West Coast Trawl Industry Anticipates Re-establishing Rockfish Market
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Seafood News] by Susan Chambers - January 3, 2017
The West Coast trawl industry is anxious to rebuild its lost rockfish market and a new exempted fishing permit could make that happen in February.
"This exempted fishing activity is designed to provide participants with additional flexibility to configure their gear to re-establish a targeted rockfish fishery for widow, yellowtail, and chilipepper rockfish," a Federal Register notice said Friday. "The annual catch limits (ACLs) for both widow and chilipepper rockfish are increasing to levels not seen in several years, and the additional fish available could provide an opportunity for the redevelopment of processing and harvesting in those areas of the coast that had been constrained by the lower ACLs for these overfished species."
The EFP is a temproary fix to get past the slow-moving regulatory process. It would eliminate the selective flatfish trawl gear requirement and provide fishermen with more flexibility to design their gear for catching pelagic rockfish, a highly marketable and favored seafood on the West Coast. The EFP also could allow fishermen to use different kinds of bycatch excluders, the notice said. Fishermen also could experiment with different mesh sizes. ...
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