August 22, 2013 — With today’s tricky fishery laws, keeping the wrong fish out of your nets has become as big a challenge as finding the right fish in the first place. That’s where Kevin Dunn comes in.
He’s a commercial fisherman by day and net-maker on the side. His trawl nets can be found on boats from Kodiak, Alaska, to Monterrey, Calif., but one of his newer items is an excluder that keeps protected fish out of the net.
A catch share system that went into effect in 2011 means boats have a set limit of each species they can catch. Catch too much of a particular species and your boat can be placed in a maritime time-out.
Dunn skippers the Iron Lady, a trawler out of Warrenton.
“I have a menu of fish I can go out and catch … and one of the constraining species was halibut,” he said. “We can’t keep halibut; it’s a federal fish. Even if it’s dead. We have to throw it over.”
When the quota system was put in place, people came and discussed what had worked to keep halibut out of the nets in Alaska where there are a lot of halibut, Dunn said. One of the ways was excluders.
Read the full story at the Coast River Business Journal