Tag Archives: Jeff Kauffman
Crab crash: Effects of collapsed Bering Sea crab stocks are being felt far beyond the fleet
The crash in Bering Sea crab stocks is translating to serious impacts for fishermen and communities across the Western Alaska coast. From the top, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery is closed entirely this season for the first time since the 1990s, while the Bering Sea snow crab total allowable catch was reduced by nearly 90 percent. In the meantime, fishermen who depend on crab are dealing with the fallout of those cuts this year. Gabriel Prout of Kodiak was waiting out a storm in the Akutan harbor last week, after finishing up his snow crab season. The F/V Silver Spray, the vessel he owns with his father and brothers, was only able to go out for 100,000 pounds of snow crab. Of that, they only caught about 75,000 pounds because the fishing was so slow; they traded the rest of the quota for bairdi and headed south. >click to read< 17:39
NPFMC ties limits on Bering Sea trawlers to halibut abundance
The council that manages fishing in federal waters voted to link groundfish trawl fishing in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands to halibut abundance today. The action caps, at least for now, a six-year debate about curbing halibut bycatch in Alaska. For many who have been following that debate, the decision comes as a surprise, since it’s expected to deal what trawlers say is a crushing blow to their fishery. >click to read< 09:10
Following his exit from the IPHC, Kauffman calls violation ‘honest mistake’
An executive from a Community Development Quota group blamed a regulatory mix-up for the fishing violation that forced him to resign from the international commission regulating halibut harvests. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Law Enforcement charged Jeff Kauffman and two other men in March with possessing more than 10,000 pounds of halibut over their combined quota limits for a violation that occurred in June 2012. Kauffman is the vice president of the Central Bering Sea Fisherman’s Association, the Community Development Quota group for the island of St. Paul. He resigned on June 22. The joint U.S.-Canadian body has governed halibut quotas and regulations by international treaty since 1923, and has three commissioners each from the U.S. and Canada. Kauffman chalked the violation up to a regulatory mix-up. The violation occurred around June 5, 2012, while Kauffman fished for halibut around St. Paul with Mike Baldwin and Wade Henley, the captain of the F/V Saint Peter. CBSFA owns 100 percent of the vessel. Read the story here 14:49
