SEAFOODNEWS.COM by Peggy Parker — Oct 16, 2014 — Fisheries managers from two states are meeting today to determine if and how the Pacific whiting fishery can continue in the face of unexpectedly high bycatch of dark blotched rockfish and chinook salmon.
An announcement is expected today to restrict the fleet from fishing within a 100-fathom line to protect chinook salmon, likely the same genetic stock as the huge Columbia River run this year.
The “lightning strike” of dark blotched rockfish was as unexpected as it was huge. The mothership sector of the Pacific whiting fleet caught four and a half metric tons of rockfish in two hours last Saturday, triggering an immediate and voluntary closure.
The fleet still has over 21,000 mt of Pacific whiting quota uncaught. Translated to value for the harvesters and processors, industry sources put the value at over $10 million.
Brent Paine, of United Catcher Boats has been working with NMFS to keep the Pacific whiting fishery open. NMFS has the authority to transfer uncaught bycatch of dark blotched rockfish to the whiting sector from other sectors. This year’s incidental catch of dark blotched rockfish in the west coast shrimp trawl fishery has been extremely low.
“We’ve asked for 3 metric tons of dark blotched rockfish," Paine explains. "If NMFS can make that transfer, we think we can harvest the 21,000 metric tons of whiting left in the water."
The soft cap on chinook salmon has also been reached by all three Pacific whiting sectors: motherships, catcher processors, and the shoreside fleet.
Under chinook salmon’s status on the Endangered Species Act, once 11,000 fish have been incidentally caught in the whiting fishery, a “biological consultation” is triggered. That number is not an absolute or hard cap, but requires additional management tools to avoid further catches. The biological consultation has happened once before in the last two decades, and moving the fleet offshore was a solution that worked.
Yesterday, biologists and managers from Pacific States Marine Fisheries arrived in Seattle to meet with NOAA Sustainable Fisheries Division to determine next steps. An announcement is expected this afternoon.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.