Fishery managers start a process to tighten salmon bycatch rules in Alaska’s Bering Sea
Federal fishery managers took steps on Tuesday to impose new rules to prevent Alaska chum salmon from being scooped into nets used to catch Bering Sea pollock, an industrial-scale fishery that makes up the nation’s largest single-species commercial seafood harvest. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council advanced a suite of new protections intended to combat the pollock trawlers’ salmon bycatch, the term for the incidental catch of unintended species. Proposed steps in the package include numeric caps on total chum salmon bycatch, with varying allocations for different sectors of the pollock fleet; protective limits in corridors known to be used by salmon migrating through the ocean back to Western Alaska freshwater spawning areas; and provisions that would link new limits in the ocean to real-time salmon counts and conditions in the rivers. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 12:31
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