Halibut bycatch: Wasting the sportsman's share.

[Nelly]

Below you'll find a pic that was given to me by a concerned Alaskan angler. I have no words to express my disgust at this waste of a precious natural resource.

Currently the Alaskan trawl bycatch exceeds the current SE Alaska sport and charter harvest alocation.
Let me say that another way: The commercial harvest WASTE exceeds the amount that charter anglers will be allowed to harvest this year.

As long as we stand by and allow this to happen we get what we deserve: shorter seasons, lighter bag limits and the ever-shrinking short end of the stick.

[Jerm]

WOW.


That's so terrible to see all those baby butts dead.

[Salmonhawk]

It's just awful and I just can't understand why decision makers stand by and let this happen year after year!
We've seen fisheries crash around the world due to commercial overfishing and waste. It's time policy makers start calling a spade a spade and shutting down this type of wasteful "harvest". Another prime example is the one that Terry Sheely wrote about in the Feb. issue of The Reel News. Industrial gillnetters snagged 5,042 legal chinook last year on the Columbia River but their bycatch of illegal fish was 6,607. How many of those do you think swam off fine after being tangled in a gill net?

Due to these wastes of OUR resources we barely have a halibut season, we have short and often confusing salmon seasons, and we are seeing our sturgeon angling severely curtailed. Can you imagine if recreational anglers peformed in this manner? We would be shut down so fast it would make our head spin. I am just sick of this I'm going to go punch a heavy bag for awhile now.

[Robbo]

We don't "deserve" this...it's total bullshit that the bottom draggers shovel millions of pounds of halibut bycatch back into the North Pacific. They know it, the politicians know it, the lobbyists know it, we know it...and yet it continues.

I've seen video of the ocean floor before and after bottom trawling in the North Pacific and the seabed is decimated afterwards. Not only are they wasting a great resource, but they're also trashing the sealife and deepwater corals on the ocean floor that help make the Alaskan waters so vibrant with sea life. It takes hundreds of years for this life to grow and it's gone in one drag with a bottom trawl

[Nelly]

You're right Robbo,
We don't individually "deserve" having our natural resources strip-mined, stolen and destroyed but as a society we allow it to happen.

So, where does the ownership and consequences of this ridiculously wasteful behavior belong? The owners and operators of the trawl fleet, fisheries managers and politicians?

If we as the sportfishing public, now made aware of this travesty sit idly by and do nothing we become complicit through our inaction.

...and Tobeck, I don't like being refered to as a "heavy bag"...

[trophymac]

That looks likes in the picture, more than most would catch in a lifetime.

[Smalma]

I have read that this "bycatch" is measured in millions of pounds.

Not is dumping those fish back to the sea wasteful it is obvious from the pictures (compare the eagle to the size of the halibut) that the average size is quite small - huge numbers of fish are being killed. Measuring the waste in poundage instead of numbers of fish killed clearly unstates the problem

Tight lines
Curt

[Robbo]

It's hard to imagine what the actual number of wasted halibut really is Curt. I ran into a guy at my PSA talk on Thursday that worked on the draggers for 25 years in Alaska and he said they'd kick back dead 200 to 300 pound halibut all day long, not to mention all the ping pong paddle sized halibut.

Numerous IPHC documents state the bycatch at anywhere from 15 to 25 million pounds in the Gulf of Alaska, Kodiak, and the Bering Sea combined. Juvenile halibut that would eventually migrate as far south as BC, Washington, and Oregon. I'd assume that the IPHC would be as interested as anyone at decreasing this waste.

[Salmonhawk]

Seems to me like we should gather every peice of video, every picture, or piece of evidence we can and make a dvd to send to every politician, media outlet, IPHC, NOAA, and everyone else we can think of. This might wake some people up to what is going on. The more attention that is called to it, the sooner it might change.

[Salmonhawk]

This video will make you sick

http://tholepin.blogspot.com/2009/10/fi ... waste.html