In historic meeting Council keeps Pacific whiting sector open, shoreside may suffer The Pacific Fishery Management Council found a way to protect chinook salmon, stay under the darkblotched rockfish quota and allow the Pacific whiting fleet to fish the remaining 21,000 metric tons of quota during an emergency meeting held on Friday. The Council used three “automatic actions” that moved the fleet to deeper water to avoid Chinook; made an immediate transfer of 3 metric tons of darkblotched rockfish from the catcher/processor sector to the mothership fleet and reapportioned the unused tribal allocation of Pacific whiting to the three trawl sectors. “I have never seen NMFS truly go to bat for us like Frank Lockhart's group did, and Bob Turner's leadership to get this done. And also Phil Anderson's creative thinking to solve the problem,” said Brent Paine, executive director of the United Catcher Boats. Despite the general positive outcome of the emergency measures, Peggy Parker reports the shoreside fleet could face restrictions when and if they hit their quota; measures that were contested during Friday’s meeting. Crab production is picking up in Russia with just over half of this year’s king crab quota already landed according to the country’s fishing officials. According to John Sackton much of this crab will be coming to the US in the next few months, and it is priced significantly less than the Alaska king crab opening price. Even with Russian production improving an internal struggle between crab poachers and federal officials continues to bear down on industry requests to raise the allowable catch. In other news, the owner of Maine lobster distributor JP Shellfish will be sentenced in federal court next week for purchasing lobsters stolen from the Spruce Head Fishermen’s Co-Op. John Price could face close to five years in prison for his involvement in buying stolen lobster from the Co-op. Price had been buying lobsters from Spruce Head for 20 years and was snared in a federal investigation into the Co-Op’s former general manager Robert Thompson. Finally, we update the situation in India’s Andhra Pradesh region where a major cyclone ripped through the state’s key city known as Vizag. Sources indicate seafood exports out of Indian are now being diverted to southern ports. Meanwhile, severe damage has been reported at shrimp hatcheries along the city's Eastern coast, which could impact seed availability for farmers.