Pollock fleet takes 200,000 chum salmon in torrent of nycatch

摘要

Too many chum: Pollock was moving at a fairly brisk pace earlier this year. But the most interesting news for the fishery isn't coming out of the Bering Sea; it's corning out of office buildings and conference rooms. This spring, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council is slated to take up chum salmon bycatch as an issue, a problem that reared its head after a period of improvement. The fleet took nearly 200,000 chum in 2011, more than they had taken in the past four years combined. In February,North Pacific Council staff reached out to rural Alaskans, who can't typically travel out to meetings, by hosting a teleconference and asking them for their input on potential chum bycatch restrictions. Most all of the western Alaskans who spoke up stressed that weaker chum runs mean less food and money for their struggling communities.