day one. The smoke and mirrors public relations used by the trawlers is very sophisticated. They hire their own data firm, propaganda wing, and political organizers who can be seen handing out trawler data to the NPFMC like it was truth. When combined with their processor allies and compromised politicos, they generally get their way with the Council process.

For instance, each year in the Gulf of Alaska, the trawlers legally waste 2000 metric tons of halibut PSC worth at least $13 million dollars so they can conduct their fisheries. This is only their reported PSC of halibut. There is little doubt among the fleet that the actual waste is far higher, perhaps twice as high or more than is reported. Without observers, or with seasick observers, no one knows for sure. Meanwhile the central gulf ITQ halibut fleet suffers reduced quotas, downstream American and Canadian ITQ halibut fishermen suffer huge reductions in quotas, charter boats suffer reductions of catch and clients, and in general the resource diminishes every year. That is the way king crab went.

For crab in the Gulf of Alaska, the story is basically the same. With bobbin or roller gear the crab are crushed to pieces, no observable data surfaces if there happens to be a conscious observer aboard. Except in rare cases, as the one we published here, where fishing crew were so disgusted by the wanton waste they took pictures; otherwise, the damage is never accounted for. King crab around Kodiak built the larger vessel fleet. King crab capitalised many of today's bigger players. King crab is nearly extinct now. It should be listed as endangered. The more abundant tanner crab, have shown some sign of comeback, but the trawlers, unless controlled, will be the end of them as well. Trawls hit them in the nurseries, in the breeding pods, and on the feeding grounds.

So called pelagic (midwater) trawl gear, when not getting ripped up on lost or fishing crab pots hard on the bottom, is killing off uncounted numbers of Chinook salmon. On Kodiak Island, chinook salmon are in such low numbers the famous Karluk and Aiakulik Rivers have failed in their escapement goals and have been closed. Stories circulate the dock gossip about huge catches of chinooks off Spruce Island and off the west side of Kodiak in the Shelikof Strait. No data observed, low observer coverage, never happened? Help, sir, we need your help. Raise your righteous sword. The Bering Sea lost chum and chinooks are starving the subsistence users of the coasts and rivers. Trawlers after pollock are blamed. Too big, too rich, too influential to be reined in.

So Mr. Schwaab, we are counting on you, in your gladiator incarnation, to be a fair and square guy and to fight like hell for the fisheries. Or if it is the NMFS's intent to destroy the crab stocks and the halibut stocks and the benthic environment so a few trawlers can reap huge profits on a foundation of waste, please just tell us so. In either case, come on and hit us with the truth. But if you are up for a fight to save the Alaskan fisheries...let us help you with that too.

Finally, as to the drum roll for privatization of the fishery resources as heard from your boss, Dr. Lubchenco, and perhaps well meaning green groups, remember: ITQs etc., are only tools. Unless they are very carefully designed, they will not stop waste, benthic destruction, and resource degradation. Dangerously, however, they do promote consolidation of ownership of the resources for corporate interests who by law are charged with making profits for shareholders, not with resource management or protection. The history of ITQs has shown that they give preference to well capitaled entities, non-local ownership, result in share cropping, high rents, and the high grading of fish. They negate new entry by younger fishermen, resulting in the graying of the fleet and the disintegration of fishing dependent families and their coastal communities. ITQs are no panacea for conservation of the resources at all, regardless of the spin various nonfishing groups have given them. As in so many cases of external do-gooder interference in the affairs of others, "We'll save them even if it kills them."

With all due respect sir, keep your flippers wet.

Report, Rumor, Analysis

2010-02-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

Report:
Potential changes to halibut hired skipper regs forwarded for further analysis by NPFMC staff. PVOA and DSFU are adamantly opposed to reform.

Large owners of halibut IFQ commonly loan the 20% cash down payment required by the NMFS loan program to their crew members. So who really controls/owns that IFQ? Hint: Follow the money. Where the hell is the IRS?

Options are moving forward to require observers on small vessels fishing groundfish, including halibut. The buzz word is data gaps, quality data. Thinly veiled attempt by trawlers to reduce the pressure on their hidden dirty fishing by allying with other gear groups. Refuse them the compromise they crave. Do not go over to the dark side.

Bruce Leaman says only 50 million pounds of halibut are missing. Says bycatch needs reduction. (Really?)

Denby Lloyd wants assessments of halibut bycatch by October 2010.

Rumor:
SOS. Same Old Stuff. A Kodiak trawler, the Sea Mac, cod trawling last month came up with a huge bycatch of halibut while the observer was in the bunk, sea sick. Estimates ranged up to 20K pounds. They set back and killed 20K more! WTF. That is $720,000 at current IFQ prices. Tell me it ain't true. 'Sammatter wit you? Do you care? No more coffee at that place for me.

The Kodiak Chamberpot of Commerce forwarded only Matt Moir's name to the Governor for the NPFMC. They didn't know we already have a hard working Member? Not possible. If we lose our current Kodiak Member, the replacement will promote the agenda of foreign processor and trawler interests, and the interests of boots on deck owner/operators will be damaged. If you want to have any chance of making progress at the NPFMC, write letters of support by the end of February for Duncan Fields and Sam Cotten to:

Office of Governor Sean Parnell
Attn: Jason Hooley, Director of Boards and Commissions
PO Box 110001
Juneau, AK 99811-0001

CC:
Cora Campbell
Fisheries Policy Advisor
PO Box 110001
Juneau, AK 99811-0001

Analysis:
We have no evidence? The resources are collapsing. The trawlers operate without or around observers; some sell and transfer at sea their cod bycatch to their former crew operating jig boats. They bring refused loads to the dock that are wasted and dumped. They rip out the bellies of their pelagic trawls dragging up crab pots. They regularly destroy and damage far more than they deliver. Everyone on the waterfront knows the story, but the very officials charged by the the people through their government to manage and protect these resources are too distracted or compromised to demand protection of the resources. Way past time to revolt, friends, the trawlers and their allies need to be brought down. Demand change.

Several AP and NPFMC Members are qualified to join the Corrupt Bastards Club. To figure out who they are, pay close attention to how they vote on controlling bycatch. Nothing of consequence came out of the Portland meeting, just potential. Meanwhile crab fishermen, salmon fishermen, halibut fishermen, charter fishermen, sportsfishermen, and subsistence fishermen wait while the resources are hammered by the horrific bycatch like that we posted on this blog http://www.tholepin.blogspot.com/2009/10/filthy-video-of-halibut-waste.html .

Don't be afraid of observer coverage on the under sixty fleet. This is a smoke screen aimed by the trawlers to distract from their continuing dirty fishing. All fisheries have bycatch. Some fisheries are just plain dirty, with unacceptable levels of bycatch and benthic destruction. Under scrutiny, the truth of trawler destruction will require major changes in the way they operate, if they operate. Support the changes to observer coverage that will expose the truth.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Read this blog...it's loaded.

2010-02-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.alaskacafe.blogspot.com/

Keep yer flippers wet.

Alaska PFD to Pay for Trawler Theft?

2010-02-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

From a memo to Denby Lloyd, Alaska Commissioner of Fish and Game:

"Last night at the Edgewater Hotel, we were told by a halibut processor who attended Steve Hare's presentation to the PAG (Processor Advisory Group) that Steve admitted to them that the (at least) 100 million pounds of missing halibut that the IPHC cannot account for these past four years was caused by 'un-reported GOA trawl bycatch.' Steve never told that to us fishermen on the Conference Board, which really stinks. I request 2 minutes tomorrow morning to put this on the record at our Observer Committee Meeting at AFSC (Alaska Fisheries Science Center). Denby, this is grotesque and it suggests that the IPHC process itself is warped towards favoritism, which we have NEVER believed before, NOT ONCE. We trust Bruce Leaman and Greg Best. But Steve makes us wonder now. Plus, why wouldn't Jim Balsinger and Ralphie Hoard come clean with us yesterday? Don't they think we can handle it?

"Can you please call Steve on the carpet tomorrow and make him explain why he failed to fully inform us fishermen and the Observer Committee of what he knew about the status of our halibut stocks. Based just on what the Canadians told us yesterday, they'll insist on being compensated for this and we long-liners don't have deep pockets to pay them off. I'll bet you they start ogling the trawlers' ITQs or that $34 billion in the Alaska Permanent Fund (to get the Council's attention) just to bring this issue to a boil when they address the NPFMC in Portland next month. Trust me, they are really pissed off now and it seems unlikely they'll take it anymore (remember Peter Finch's 1976 performance in Network? "We are made as hell and we are not going to take it anymore." Double it!)

"Don't mean to ruin your day."

An Alaska Fisherman (name withheld)

Keep yer flippers wet.

Contact IPHC About Dragger Destruction of the Resource

2010-01-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

The International Pacific Halibbut Commission is meeting in Seattle January 25 through 29. Here is an opportunity to contact Executive Director Bruce Leaman bruce@iphc.washington.edu and make your concerns known about the wanton waste of halibut in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea by the American trawler fleet. While halibut stocks plummet and fishermen dependent on the resource continue to suffer economic impacts, the trawler fleet continues to decimate the halibut (and crab and salmon) stocks with impunity. By shear numbers of concerned citizens, perhaps if we add our voices to those in attendance who will be demanding changes in the way the IPHC and NMFS (No More Fish Sorry) calculate the real loss of halibut and habitat by the trawl fleet. Speak up now, loudly and often, before there is nothing left, like what has happened to the East Coast fisheries.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Tholepin Called Biased...

2010-01-17T17:02:00.000-08:00

Since when is truth biased? We are moving in a scary direction, people.

Keep yer flippers wet.

The Dope on Marine Stewardship Council Certification

2010-01-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6908997.ece

You pay 'em and they certify. Wow. That's what they mean by 'green.'

If you want to object to certification, you have to pay them...up to $30K. WTF.

Keep yer flippers wet.

Do Not Certify Pollock as Green!

2010-01-16T10:12:00.000-08:00

The blue tangles of threads on this tanner crab is chafing gear from a trawl net proving they are contacting the bottom and fragile crab, as well as everyting else! These were common during tanner crab season 2009 in Kodiak.

The Marine Stewardship Council (http://www.msc.org/) is about to re-certify the pollock trawl fishery as green and sustainable. Of course it is neither green or sustainable. It has a dark history going back at least as far as the joint venture days when hundreds (some say thousands)of my fellow sea lions were killed in the Shelikof Strait. More recently huge numbers of salmon, especially chum and chinook are taken by trawlers here in the Gulf of Alaska and in the Bering Sea, where resultant shortages of fish have closed the Red and the Karluk Rivers to fishing on Kodiak Island, and have starved the residents of the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers who depend on these fish for food and income. These systems have been declared a disaster for lack of fish, bycaught by the Bering Sea trawlers. www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/1095790.html.

Here in the Gulf of Alaska, it is well known that the 'midwater' trawls frequently contact the bottom (they call it 'kissing') crushing crab and other species while the trawlermen chase the pollock close to the bottom. Furthermore, juvenile pollock excluder gear allows for larger average fish size while excluding these juveniles. As a result of going through the excluder mesh, these smaller pollock are damaged and most do not survive thus distorting the catch stats. Since there is no accounting, these excluded/killed fish are not counted against the total allowable catch quota. Like the king and tanner crab that are crushed, if you don't see 'em you can't count 'em.

There is no way the pollock fishery is green or sustainable. You can make an objection to the Marine Stewardship Council, but only if you are a registered participant and are willing to pay up to $30k. Now that's some green!

Keep yer flippers wet.

SEACOPS Joins the Fight for Cleaner Fishing

2010-01-15T09:28:00.001-08:00

Welcome SeaCops to the fight to stop the wasteful destruction of our fisheries resources by the dirtiest fishing gear ever invented, trawling.

"Wiglaf - thanks for your work, we need your help! WE NEED VIDEO AND PICTURES. We're experiencing a severe decline of Halibut in SE Alaska and the charter sector is getting a lot of the blame for this. Go figure-punish the smallest user group with the least representation who get the most value per pound of fish caught.

"We are on a mission to educate the public about how ALL halibut drift west as larva and grow up in the nurseries of the Western Gulf only to be slaughtered by draggers as juvenile fish before they can complete their migration and be recruited into the fisheries = 2,000,000 individual fish! That's more halibut than the longliners and sport fishermen will get to catch this year combined.

"I work closely with SEACOPS (http://www.seacops.com/) who had a lot to do with getting rid of the draggers in SE Alaska in the '80s. We've got SEACOPS active again and are working on a presentation to educate SE communities about why our halibut numbers are down so low.

"Can we get a copy of your filthy halibut video for the presentation, and do you have pictures?"

Absolutely. On its way.

Keep yer flippers wet.

The Central Gulf, An Issue Overview for Non-Fishers

2010-01-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

The Central Gulf of Alaska

The richest area of the Gulf of Alaska, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, is the central gulf, composed of the near shore, the continental shelf, and the continental shelf edge waters between 159 W and 140 W longitude. Huge flats areas, mountainous pinnacles, and muddy gullies offer an incredible diversity of sea life. Most trawling occurs in waters well under 500 fathoms. This Google Earth view shows the continental shelf and the deep offshore abyssal waters. Jurisdictions include state waters (out to three miles) and federal waters out to 200 miles.

The state waters are mostly managed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and federal waters by the National Marine Fisheries Service through the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. Halibut are managed by the International Pacific Halibut Commission.

Comments about management should be addressed to your state senator, or representative as well as the governor's office, and the commissioner of Fish and Game. Comments about federal management should be addressed to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and copied to your US Senators and Representative Don Young. Don't expect much from the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council unless they are flooded with comments. They are not a democratic council and mostly follow the directives of their interest conflicted Members. Petitions and letter writing campaigns have greater effect than individual letters. Organizations also have greater effect, based on member numbers. Start your movement today. You might consider: www.ipetitions.com/start-petition

Bear in mind the following:

The Prohibited Species Catch (PSC) of halibut for trawlers in the Central Gulf is 2000 metric tons (4.4 million pounds). All of these fish are killed, thrown overboard and wasted. Because less than 30% of the trawler tows are observed, and these observations are often manipulated by the trawlers, the actual PSC is believed by most non-trawler fishermen to be far higher.
This PSC doesn't change with the abundance of halibut. Now that halibut abundance has gone down for several years in a row, effectively the trawler fleet is killing and wasting a much larger share of the halibut.
The trawler fleet wants to negotiate a larger PSC so they can catch more flounders (flats), since they reach their halibut PSC cap without catching all the flats they might otherwise be allowed. They call this stranded quota. The actual value of the flats is very low, but trawlers are allowed to keep targeted incidentally caught codfish which pays for the trips. So they want to waste more halibut to waste more flats so they can catch a little cod. Does this make sense to you?

If you are not a commercial fisherman and this all seems complex, remember, this is the simplified version. This all becomes more and more complex the more you learn and the NMFS and the trawler industry intends it to be too daunting to understand. The less the public knows, the more trawlers and their friends can get away with. The trawler fleet actually hires their own analysts to feed both NMFS and the public data and information most carefully spun to their distinct advantage. How else would they be able to continue to waste Alaska resources with such apparent nonchalance?

Missing data. Where is the data you ask? Missing or carefully manipulated. Because observer data is fragmentory, it used to both support trawler arguments before the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council , and dismissed as insufficient when used to criticised the trawler industry. When fewer than three vessels are involved in any area, the claim of proprietary privacy is made and the federal or state government can not by statute release the data. We need more data, no doubt, and to this end 100% observer coverage must be instituted to see what really goes on with our resources.

Begin your education at: www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc

Request:

100 % observer coverage on all trawlers in the Central Gulf.
Individual trawler bycatch caps on all PSC (halibut, king salmon, and crab).
PSC cap of halibut at 2000 metric tons must be linked to the highest abundance of halibut, and scaled back according to current abundance.
No increase of PSC. Enough wanton waste already.
Demand cleaner fishing practices by all gear types, no more free pass.

Keep yer flippers wet.