Halibut bycatch likely to be 3 times quota harvests in Bering Sea 

News Summary: December 10, 2014 :  Although there may be signs of stabilization in North Pacific halibut populations, the area facing the most difficulty is the Bering Sea, where halibut bycatch is many times the quotas allowed for licensed halibut quota holders. We run an opinion piece by Buck Laukitis from Homer, Alaska, suggesting the current system is broken. 

Yesterday we screwed up on our pollock TAC article. I had misread some spreadsheets, and thought NMFS was publishing new numbers, rather than the same numbers they published last March. The article is corrected, but today we take a deeper look at how the TAC actually gets set, and the complicated process involved. For 2015, the ABC limit - above which catches cannot go, is recommended at 1.63 million tons, and the TAC - the actual harvest by quota and CDQ holders, will be set a a lower number by the council this weekend. 

Two companies are responsible for most of the surf clams/ ocean quahogs that are used for processed clam products in the US. We profile LaMonica, which although smaller than rival SeaWatch, also serves this market. 

Ray Hilborn, Brian Rothschild and two co-authors published an op-ed in Washington DC yesterday calling into question Secretary of State Kerry’s infatuation with Marine Protected Areas. Hilborn et al say they are a poor management choice to deal with fluctuating conditions, and fail to account for the environmental costs of replacing fish protein with meat protein, which has a much larger negative environmental footprint. 

The Province of Newfoundland is learning that Ottawa may not agree with the $400 million in payments they negotiated as part of changing Provincial laws to comply with the EU trade deal requirements. Ottawa was to pay $280 million in adjustment assistance to the Province - but now Ottawa is saying no harm was done, and is threatening to withhold payment. This money is critical to Newfoundland to manage the coming transition from a crab/shrimp fishery to a cod fishery as ocean conditions change. 

Federal rules for posting calories on menus are coming into effect, but some are still unclear, mostly in how smaller chains may have to operate. One exemption is that calories are not required for specials and temporary menu items listed for 60 days or less. However, the rules will require virtually all larger chains to redo their menus over the next year. 

Finally - another correction. We caused some confusion in our article on tuna management between the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission - the one that failed to take action on bigeye tuna, and the US based Western and Central Pacific Regional Management Council, one of the eight regional councils that operate in the US. The management council got some calls about bigeye tuna, yet they are not the responsible body. We have corrected the story where we referred to the Commission as a ‘council’.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher
SeafoodNews.com 1-781-861-1441
Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com

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