Tag Archives: bycatch

‘Freaked out’: Big money industry crippling salmon population in Alaska, natives say

There is no more salmon. That’s what native Alaskan Ricko DeWilde is most concerned with these days. Once flowing with abundance, native tribes have been sounding the alarm about the overfishing of Alaskan Ricko DeWilde and other native fish by international fishing companies, essentially wiping out natives’ main source of food as well as a cultural touchstone. “That’s a way of life that we’re losing right there,” DeWilde said. “Any of the fishing along the Yukon River has been prohibited,” DeWilde said. “The commercial fishing industry is just running rampant out here and it’s big money. They take over to board of fish, they take over to politicians, they have them in their pocket and it becomes like a fish mafia out here.” photos, >>click to read<< 08:08

New tech designed with Cornish fishermen to transform bycatch monitoring

An innovative new tool being developed with fishermen in Cornwall aims to radically transform how by-catch is documented on board fishing vessels and, ultimately, prevent it happening. In a UK-first, Insight360 combines voice recognition and video information to deliver real-time insight and create a 360-degree view of what’s happening at sea during a by-catch event, that continuously improves over time. Refined with fishermen, the technology removes the need to manually review and add notes to footage, offering instead a way for skippers and crews to train a monitoring system to automatically recognise and record bycatch events as they happen. >>click to read<< 08:19

With little movement on salmon bycatch, Alaska advocates look to Biden administration for executive action

Amid catastrophic shortfalls in salmon harvests in some of Alaska’s rural, Indigenous communities, advocates have pleaded for a crackdown on unintentional catch of those same salmon by the trawl vessels that harvest billions of pounds of whitefish in the Bering Sea. But the politically appointed regional council that manages Bering Sea fisheries has largely resisted those requests. So instead, advocates are now taking another approach. They’re pushing the Biden administration for a workaround: a rewrite of the federal guidelines that tell the regional council, and its counterparts across the country, how to manage all the fisheries under their supervision. >>click to read<< 18:40

In Depth: Alaska’s Fisheries Are Collapsing. This Congresswoman Is Taking on the Industry She Says Is to Blame.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were boomtimes for halibut fishermen in Alaska. Over 80 million pounds of the flatfish were being harvested annually. Deckhands could earn $250,000 a season. The small boat harbor in the southcentral city of Homer, known as the “halibut capital of the world,” was bustling. Erik Velsko, 39, was one of those fishermen. He started buying annual shares in 2001 when the halibut population was at near historic highs. But within a few years, the stock plummeted by more than half and the quotas for commercial fishermen were slashed accordingly. Halibut wasn’t the only so-called directed fishery to experience such a catastrophic drop. The crab fleet — made famous in the reality show “Deadliest Catch” — has been mostly stuck in port for two years after the near total collapse of the snow crab population and the decades long decline of red king crab. Photos, >click to read< 11:42

Bycatch task force considers new rules, more research to protect Alaska fish intercepted at sea

In the search for a solution to the problem of bycatch, the unintended at-sea harvest of non-target species, the stakes in Alaska are high. Now a special task force is nearing the end of a year-long process to find solutions that satisfy competing interests to the problem of bycatch, which refers to fish that are caught incidentally by commercial fishers who are targeting other fish. The Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force, created by Gov. Mike Dunleavy last November, is due to release its final report by the end of next month. At least two additional meetings are to be held between now and then. >click to read< 11:50

Bycatch stirs debate at fisheries roundtable

Hosted at Kenai Peninsula College by the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, the three-hour event brought together a who’s-who lineup of fisheries and policy experts from Alaska. That lineup included Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, who said Bering Sea trawling is not responsible for Alaska’s declining chinook salmon runs. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act defines bycatch as fish harvested in a fishery that are not sold or kept for personal use. The phrase is sometimes used generally to refer to the capture of fish that are not being targeted by a specific fishery that are discarded. >click to read< 09:59

Regardless of party or office, Alaska candidates are targeting trawling

Republicans, Democrats and independents seeking a variety of elected offices across Alaska appear united by a desire to restrict deep-sea trawling. In candidate questionnaires submitted to the Alaska Beacon, candidates for statewide and legislative races, regardless of party, say the restrictions are the best way to improve salmon returns on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. “I support efforts to reduce the wasteful bycatch of Alaska’s seafood by Seattle-based high seas fishing corporations,” said Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Alaska’s U.S. House seat. “Science provides the best guide. However, I think most Alaskans agree it is past time to get high seas trawler bycatch under control,” said Tuckerman Babcock, a Republican candidate for an Alaska Senate district on the Kenai Peninsula. >click to read< 19:46

How warming ocean temperatures wiped out Maine’s shrimp industry

Since 2014 fishing for northern shrimp has been banned in the United States. The stock in our area has decreased to the point where they are not reproducing. This is not due to overfishing; it is directly due to the temperature of the water. They have simply moved north to colder Canadian waters. Back in 2007, when there was a robust northern shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine, scientists were looking for net modifications that would catch shrimp but not have any bycatch of finfish. Since shrimp fisheries throughout the world have some of the highest bycatch of any fishery, this was a priority worldwide. At that time the Northeast Consortium at the University of New Hampshire helped fund research by Dr. Pingguo. He and David Goethel developed a trawl net, named “The Topless Trawl,” that drastically reduced bycatch in the northern shrimp fishery. >click to read< 10:21

Bycatch task force works to refine mission ahead of November deadline

Bycatch is when fishing vessels catch something they’re not targeting. It could be tanner crab caught in a black cod pot, or halibut scooped up in a pollock trawl net. It’s been an incendiary issue in Alaska’s fisheries for decades. Now, as stocks of crab, salmon and halibut decline, trawl fisheries have come under fire for their role, which represents the vast majority of incidental catch in and around Alaska. The governor’s office took notice. Gov. Mike Dunleavy established a task force to review bycatch late last year with a deadline of November to submit its recommendations. But during that time, the Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force also has to establish its own priorities, break into subcommittees, and decide what it’s going to focus on before its mandate expires in just nine months. And there’s a lot of information to sort through already as it plays catch-up. >click to read< 11:01

Dunleavy administration announces formation of bycatch task force

“We’ve had a reduction in or closure of the crab fisheries in the Bering Sea. The [North Pacific Fishery Management] Council is discussing how to deal with halibut bycatch, and I think there’s a lot of perception that there are bycatch issues associated with what’s happened with salmon in Western Alaska systems,” said Alaska Fish & Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang. And, he says, his boss has taken notice. “I think the governor was hearing loud and clear that there was just a lot of noise around the issue of bycatch,” >click to read< 12:52

Alaska snow crab harvest slashed by nearly 90% after population crash in a warming Bering Sea

The snow crab is a mainstay of the Alaska crab boat fleet, much of it based in Washington, and the 2021-22 catch limit of 5.6 million pounds, announced Friday, is down 88% from the previous season. The 2021 fall harvest of Bristol Bay red king crab, another important source of revenue for that fleet, was canceled for this year because of too few females. The combined impacts of the closure and snow crab cutbacks are a big financial hit to crabbers who in past years have grossed more than $200 million from the two harvests. At a meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council this week, crabbers called for additional restrictions in other harvests. >click to read< 09:30

Canada adds warm-water fish to list of species monitored in DFO summer trawl survey off East Coast

Several warm-water fish species were added to the annual summer research vessel survey off the coast of Eastern Canada in 2020.,, Monitoring for the blackbelly rosefish, john dory, trigger fish, tilefish fish, dusky shark and others was included in the DFO summer trawl survey along the Scotian Shelf and Bay of Fundy for the first time last year. It was done at the request of the commercial fishing industry, which is capturing them accidentally, called bycatch, but cannot land them because they are not included in any Canadian commercial fish licence conditions. That doesn’t make sense to Alain d’Entremont, president and CEO of Scotia Harvest,,, “I think that if they are groundfish species and we are catching them as part of our regular fishing, then there should be mechanisms for us to be able to land them,,, >click to read< 16:55

Anti-Commercial Fishing Lawsuit demands NC coastal fishing reforms

The N.C. Coastal Fisheries Reform Group, a nonprofit organization, has said the degradation of marine fisheries is the most significant environmental issue facing the state, and it is going to court to seek change. Joe Albea, a spokesman for the organization, said that “vast schools of croaker and gray trout all over North Carolina in the sounds and along the beach” were present in the 1970s and ’80s. “Through the years we have lost those great schools of fish,” he said. Brent Fulcher, whose fishing vessel, the Micah Bell, is named as a defendant“,, Glenn Skinner, executive director of the trade group the N.C. Fisheries Association, believes the lawsuit is without merit. >click to read< 14:44

Bycatch – From problem to opportunity. Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA

For as long as I have been involved in the commercial fishing industry, and that’s going back for what is approaching forty years, there has been a widespread feeling that “things would be better if this industry were administratively housed in the Department of Agriculture (DOA).” Whether at the state level, in state waters within three miles of the coastline, or the federal level beyond three miles, there’s always been a sort of wistful “wouldn’t it be great if we were over there” view of the DOA, and the reasons for this aren’t awfully difficult to fathom. The Department of Agriculture, no matter whether state or federal, is mostly focused on promotion, and fisheries agencies, no matter the level, are regulatory in nature, in organization and in attitude. This is glaringly obvious with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal fisheries agency, which in recent years has become almost totally focused to the virtual exclusion of anything else on limiting – rather than enhancing – the commercial production of fish and shellfish. >click to read< 15:06

Turtlegate: Net Escape Doors Versus the Doors of Government

This week, a 50 pound Loggerhead was rescued on Cape Cod.,, Kemp’s Ridley turtles are endangered and although it cannot be confirmed if there is a direct connection between these cold-stunning incidents and interaction with fishing boats, trawler net entanglement remains the number one culprit for sea turtle trauma and mortality. huh! Let’s turn our attention to this critical man-made danger that affects all ocean mammals and sea life in general,,, we see where this is going, >click to read< 09:33

New Jersey fishermen to donate bycatch to NJ food bank

A new partnership between New Jersey fishermen and a local food bank will mean that some of New Jersey’s hungry residents will have plenty to eat.
For decades, a large portion of the fish caught by commercial fishermen in the United States has gone to waste.,,, But a new program launched in New Jersey Friday means that some of this wasted fish will be donated to Fulfill, the food bank of Monmouth and Ocean counties. “That fish gets turned over to the people in Monmouth and Ocean counties who need it the most. And there are a lot of them,” says former Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, the CEO of Fulfill. >Video, click to read< 10:14

DC Circuit Sinks Challenge to Fishing Bycatch Rule

The D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld the government’s method of counting fish and other sea life that are unintentionally swept up in commercial fishing nets. The NMFS changed its method for counting bycatch in 2015,,, The 2015 change puts trained reporters, typically biologists, on a sample of fishing boats to count bycatch. Their numbers are then extrapolated across entire fleets, giving the government an estimate to work with. Conservation group Oceana challenged the new rule,,, >click to read<19:25

Controversial bycatch monitoring program coming to Maritime lobster industry

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans is rolling out a controversial bycatch monitoring program in three lobster fishing areas in Nova Scotia, but it won’t say when the program will be introduced across the Maritimes. The department is imposing at-sea monitors for the first time this fall in three lobster fishing districts in Nova Scotia from Halifax to Digby. The department said it needs to collect data on other species — such as cod, cusk and Jonah crab — that are inadvertently being caught in lobster traps, which is known as bycatch. The question is when the monitoring will roll out elsewhere. >click to read<11:14

With New Kuskokwim King Salmon Data Released, Bering Sea Bycatch Restrictions Come Under Review

New state data reveals that the number of king salmon returning to the Kuskokwim River has been inflated for decades. Now, the state is recommending that the body governing the Bering Sea pollock fishery adopt this new information. If it does, restrictions on the fleet’s bycatch of king salmon could tighten, and a long-voiced demand from Kuskokwim residents could be met. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting in Kodiak, Alaska this week. It’s scheduled to make a decision by Monday on how many king salmon can be caught incidentally by commercial fishing boats targeting pollock in the Bering Sea. >click to read<08:33

Social media post criticizes Trident Seafoods, Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet for halibut bycatch

A fisherman based out of Homer posted images on social media of halibut bycatch headed for the grinder at Kodiak’s Trident Seafoods processing plant. The post got a lot of attention online and sparked criticism of Trident, the Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet and a body that regulates the commercial fishing industry. Trident is the largest primary processor of seafood in the United States and is heavily invested in Alaska. “We’re a company built by fishermen for fishermen and we don’t just buy pollock or cod or crab or salmon or halibut, we buy everything that we can sustainably harvest and feed the world with. Halibut is a very important part of our business,” said Lumsden. Longtime fisherman Erik Velsko says if Trident really cares about halibut and sustainability some things need to change. >click to read<18:59

Halibut trash

Only in Alaska, which likes to claim title to the world’s “best-managed fisheries,” would halibut now retailing at prices in excess of $20 per pound be ground into fish meal to feed animals, shrimp and maybe even farmed salmon – the bane of Alaska commercial fishermen. Photos of halibut and other, trawl-caught bottomfish headed for the grinder emerged from Kodiak this weekend as Alaska fishermen started into a fishing season where the targeted harvest of halibut by both commercial fishermen and anglers has been seriously restricted because of conservation concerns. >click to read<18:20

Lawsuit seeks to protect whales, turtles from California gillnets

Oceana filed a lawsuit seeking to force U.S. fisheries managers to implement plans for restricting the number of whales and turtles permitted to be inadvertently snared in drift gillnets used for catching swordfish off California’s coast. The proposed rule, endorsed in 2015 by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, would place numerical limits on “bycatch” of whales and other marine creatures, and suspend swordfish gillnet operations if any of the caps are exceeded.  The regulation was expected to gain final approval from the National Marine Fisheries Service. But it was withdrawn last month after the Commerce Department agency determined the cost to the commercial fishing industry outweighed conservation benefits, agency spokesman Michael Milstein said on Thursday. click here to read the story 17:11 Geoff Shester, a senior scientist at Oceana, who was “furious” when he found out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had decided to against adopting the rule. (lmao!) click here to read 17:13

Opinion: State, council fail to help Kodiak trawl fisheries

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has a record for successful fishery management, built on principles known as the Alaska Model. Recently, the council abandoned the Alaska Model and its solid reputation for progressive fishery management. In doing so, the council failed the Gulf of Alaska trawl groundfish fisheries and our community of Kodiak. Led by the state of Alaska, the council voted at its December meeting in Anchorage to “postpone indefinitely” any further work to address the goal of bycatch reduction through a cooperative management program for Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries. Instead, the Council ended a four-year public process to develop a program to achieve this goal. By their action, the state and the council put politics first, and the health of our fisheries and coastal communities came in dead last. Read the op-ed here 17:46

Gulf of Carpentaria trawl operators on track to cut bycatch by one third with new prawn net devices

7669612-3x2-700x467Trawler operators in the Gulf of Carpentaria believe they’re on track to achieving an ambitious target of cutting bycatch by 30 per cent in three years. The northern prawn fishery’s been offering cash incentives to promote and develop new ideas for limiting the amount of non-target species caught in prawn nets. Trawler skipper Jamie Ball admitted he was worried at first about potential prawn losses when trialling a new bycatch reduction device on board his fishing vessel, Xanadu. But after measuring and comparing catches in separate nets over a two-week period, the skipper and his crew were convinced the industry was on a winner. “I was a bit hesitant ’cause I thought ‘oh well is it losing prawn as well?” Read the story here 13:34

Their proposal would hurt North Carolinians – Jerry Schill, President, North Carolina Fisheries Association

ncfa 3 finishedIn response to a letter to the editor, “Thoughts on marine fisheries,” Wednesday, March 16, I offer the following comments. It should be noted that the Kinston authors sent the letter to several media outlets. On the subject of shrimp trawling, the writers fail to acknowledge the many studies done by researchers over the years that have documented bycatch associated with this fishery and that despite decades of trawling, overall benthic productivity is dramatically increased. They also ignore the efforts by commercial fishermen to work proactively to reduce bycatch. Those studies began in the late 1980s and resulted with bycatch reduction devices in shrimp trawls. Currently, even though North Carolina is ahead of federal requirements to reduce bycatch, there is cooperative research ongoing to reduce it even further. Read the rest here 10:11

Australia: Calls for a long-term strategy to protect threatened marine species from commercial fishing

There are calls for the Federal Government to develop a long-term strategy to protect threatened marine species from commercial fishing. Every year thousands of protected species are killed as bycatch.  The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) publishes a quarterly report detailing how many protected species have been killed in Commonwealth waters. The Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Tooni Mahto said the numbers were unacceptable. (but they never are, eh Tooni?)  Meanwhile, In the Small Pelagic Fishery,,, Read the rest here 20:07

Your Definition of Bycatch is Most Likely Incorrect

So why is this important? One reason it’s important is because when the world’s largest ocean conservation organization does not understand what bycatch even is, then we have a very big problem. When ocean conservation organizations do not understand what bycatch is, it can lead to scientifically flawed statistics published in reports such as “Wasted Catch” which only amplify the confusion by spreading misinformation about responsible U.S. fisheries to the mass general public. Read the rest here 16:59

Alaska flatfish catchers take hit after NPFMC bycatch vote

“We are not happy. This is a huge, huge cut,” Chris Woodley, executive director of the Groundfish Forum in Seattle, Wash. “We have already taken a 20 percent cut in the last seven years and now this is a 25 percent reduction.” The Groundfish Forum estimates USD 30 million (EUR 26.6 million) to USD 50 million (EUR 44.3 million) in losses to catchers-processors of Pacific cod, sole, Atka mackerel and other flatfish because of the reduction. Read the rest here 21:24

Guest Opinion: State needs to push for halibut protection – by John L. Beath

pacific_halibutThe Pacific halibut may be an icon of our region, but over the past 10 years in the Bering Sea, it’s become increasingly obvious that we aren’t doing as good a job of protecting them as we should. A total of 62.6 million pounds of halibut were caught as bycatch, harvested unintentionally and thrown overboard dead. To compare, the hook-and-line fishermen targeting halibut only caught 69.7 million pounds in the same area over the same period of time.  Read the rest here 10:52

David Bayes: Major bycatch reduction essential to halibut fishery

In recent seasons, halibut users across the state have been tightening their belts. Biologists tell us that, though the total number of halibut in Alaska’s waters is at a very sustainable rate, those halibut are now growing more slowly than usual. Since halibut are regulated based upon the “total number of pounds in the sea,”  rather than “total number of fish in the sea,” the longline and charter fleets are facing allocation cutbacks. Read the rest here 16:27