Tag: halibut

US extends deadline for comments on Alaska halibut closure

521-areas2C_3A_sm.jpgThe United States National Marine Fisheries Service has extended the deadline for comments on its controversial Halibut Catch Sharing plan by 15 days until Sept. 21.

The NMFS made the announcement in a news release on Sept. 1.

There was increasing political pressure on the service to take another look at the proposal, which like parallel cutbacks along the British Columbia coast are raising fears of economic damage to the recreational halibut sector. In Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has closed the recreational halibut season as of midnight, Sept. 5.

The Seattle Times reported Sept. 1, “Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, said the halibut-allocation plan proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which could cut the bag limit for charter-boat anglers from two to one halibut, could have a tremendous impact on Alaska coastal communities that depend on tourism connected to sport fishing.”

In the news release, Natinal Atomspheric and Ocean Administration, the department that governs the NMFS, said.

The decision to extend the comment period comes following a visit to Alaska last month by NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco, who attended a luncheon in Homer with U.S. Senator Mark Begich to hear concerns and comments about the draft plan first hand from both charter and commercial halibut fishers.

 “Alaska fisheries have been among the healthiest and most sustainable in the world, and we are working to keep them that way for both recreational opportunities and the long-term economic benefit of Alaska fishermen and fishing communities,” said Dr. Lubchenco.

“During my recent trip to Alaska, I was honored to visit communities where the local economy is tied to the halibut fishery. I listened to the community’s concerns and I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to provide input in this public process of shaping the final halibut catch sharing plan.”

 “While we need a plan to keep all segments of the halibut fishery within catch limits to sustain and rebuild the stocks, charter fishermen raised several legitimate issues at the Homer meeting warranting further consideration,” Sen. Begich said. “While many fishermen have already submitted comments, this extension will allow additional time for fishermen still out on the water to make sure they are heard. I am pleased Dr. Lubchenco is taking action and responding to the comments we heard when we spoke to the Homer Chamber of Commerce.”

 

 NOAA says that the halibut stock in southeast Alaska and the central Gulf of Alaska has seen a steep decline in the past several years.

The agency claims the proposed catch sharing plan is designed to foster a sustainable fishery by preventing overharvesting of halibut and would introduce provisions that provide flexibility for charter and commercial fishermen. It adds that the catch sharing plan “was shaped through an open and public process through the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which recommended the rule to establish a clear allocation between the commercial and charter sectors that fish in southeast Alaska and the central Gulf of Alaska.”

 However, in protest meetings and letters to local media, the charter and recreational fishers in the state are saying that the council is dominated by the commercial interests and has been unfair to the charter and recreational fishery.

Links: Alaska legislature looks at state’s halibut crisis: Alaska Dispatch

Environment Fishery Link

 In Alaska’s dispute over halibut allocation in that state, Alaska Dispatch is reporting State to look at proposed Alaska halibut charter regulations:

With a deadline fast approaching on a federal plan to reduce the number of fish allocated to Alaska halibut charter businesses and hand them over to commercial fishermen, a handful of state legislators say they are going to take a look at the issue. To date, the state has ignored a so-called “catch share plan” developed by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, an organization dominated by commercial fishing interests.

Earlier in August, the Alaska Dispatch, published articles highly critical of the state fishery management practices, called Alaska’s Mafia-style fisheries management.

Link: Anger in Homer, Alaska over halibut allocation

Environment Fishery Halibut Link

There is growing anger to the north of us in Alaska, over halibut allocation policies by the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.   If Kitimat is the centre of opposition by the recreational halibut sector in British Columbia, in Alaska, much of the opposition is in the town of Homer.

The Homer Tribune is reporting: Chamber members vote to oppose one-halibut rule

Business members of the Homer Chamber of Commerce voted Sunday night in favor of a letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service that asks for another look at how halibut are allocated…

Members request NMFS Catch Share Plan allocation to closely approximate the Guideline Harvest Level for Area 3A, the central Gulf of Alaska including Cook Inlet and Homer…

The Catch Share Plan proposal to reduce halibut take on chartered sport fishing boats is viewed as a measure that could damage the charter sport fishing industry in Homer as well as the town’s economy as a whole. That’s a problem for the whole town to deal with, since every bait shop, kayak rental and pottery shop is tied to it, business owners told the chamber….

“We have before us an issue that can break us,” said Jack Montgomery, owner of Rainbow Tours for the past 30 years. “This could tear our town apart.”

And an angry commercial fisherman, Erik Velsko, responds to the vote in this letter to the editor.

My quota has suffered substantial cuts over the last three years as a result of commercial legal halibut biomass decline, and the explosive unregulated growth of the halibut charter industry….Currently, based on 2011’s TAC I am legally able to harvest a little over half of what I had originally purchased, but I realize the resource is changing and the initial shares I bought were not a fixed amount. Fish stocks rise and fall just as our stock market does for a number of reasons and influences…..

Fisheries politics should not and should never be discussed by unqualified, uneducated members of a biased Chamber at the city level. The issues that are at the forefront of this discussion are not city issues; they are federal and they are international and there are two perfectly capable, if not perfect, agencies that do deal directly with the issues at the forefront of this debate – the International Pacific Halibut Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service…. here is a reason for the Catch Sharing Plan that goes above and beyond what you and I know about the halibut stocks on an international level, not just what goes on in Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay at the end of a fishing pole.

Links: Halibut controversy continues

Environment Fishery Links

Comox Valley Echo

Halibut decision tramples rights

>Larry Peterson
I am absolutely stinking mad.
DFO is going to close down recreational halibut fishing as of Sept. 5? This action is an attack on my rights as a taxpaying, law-abiding Canadian citizen.

Victoria Times Colonist

Halibut season end hurts communities

By Lanny Sawchuk, Oak Bay Marine Group

Last week’s announcement of a shutdown of recreational halibut fishing is terrible news for coastal communities.
Our company operates businesses on the coast, including sports fishing resorts and marinas. Several will be severely impacted by this closure. Our employees will soon be dealing with guests unable to fulfil their plans to fish halibut, guests who in many cases travelled from great distances, at great expense, to have that experience. We’re also dealing with cancellations. We’ll be cutting back staffing accordingly, resulting in a ripple effect of lost economic activity for communities.

Is that halibut playing a smart phone video game?

Environment Fishery

 

514-nr20110822_tagsm-thumb-500x256-513.jpg

The International Pacific Halibut Commission is trying a new way of tracking halibut migration using technology invented for smart phones and tablets.

The same high tech that lets your smart phone or tablet know the screen should be horizontal or vertical may help the commission, responsible for the conservation of halibut from the Bering Sea along the Alaska and BC coasts all the way to California, track the migration of the valuable and possibly threatened groundfish.

Commission scientists have tagged 30 halibut in areas 3A (roughly the Gulf of Alaska) and 2C  (the Alaska panhandle north from the Canadian border)  with a combination of external electronic “backpack tags” and electronic internal “gut tags”

The IPHC says the backpack  tag is a black plastic cylinder that measures ~3″ (7.6 cm) long by ½” (1.2 cm) in diameter, It is attached to the dark side of the fish, below the dorsal fin, using a green-coated tagging wire, with a white backing plate that rests on the underside of the fish. Gut tags are surgically implanted in the gut cavity, but have a translucent green stalk that protrudes from the belly on the fish’s dark side. The stalk is made of Teflon, and contains sensors that record ambient light levels.

The  commission says the purpose of the study is to examine whether geomagnetism can be used as a means of tracking halibut migrations.

The tags record the local magnetic field in ways that can be converted into location estimates, based on the strength of the magnetic  field and magnetic declination angle in relation to the poles (which gets steeper closer to the poles) in combination with depth and light data.  The “the pitch and roll detectors” in the phones and tablets that can also track the “the rolling bead in the maze game”  do all the calculations needed to track the fish tag.

Since the halibut feeds on the relatively horizontal bottom of the ocean, the angle of the earth’s crust in relation to the poles should be able to track the migration without the use of GPS which cannot penetrate the ocean depths.

All data is recorded in the tag’s memory and can be retrieved if the fish is harvested. There is enough memory and battery capacity that the data can be recorded every 30 seconds for up to seven years. The IPHC is offering a $500 reward to fishers who may catch the halibut to  return both tags.

If the pilot project is successful, the IPHC will tag another 2,000 halibut along the coast from Oregon to the US-Russia border in the Aleutians.

IPHC News release and fact sheet on halibut tagging  (PDF)   Webpage
 

DFO closes recreational halibut fishery as internal memo warns of “significant economic impacts in the fishery”

Environment Fishery
Originally posted  Aug 23, 2011  1:15 PT
Updated Aug. 23, 2011, 2104 PT.

.Just after noon on August 22, 2011, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans  quietly announced that the it was closing the Pacific region  recreational halibut fishery as of  midnight Sept. 5,  2011 cutting off charter, lodge and recreational anglers from the fishery.

The commercial halibut fishery will continue, as planned, until November 18, 2011.

At the same time, DFO continued the highly controversial program of allowing those recreational fishers who can afford it to “‘lease” quota from the commercial fishery.

The closure notice posted on the DFO website on August 22. says:

Throughout the 2011 recreational halibut fishing season, the Department has reviewed in-season monthly catch estimates for the recreational halibut fishery. Catch information indicates that the recreational share of the Total Allowable Catch will be achieved in August. Therefore, recreational fishing for halibut under the BC tidal water licence will close effective 23:59 hours September 5, 2011 for the balance of the year. 2012 management actions will be developed this fall and announcements will be made in early 2012.
 Variation Order 2011 – 404 is in effect

DFO did not issue a news release on the closure and the opportunity to
lease, instead only posting the notices on the official notices to
fishery site. That meant that many recreational fishers did not learn
about the closure until the story broke in the British Columbia news
media almost 24 hours later.

Yet at the very same time, DFO did issue a news release,  at 155 pm, also on August 22, about a shell fish closure on the St. Lawrence.

 It is the earliest date that the recreational halibut fishery has been closed. Last year, the recreational halibut fishery closed on October 18.

Although the  total halibut biomass is considered healthy over the long term,  the stocks are low at the moment, probably due the lifecycle of the fish, and most of the existing stock is usually too small for harvest.

An internal memo from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, dated  Sept. 1, 2010, obtained by Northwest Coast Energy News under the Access to Information, outlined three possible closure dates for the recreational halibut fishery in 2010.

The memo gave the deputy minister three options for that year,  September 1, October 1 and “no closure” which would mean that the closure would have come on the traditional date of  December 1.

The documents predict the consequences for the recreational fishery if it was closed on Sept. 1, 2010 consequences that are likely to happen this year.

“An end of August closure does not allow time for the recreational  community  to make contingency plans or to inform clients in a timely manner,”  a problem that recreational fishers and charter operators   have been predicting since the protest meetings last winter.

Since 2003, the Canadian halibut harvest has been divided between the commercial fishery, which gets  88 per cent and the recreational fishery, which includes lodges, charters and individual anglers at 12 per cent.  The recreational fishery has disputed that division since it began.  The recreational halibut fishery has generally exceeded its quota for the past few years.

Thus the DFO memo says that: “Closing the recreational fishery  at the end of August  would reduce the potential  recreational fishery overage significantly. This would assist in Canada’s commitment  to managing within the TAC” (the total allowable catch set by the International Pacific Halibut Commission which sets catch limits for the Pacific US states, British Columbia and Alaska)

The DFO memo adds that an end of August closure would: “Although the recreational  fishing community has been advised of a possible in-season  closures, there will be significant economic impacts in the fishery  and there are concerns about the regular sports fishermen  who continue to  fish in the latter part of the year.”

(more to come)

US proposes handing Alaska halibut allocation dispute to international commission, have charters buy commercial quota

Environment

Editor’s note: With this entry, Northwest Coast Energy News launches its planned expansion of coverage from energy and energy related environment issues to include other environmental and related issues in the northwest, including fishery issues.

For the past year, anglers, guides and outfitters on the British Columbia coast have been concerned about the allocation problems with the halibut fishery, with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans sticking to the original quota system of 88 per cent of the total allowable catch going to the commercial fishery and 12 per cent to the recreational fishery, which includes both recreational anglers and the tourist industry.

There have been parallel problems in the state of Alaska, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which governs the US fishery, began moves to take away the licences from many of the halibut charter operators on the lower end of the income scale. That move is currently being challenged in a federal court in Washington, DC.

On Thursday,  NOAA proposed solutions to Alaska halibut dispute,  in effect, handing the hot potato decision on halibut allocationover to the International Pacifc Halibut Commission, suggesting that the Commission decide the split for charter and commercial allocation when making the overall decision on total allowable catch.  NOAA has also proposed allowing Alaska halibut charter operators to buy commercial quota, similar to the Canadian proposal from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans last winter.

The key phrase in the July 21 NOAA news release says

The International Pacific Halibut Commission, through which the United
States and Canada jointly manage the halibut resource from California to
the Bering Sea, would determine total commercial and charter catch
limits for southeast Alaska and the central Gulf of Alaska each year
before the fishing season….

Allocations to the charter and commercial sectors would vary with changes in the number of halibut available for harvest as determined by the best available science.

The actual details from the US Federal Register states:

The International Pacific Halibut Commission would
divide the annual combined catch limits into separate annual catch limits for the commercial and guided sport fisheries. The CSP (catch sharing plan) allocates a fixed percentage of the annual combined catch limit to the guided sport and commercial fisheries. The fixed percentage allocation to each sector varies with halibut abundance. The IPHC would multiply the CSP allocation percentages for each area by the annual combined catch limit to calculate the commercial and guided sport catch limits in net pounds. At moderate to low levels of halibut abundance, the CSP could provide the guided sport sector with a smaller poundage catch limit than it would have received under the GHL (guideline harvest levels) program. Conversely, at higher levels of abundance, the CSP could provide the guided sport sector with a larger poundage catch limit than it would have received under the GHL program.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council intended the CSP sector allocations to balance the needs of the guided sport and commercial sectors at all levels of halibut abundance.
Although the CSP allocation method is a significant change from the current allocation method under the GHL, National Marine Fisheries Service believes that the allocation under the CSP provides a more equitable management response

On the issue of buying commercial quota, the NOAA release says:

The catch sharing plan would authorize transfers of commercial halibut individual fishing quota to charter halibut permit holders for harvest by anglers in the charter halibut fishery.
Those transfers would offer charter vessel anglers in southeastern Alaska and the central Gulf of Alaska an opportunity to catch additional halibut, up to specified limits.

The news release goes on to say:

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council recommended the rule to
establish a clear allocation between the commercial and charter sectors
that fish in these areas.

Currently, the commercial and charter halibut fisheries are managed
under different programs. The commercial halibut fishery has been
managed under a catch limit program since 1995. The charter halibut
sector has been managed under a different harvest guideline since 2003,
which gives charter fishermen a number of fish they can catch per guided
angler per day, but does not ensure the overall catch stays within a
definitive catch limit.

The proposed catch sharing plan, which is scheduled to be in place by
2012, is designed to foster a sustainable fishery by preventing
overharvesting of halibut and would introduce provisions that provide
flexibility for charter and commercial fishermen.

Those who wish to comment on the draft policy must respond before September 6.

Link to NOAA news release

NOAA draft rule in US Federal Register

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