From
https://www.facebook.com/imawgvi
Key points/highlights from the Tier 3 Halibut Advisory Board Meeting held yesterday (June 17, 2021)
1. Commercial and Recreational Halibut catch to date:
- Overall 48% of the 2021/2022 canadian halibut quota has been caught. Catch to date is slightly higher this year compared to last year.
- 97.3% of the recreational TAC remains, as of May 1. Catch is up ~125% compared to this time last year.
2. Emergency Electronic Monitoring (EM) Update:
- Due to Covid 19, Trawl catch monitoring moved to Electronic Monitoring instead of on-board observers.
- DFO has developed an Audit process to evaluate the EM.
- While DFO rep's indicated no decision has been made around the future of catch monitoring and long-term implementation of EM instead of on-board observers, it is up for consideration.
- It is important to note that Observers are able to collect important biological data, as well as capture observations that camera's may not see.
3. DFO is reviewing a Pilot Project for offshore (at-sea) processing vessels to allow for reduction of offal to fish meal.
- DFO is currently reviewing a proposal that would allow some groundfish trawl vessels to render down their offal AT-SEA.
Currently, this is done on land at processing facilities. These processing facilities provide important jobs to remote coastal communities. A number of which are Indigenous communities.
There are a number of concerns with this process including:
- The further loss of jobs in small, remote communities that already have limited opportunities.
- The increased opportunity for commercial vessels to keep, and then render down, species that they are not supposed to be keeping.
- The ability for C&P to enforce, monitor and regulate this.
- This opportunity is likely to be lucrative for these large offshore freezer vessels, increasing the demand for more of them to operate resulting in increased pressure and conservation concerns.
4. Marine Protected Area Network Planning (Northern Shelf Bioregion Update):
- work has been underway on this initiative since around 2014/2015.
- DFO and the Partners have developed a Draft Scenario ("Scenario 2") which they will be consulting on broadly this Fall 2021.
-Under the Draft Scenario there are 121 areas on the North Coast and around NVI that will be protected, However, a number of these are existing protected areas (such as Rockfish Conservation Areas, etc).
