Whiting boats cleared to catch salmon
Officials allow 11,000 chinook to be snared as bycatch
Thursday, June 05, 2008
SCOTT LEARN–
The Oregonian
This summer, commercial salmon trollers and sport anglers in California and along most of Oregon's coast won't be allowed to pluck a single chinook salmon from the ocean, an unprecedented shutdown.
But the boats that chase whiting -- the codlike fish used mostly in imitation crabmeat and other processed fish products -- will be allowed to haul in 11,000 or more chinook along the West Coast without penalty, as part of the fishery's inadvertent "bycatch."
Whiting fishermen and federal managers say the salmon catch is well within safe limits and tiny compared with commercial salmon harvests, which totaled roughly 185,000 chinook along the West Coast last year. It's also a minuscule part of a huge whiting haul that made Oregon's commercial whiting landings 50 percent more valuable in 2007 than commercial landings of salmon.
But environmentalists and the salmon trollers shut down for the season see a double standard. Regulators closed the direct ocean chinook fishery in April with the mantra that "every fish matters."
When they head to sea in mid-June, whiting boats will still have flexibility on the number of salmon they can catch incidentally. High numbers will trigger a federal review rather than an automatic shutdown. Regulators didn't reduce that "soft cap," despite the closure of other fisheries.
"We feel there should be a hard cap with salmon -- if you reach this many salmon, you're done," said Paul Merz, a longtime salmon troller out of Charleston. "And in a year like this where we have no fishery, that number should be really small."
In 2006, a year after salmon bycatch spiked, regulators proposed having the Pacific Fishery Management Council set tougher standards, including a hard cap of 14,000 fish. But the bycatch dropped the next two years, and regulators abandoned the idea.
The whiting industry has had problems reporting bycatch of rockfish, the fish of most concern in years past. Last year, one whiting processing plant got caught grinding rockfish to escape detection, a whiting fisherman illegally tossed a big load of rockfish bycatch overboard, and others unplugged on-board monitoring cameras when bringing in nets full of fish.
Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shut down the whiting season early for the first time because fishermen reached rockfish bycatch limits. This year, there's the salmon issue and concern about overfishing of whiting itself.
Adding to the pressure: Worldwide demand for whiting is up, with Russia and China increasingly in the mix. That's drawn more boats chasing a fixed overall limit of whiting.
Whiting swim in the middle of the water column, about halfway between the surface and the ocean floor, often in schools that can run for a mile or more. On a whiting trawler, the crew unspools a net up to 700 feet long from two mammoth reels bolted into the steel deck.
For the most part, the nets come back full of just whiting. Most tows are clean, regulators say, with the bycatch typically coming in just a few "dirty tows." Salmon bycatch brought to onshore processors typically gets taken to food banks.
The rockfish bycatch quota is small, less than 1 percent compared with the total whiting limit. Salmon bycatch is an even smaller proportion.
But David Jincks, a whiting fisherman and president of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative in Newport, said the fishery is way ahead of most on avoiding bycatch. Skippers fish in daylight and coordinate with each other to steer clear of dirty tows. "I think the whiting industry has taken a lead on all bycatch. We're managing our resource really well."
Also true: The low bycatch proportions come in part because the whiting haul is enormous, reflecting a low-value, high-volume fishery. In Oregon last year, whiting landings totaled 94.3 million pounds compared with 1.4 million pounds of commercially caught salmon. The value per pound: 7.4 cents for whiting; $3.41 for salmon.
"A small percentage of an enormous volume can still be significant," said Ben Enticknap of the conservation group Oceana. "We're talking about at-risk populations of salmon and depleted populations of rockfish."
Federal regulators focus their review of the salmon bycatch on salmon runs listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
But this year, the concern is for low levels of Sacramento River fall chinook, which aren't on the federal list. No detailed review has been made of the bycatch effect on the Sacramento run, which journeys up Oregon's coast when it hits the ocean.
Frank Lockhart, sustainable fisheries administrator in the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northwest office, said the focus of the management council's closure was on fisheries that specifically target salmon. Commercial trollers can catch no salmon this year. Sport anglers will be allowed a small ocean coho salmon season.
"Does it really make sense to shut down the second-largest fishery off the coast for the catch of a few hundred (threatened or endangered) fish?" Lockhart said. "In general, the council has come down on the side of no."
In 2005, the chinook bycatch hit 11,916 fish, triggering a review under the Endangered Species Act. Regulators proposed amending fishery rules to allow quicker in-season closures if the salmon bycatch was running high or setting a hard bycatch limit of 14,000 a year.
But bycatch numbers dropped and NMFS officials decided internally not to bring those proposals before the council, Lockhart said.
Federal regulators are considering a hard cap on the pollock fishery in Alaska, where the chinook bycatch totaled 130,000 fish last year, including many from Northwest rivers.
"It's not clear that the council's system (for whiting) actually encourages people to develop new techniques and fishing fleet behaviors that would avoid bycatch," said Julie Sherman, West Coast organizer for the Marine Fish Conservation Network. "It didn't work for rockfish. It's not working for salmon."
There's also doubt about the accuracy of the bycatch numbers that fishermen report -- in large part because of the two cheating incidents last year.
This year, the shoreside boats have more monitoring cameras and the cameras are more tamperproof. Most important, government observers will count bycatch as the boats deliver their loads to processing plants.
That observation isn't 100 percent yet, Lockhart said, but it's a huge improvement.
Other measures the council's enforcement committee recommended have yet to be implemented, including tougher penalties for cheaters and ramp cameras to film tows as they're brought on board.
The council is close to approving a system to assign the whiting quota to individual boats. That should give fishermen more time to pick their spots and avoid bycatch.
Jincks, the Newport whiting fisherman, said his first job was fishing for salmon. "We live in these communities with salmon fishermen, too. We all need to watch out for each other."
Scott Learn: 503-294-7657; scottlearn@news.oregonian.com For environment news, go to oregonlive.com/environment
Officials allow 11,000 chinook to be snared as bycatch
Thursday, June 05, 2008
SCOTT LEARN–
The Oregonian
This summer, commercial salmon trollers and sport anglers in California and along most of Oregon's coast won't be allowed to pluck a single chinook salmon from the ocean, an unprecedented shutdown.
But the boats that chase whiting -- the codlike fish used mostly in imitation crabmeat and other processed fish products -- will be allowed to haul in 11,000 or more chinook along the West Coast without penalty, as part of the fishery's inadvertent "bycatch."
Whiting fishermen and federal managers say the salmon catch is well within safe limits and tiny compared with commercial salmon harvests, which totaled roughly 185,000 chinook along the West Coast last year. It's also a minuscule part of a huge whiting haul that made Oregon's commercial whiting landings 50 percent more valuable in 2007 than commercial landings of salmon.
But environmentalists and the salmon trollers shut down for the season see a double standard. Regulators closed the direct ocean chinook fishery in April with the mantra that "every fish matters."
When they head to sea in mid-June, whiting boats will still have flexibility on the number of salmon they can catch incidentally. High numbers will trigger a federal review rather than an automatic shutdown. Regulators didn't reduce that "soft cap," despite the closure of other fisheries.
"We feel there should be a hard cap with salmon -- if you reach this many salmon, you're done," said Paul Merz, a longtime salmon troller out of Charleston. "And in a year like this where we have no fishery, that number should be really small."
In 2006, a year after salmon bycatch spiked, regulators proposed having the Pacific Fishery Management Council set tougher standards, including a hard cap of 14,000 fish. But the bycatch dropped the next two years, and regulators abandoned the idea.
The whiting industry has had problems reporting bycatch of rockfish, the fish of most concern in years past. Last year, one whiting processing plant got caught grinding rockfish to escape detection, a whiting fisherman illegally tossed a big load of rockfish bycatch overboard, and others unplugged on-board monitoring cameras when bringing in nets full of fish.
Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shut down the whiting season early for the first time because fishermen reached rockfish bycatch limits. This year, there's the salmon issue and concern about overfishing of whiting itself.
Adding to the pressure: Worldwide demand for whiting is up, with Russia and China increasingly in the mix. That's drawn more boats chasing a fixed overall limit of whiting.
Whiting swim in the middle of the water column, about halfway between the surface and the ocean floor, often in schools that can run for a mile or more. On a whiting trawler, the crew unspools a net up to 700 feet long from two mammoth reels bolted into the steel deck.
For the most part, the nets come back full of just whiting. Most tows are clean, regulators say, with the bycatch typically coming in just a few "dirty tows." Salmon bycatch brought to onshore processors typically gets taken to food banks.
The rockfish bycatch quota is small, less than 1 percent compared with the total whiting limit. Salmon bycatch is an even smaller proportion.
But David Jincks, a whiting fisherman and president of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative in Newport, said the fishery is way ahead of most on avoiding bycatch. Skippers fish in daylight and coordinate with each other to steer clear of dirty tows. "I think the whiting industry has taken a lead on all bycatch. We're managing our resource really well."
Also true: The low bycatch proportions come in part because the whiting haul is enormous, reflecting a low-value, high-volume fishery. In Oregon last year, whiting landings totaled 94.3 million pounds compared with 1.4 million pounds of commercially caught salmon. The value per pound: 7.4 cents for whiting; $3.41 for salmon.
"A small percentage of an enormous volume can still be significant," said Ben Enticknap of the conservation group Oceana. "We're talking about at-risk populations of salmon and depleted populations of rockfish."
Federal regulators focus their review of the salmon bycatch on salmon runs listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
But this year, the concern is for low levels of Sacramento River fall chinook, which aren't on the federal list. No detailed review has been made of the bycatch effect on the Sacramento run, which journeys up Oregon's coast when it hits the ocean.
Frank Lockhart, sustainable fisheries administrator in the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northwest office, said the focus of the management council's closure was on fisheries that specifically target salmon. Commercial trollers can catch no salmon this year. Sport anglers will be allowed a small ocean coho salmon season.
"Does it really make sense to shut down the second-largest fishery off the coast for the catch of a few hundred (threatened or endangered) fish?" Lockhart said. "In general, the council has come down on the side of no."
In 2005, the chinook bycatch hit 11,916 fish, triggering a review under the Endangered Species Act. Regulators proposed amending fishery rules to allow quicker in-season closures if the salmon bycatch was running high or setting a hard bycatch limit of 14,000 a year.
But bycatch numbers dropped and NMFS officials decided internally not to bring those proposals before the council, Lockhart said.
Federal regulators are considering a hard cap on the pollock fishery in Alaska, where the chinook bycatch totaled 130,000 fish last year, including many from Northwest rivers.
"It's not clear that the council's system (for whiting) actually encourages people to develop new techniques and fishing fleet behaviors that would avoid bycatch," said Julie Sherman, West Coast organizer for the Marine Fish Conservation Network. "It didn't work for rockfish. It's not working for salmon."
There's also doubt about the accuracy of the bycatch numbers that fishermen report -- in large part because of the two cheating incidents last year.
This year, the shoreside boats have more monitoring cameras and the cameras are more tamperproof. Most important, government observers will count bycatch as the boats deliver their loads to processing plants.
That observation isn't 100 percent yet, Lockhart said, but it's a huge improvement.
Other measures the council's enforcement committee recommended have yet to be implemented, including tougher penalties for cheaters and ramp cameras to film tows as they're brought on board.
The council is close to approving a system to assign the whiting quota to individual boats. That should give fishermen more time to pick their spots and avoid bycatch.
Jincks, the Newport whiting fisherman, said his first job was fishing for salmon. "We live in these communities with salmon fishermen, too. We all need to watch out for each other."
Scott Learn: 503-294-7657; scottlearn@news.oregonian.com For environment news, go to oregonlive.com/environment
