Groundfish Industry Voices Frustrations About Catch Shares Program
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [SeafoodNews] by Susan Chambers - September 9, 2016
The West Coast trawl catch shares program five-year review kicked off with a series of public hearings and already some common themes have emerged: the non-whiting shoreside sector is underutilizing its allocation, monitoring costs are affecting both processors and fishermen; and sablefish has become a constraining species.
“We’ve worked hard to bring this program together,” Coos Bay Trawlers Executive Director Steve Bodnar told state and federal fishery managers at a Coos Bay, Oregon, hearing Thursday, “but it hasn’t treated all of us fairly.”
Bodnar said the at-sea whiting sectors, the catcher-processors and motherships, seem to be doing OK. Captains of some whiting catcher vessels testified to that fact in California and also indicated they were doing better than they had during the pre-catch shares management regime.
That leaves the shoreside sector, with more than 30 species of groundfish covered under the quota program, to struggle with high catches of some species, like petrale and blackcod, while very low catches of others that have high volumes available to harvest. ...
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