Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[IronNoggin]

Fishermen in the Gulf of Alaska have accidentally caught an estimated 58,336 king salmon this year, an unprecedented level of bycatch that could lead to new fishing restrictions.

In recent years the Gulf of Alaska’s bycatch numbers have hovered around 20,000 fish. This year’s numbers surprised both the industry and regulators.

“By far this is the largest (bycatch) we have ever seen,” said Josh Keaton, a fisheries manager with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). “Hopefully it means a lot of kings are out there to be caught and they ran into a big pack of them.”

Most of the bycatch came from the trawl pollock fishery in the last month, especially in the western Gulf.

About 20 boats from King Cove and Sand Point averaged 3.4 king salmon per metric ton of polluck, picking up an estimated 24,878 fish in 12 days of fishing between Oct. 1 and Oct. 17.

Pollock boats in two regions around Kodiak took in 11,896 kings this October.

Julie Bonney, director of the groundfish industry group Groundfish Data Bank, said this is the highest bycatch she has seen as well.

Unlike 2007 — the last time a high level of king bycatch was reported — the bycatch data is considered accurate this year, both Keaton and Bonney said.

Bycatch numbers are estimated using data collected by fisheries observers. Bycatch for non-observed boats is generalized using observed data.

This year’s bycatch numbers could lead to new restrictions or regulations designed to lower bycatch, but not in the immediate future.

Chinook (king salmon) bycatch was already on the agenda for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council agenda this December. The council is not scheduled to take any final action, but will consider a new paper on the subject.

The Gulf of Alaska’s king salmon bycatch this year was also large enough to attract the attention of fishery managers in the Lower 48 because kings accidentally caught in the Gulf of Alaska may be endangered stocks from the Lower 48.

Because this year’s Chinook bycatch exceeded a limit of 40,000 kings, it triggered conversations about the problem with fishery managers in the Lower 48, NMFS manager Melanie Brown said.

King salmon tagged from endangered stocks like the Upper Willamette and lower Columbia rivers have been found in the Gulf of Alaska before.

Salmon bycatch is difficult to control because the fish are always moving around, but the trawl industry does have technologies to reduce it, Bonney said.

One option is salmon excluder devices, openings in trawl nets which let salmon escape. Some devices are used by larger boats.

Another approach is avoiding salmon hot spots, but detecting salmon and avoiding them during a derby-style fishery opening is difficult, Bonney said.

Source:
http://www.kodiakdailymirror.com/?pid=19&id=9256

[doja]

Sound like they have gotten better at their by-catch-fishing skills.

I'd be very surprised if all boats did everything to avoid by-catch. I'm also sure many do but there is always those who want more money and it is legal to do so.

[BBarley]

Just remember this next time you bite into fillet-o-fish

Your indirectly supporting this cowboy style fishing. 

[IronNoggin]

Worse than originally reported: http://tholepin.blogspot.com/

[Bently]

Draggermen like salmon too ya know

That's a lot of fish, considering the 20 plus yrs I fished hake off our west coast. We might get the odd chinnook and chum, but that's about it.If anything we had more yellowtail rockfish by-catch than salmon. We used to get a few silver brights in the soft bottom trawl fishing for grey cod and sole 50 fathoms and shallower. I wonder what depths these guys are fishing their midwaters at ?? With numbers like that, they might have to send them offshore into deeper waters, but then they'd b!tch cause its harder to find a good worm of fish, making for quicker tows and shorter run to town.

I like filet-o-fish  

[Bently]

Salmon bycatch is difficult to control because the fish are always moving around, but the trawl industry does have technologies to reduce it, Bonney said.

One option is salmon excluder devices, openings in trawl nets which let salmon escape. Some devices are used by larger boats.



Source:
http://www.kodiakdailymirror.com/?pid=19&id=9256

We used these escapement panels laced into our lengthening pieces before and found that they only worked to decrease small fish by-catch. It's pretty tough to have these work for salmon escapement if the pollack their catching is to be of any size. They have two different types of these "excluder" devises.....one made of mesh and one made of bars. We used the bar style when pelagic trawling for squid offshore. These were to reduce tuna by-catch. The best way we found to reduce by-catch in this fishery was to have actual cameras mounted in the belly's of the trawl. You could literally see everything going in. The "excluder" devices do work, but they have to mount them higher up towards the front of the trawl, this gives the fish time and less effort to swim back out.When their mounted down near the cod end, the fish have no chance then as the flow is too strong. This is just what I experienced with using these devises, nothing more