May 22, 2014 — Although no one will dispute that the Bering Sea groundfish industry is a behemoth, its financial success is coming at the expense of other users.
This year the Magnuson Stevens Act will be reauthorized by Congress. The MSA is the law by which the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Pacific Fisheries Council manage the federal fisheries off of Alaska. In public hearings, the message that “all is well in Alaska waters” and “no major changes to the law are needed” has been echoed by many groundfish industry lobbyists. Although no one will dispute that the Bering Sea groundfish industry is a behemoth, its financial success is coming at the expense of other users. Halibut fishermen in all areas of the Bering Sea have a catch limit of 3.2 million pounds this year. The estimated bycatch cap in the Bering Sea is almost 8 million pounds.
The North Pacific Fisheries Association in Homer represents commercial halibut fishermen who fish throughout the state. Our members who fish in the Bering Sea have seen their halibut quotas reduced to the lowest levels since the advent of the modern halibut fishery — which began to recover in the mid-1980’s after years of foreign trawling. Our members who fish for halibut in the Gulf of Alaska recognize that the best science shows that juvenile halibut in the Bering Sea later in life populate all areas of the Gulf and beyond to Canada and the West Coast. What happens in the Bering Sea affects all halibut users in Alaska.
The entire Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands directed halibut projected catch in 2014 has been reduced to only 3 million pounds from almost 8 million pounds three years ago. The three-year forecast looks like the prospect of no directed fishery in areas 4C, D, and E (an area from the Pribilof Islands north) is a very real and sobering possibility. At the same time the halibut bycatch limits in the Bering Sea have not been reduced appreciably since 1993 — or at least not proportionally to the decline in the directed fishery.
The Bering Sea is huge, and it has the most productive marine shelf edges in the world with the largest groundfish industry in the world. The reality that there are only 3 million pounds of halibut for directed users is startling. The Bering Sea is entirely out of balance in this respect. The groundfish industry is winning, and the halibut resource and halibut fishermen (commercial, charter, sport and subsistence) all over the state have lost if the trend is not reversed.
Read the full opinion piece at the Alaska Dispatch