April 8, 2015 — Frustrated fishermen have tried tactics such as blasting heavy metal music from their boats to deter whales from nabbing the fish off their lines. Now, they are talking about abandoning hooks and lines in favor of baited traps.
How do you keep a whale from grabbing the fish off your lines?
Do you put out decoy buoys to try to trick them? Do you blast heavy metal from the deck of your boat to annoy them, or run for hours in hopes of ditching them?
All these tactics — and more — have been tried by frustrated fishermen working the Gulf of Alaska, where sperm and killer whales skillfully strip high-value black cod from miles of baited lines.
“Sometimes, you will catch 3,000 pounds. Then the whales will show up, and you will get nothing,” said Paul Clampitt, an Edmonds fishermen who is a 30-year veteran of the black-cod harvests off Alaska.
The problem has grown so bad that many Gulf of Alaska longliners favor a radical move: They want to abandon their traditional hooks and lines in favor of baited steel traps — akin to crab pots — that would protect their catch from whales.
Read the full story at the Seattle Times