May 22, 2014 — Scientists, industry representatives and others interested in fisheries science, management and policy discussed all things bycatch at the Lowell Wakefield Fisheries Symposium in Anchorage May 13-16.
From January through May 10, commercial fishermen targeting primarily pollock and other groundfish in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea have caught about 5,868 king salmon and 2,294 metric tons, or more than 5 million pounds, of halibut while targeting other species in federal fisheries offshore from Alaska.
Those fish are classified as prohibited species catch, or PSC, and can’t be sold although in the case of Bering Sea king salmon they are required to be retained for a full count. Other PSC is discarded or sometimes donated to an organization that funnels them to food banks and organizations feeding hungry Alaskans.
Symposium presenters talked about the value of those discarded fish, as well as ways to minimize discards and other possible uses for them, although the symposium took a somewhat wider view of bycatch, including fish released by sport anglers and other discards in the discussion.
Lee Benaka talked about the 2014 update to the National Bycatch Report, which updated the first edition of that bycatch report to provide more recent information — the report now goes through 2010 — and change some methodology.
Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce