Bering Sea King Salmon By-Catch Press Release

[akfishnut]

Attached is an ADN story about the Bering Sea by catch (and waste) of King Salmon.

http://www.adn.com/money/industries/...ry/740118.html

[Akbrownsfan]

Good article!! Wesley is a good writer.

[270ti]

Thanks for the link. It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. The commercial power trollers in my area are reporting the WORST winter for king fishing they have ever seen. It's getting scary.

[fishNphysician]

'bout time!

[willphish4food]

same old tired rants

"The fish are there, they need to be caught."

"Indicators that the fishery may be hurting other fisheries, the ecosystem as a whole, and even itself, are only indicators. They could indicate anything, so should not be taken seriously."

"We can't prove (beyond a shadow of a doubt) that the pollock fishery is causing any harm to anything, until we have more studies."

"We cannot take action to throttle back such a valuable fishery without having better proof. We will take it up again in cycle when more evidence has been gathered."

Obviously, a chinook cap that is anything less than the second highest catch EVER would be ridiculous, based on the flimsy evidence that this bycatch is actually harming any individual chinook fisheries.

From the NPFMC: "Precautionary management of the fishery is always employed, and will be employed here: we will be extremely cautious not to hurt the bottom line of the pollock industry."

What another poster on this topic stated makes sense. This is a federal fishery, and the product feeds many people worldwide (with cheap, highly processed, msg, sugar, trans fat laden, and surely extremely healthy fish sticks), so therefore it is ok to ruin any fisheries that the pollock industry is overharvesting as bycatch. Alaska villages get their token payoff in CDQ's, and once again, Alaska gets screwed by the Feds. Feels good, don't it?