Today's Main Story: West Coast Non-Whiting Trawl Fleet Crippled by Spiraling Costs of 2003 Buy Back Program
The West Coast groundfish industry is a disaster writes Peggy Parker.
Low volume and lack of catch due to the way regulations are implemented, along with crippling costs from a buyback program and mismanagement on the part of NMFS have crippled the sector. This is now the context that the Pacific Fisheries Management Council will have to work with as it initiates a five-year review of the Pacific groundfish quota program. Council members and stakeholders are already deep into discussions about potential fixes. However, Parker reports that nobody is discussing how to handle out of control costs of a federal buy-back loan program that was originally designed to reduce the non-whiting trawl fleet. Today's story reports how and why this crisis has unfolded and the challenges the industry faces in trying to fix the issues.
Alaska Governor Bill Walker is undecided if he will sign all or parts of the state Legislature's proposed budget plan. Gov. Walker said he wants to see how much progress lawmakers will make on the remainder of his deficit-reduction financial package during the rest of their special session in Juneau. Alaska has two weeks to pass a budget or will shutdown, which would force state layoffs and essentially cancel Alaska's salmon season.
In other news, Canada set its commercial mackerel quota in NFAO areas 3 and 4 ten times higher than levels scientifically recommended by federal stock assessments. The problem, writes John Sackton, is Canadian law allows fishery managers to outright ignore such assessments, a practice that must put an end to. "It is way past time for a major overhaul of Canadian fisheries law, so it will not continue to be the outlier among major fishing countries practicing effective conservation," says Sackton.
Meanwhile, NMFS has closed large-mesh drift gillnet swordfish fishing off the coast of Southern California through August 2016 due to El Nino conditions. The closure is designed to protect endangered populations of loggerhead sea turtles, which are unseasonally abundant because of warmer Pacific waters.
Finally, the NPFMC will meet in Kodiak next week and conduct a 10-year review of how the Bering Sea crab rationalization program has played out across Alaska. The state's crab fleet shrunk from 256 boats in 2005 to just 91 boats in a single when the program was initiated.
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