Stop Wasteful Trawl Bycatch
January 1 - November 16, 2024 Bering Sea & Gulf of Alaska Trawl Bycatch Numbers
38,553 Chinook Salmon
48,371 Chum Salmon
4.3 million pounds of Halibut
3 million pounds of Herring
913,305 individual Crabs
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What is trawling?
Illustration credit: Oceana
Trawlers tow nets the size of a football field through the water column, catching everything in their path. This extractive fishing practice leads to the “incidental” catch of non-target species, commonly known as bycatch. Bycatch cannot legally be retained, so the majority of it is discarded with a small percentage donated.
Trawlers can generally be organized into pelagic trawlers, also called “midwater” trawlers, and bottom trawlers. Bottom trawlers drag their nets across the ocean floor to catch flatfish such as sole and flounder. Midwater trawlers target fish such as pollock in the middle of the water column. A recent report, however, found that “midwater” trawlers actually drag the seafloor between 40% and 80% of the time, on average, with rates up to 100% on factory ships, also called catcher/processors.
Trawling leads to millions of pounds of bycatch every year. In just 2023, trawlers in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska bycaught 35,655 Chinook salmon, 122,279 chum salmon, 4.4 million pounds of halibut, 1.14 million individual crabs, 7.3 million pounds of herring, and 9 orcas.
How can this change?
Federally managed fisheries such as the Alaska trawl fleet are regulated under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which requires fisheries management to conform to ten National Standards. NOAA Fisheries issues guidelines for how fisheries decisions should be made to follow the National Standards. NOAA must update the two-decade-old national standards guidelines to meet the challenges facing Alaska’s fisheries.
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Reads: Conservation and management measures shall not discriminate between residents of different states. If it becomes necessary to allocate or assign fishing privileges among various United States fishermen, such allocation shall be (a) fair and equitable to all such fishermen; (b) reasonably calculated to promote conservation; and (c) carried out in such manner that no particular individual, corporation, or other entity acquires an excessive share of such privilege.
Why the guidelines need to change: The trawl fishery bycatch of salmon, halibut, and crab have likely contributed to the reduction and closure of direct commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries. However, the current guidelines for National Standard 4 do not direct the Council to consider these impacts in allocation and equity distribution in the pollock trawl fishery. As such, NMFS could update the guidelines for National Standard 4 to consider impacts to fisheries and equity of fishermen outside of the managed fishery by setting allocations and bycatch caps under National Standard 9.
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Reads: Conservation and management measures shall, consistent with the conservation requirements of this Act (including the prevention of overfishing and rebuilding of overfished stocks), take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities by utilizing economic and social data that meet the requirement of paragraph (2) [i.e., National Standard 2], in order to (a) provide for the sustained participation of such communities, and (b) to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.
Why the guidelines need to change: National Standard 8 requires fishery management to take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities. The high number of bycaught salmon, halibut, and crab taken by the pollock trawl fishery has negatively impacted the socioeconomics of the direct target commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishers of those species, as well as the communities that rely on them. The impact of both low abundance and high bycatch in the trawl fishery is not thoroughly represented by the Council and NMFS decisions.
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Reads: Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (a) minimize bycatch and (b) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.
Why the guidelines need to change: Guidelines could be updated by NMFS to further the goal to minimize bycatch, reduce the impacts of bycatch on valuable species, and protect direct target fisheries such as Alaska’s commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries for Chinook and chum salmon, halibut, and crab.
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