July 29, 2020 — A bipartisan bill that would eliminate the use of drift gillnets to catch swordfish and thresher sharks in Pacific Ocean waters within five years passed the U.S. Senate last week.
Senate Bill 906 passed by voice vote in the chamber on Thursday, 23 July. It now heads to the U.S. House of Representatives, which has until the end of the year to consider the legislation.
March 11, 2020 — Almost all Mexican shrimp and fish caught from the northern Gulf of California was barred from U.S. trade March 4, as NMFS invoked the Marine Mammal Protection Act in a bid to stop use of gillnets blamed for entangling endangered vaquita porpoises.
The porpoises’ population had already plunged from an estimated 560 animals in the 1990s to 30 surviving by 2017, when the Mexican government officials banned most gillnets in the area.
“Mexico has no choice but to eliminate the destructive fishing taking place in the northern Gulf of California that is driving the vaquita to extinction,” said Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s the only hope the vaquita has for survival, and it is required if Mexico wants to resume exporting these products to the United States.”
December 16, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
In compliance with a recent Federal District Court Order, NOAA Fisheries is implementing a closure of the Nantucket Lightship and Closed Area I Groundfish Closure Areas for gillnet gear only.
This rule is effective tomorrow. All gillnetters must remove their gillnet gear from these areas as soon as possible, consistent with safe vessel operations.
Background
The October 28, 2019, Court Order prohibits NOAA Fisheries from allowing gillnet fishing in the former Nantucket Lightship Groundfish Closure Area and the Closed Area I Groundfish Closure Areas (see map below) until NOAA Fisheries has fully complied with requirements of the Endangered Species Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, consistent with the Opinion.
After the Order was issued, we notified gillnetters in these areas on November 1 that all gillnet gear needed to be removed from these two areas and that we would be issuing a formal rule closing these areas. That formal rule has now been issued.
February 14, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Washington Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources and Parks held a hearing Tuesday on SB 5617, the anti-gillnet bill, and testifiers on both sides of the issue had strong feelings about the bill.
As introduced, SB 5617 would mandate the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife develop a three-phase program for purchasing and retirement of nontribal salmon gillnets by Dec. 31, 2022. However, no appropriations for buying out the permits was included in the bill. It would effectively eliminate gillnet fisheries in Puget Sound, Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay and the Washington side of the Columbia River.
Chief sponsor Sen. Jesse Salomon, a Democrat and vice chair of the committee, introduced the hearing by saying gillnets are the only non-selective gear allowed in Washington waters and said they are not the best management tool for managing salmon, particularly ESA-listed species.
Sport fishermen were the primary supporters of the bill. The arguments and tensions surrounding the issue mirrored controversies and arguments heard on the Columbia River about the reforms put in place six years ago designed to move gillnets off the main river.
Sport fishermen and guides said their fishing and business was dropping and that the only solution was to eliminate gillnetting. Furthermore, recreational fishing is big business and that should count toward support of the bill.
“Our industry is a transfer of wealth from urban to rural Washington,” said Mark Bush, an northwest guide and angler. Furthermore, some guides have had to reduce their rates or start guiding on inland fisheries to make up for business losses, he added.
Commercial fishermen and processors countered that idea.
The problem is not with gillnets, they said, but with hatchery production. More hatchery-produced salmon would benefit both sport and commercial fishermen. And, they said, it would benefit the southern resident killer whales whose main diet is salmon.
“Our delegation, our association in Bellingham is against this bill, …” said Shannon Moore, a Puget Sound gillnetter. “This bill will not accomplish anything expect putting families out of business.”
Moore also noted a letter from Ron Garner, president of the Puget Sound Anglers, that was posted on SquidPro Tackle’s Salmon Chronicles website, mentioned the unintended consequences of banning gillnets. SB5617 would stop hatchery production increases, Garner wrote.
“It does not address the ESA requirement of commercial clean up or commercial netting to stop the excess hatchery fish on spawning beds. This state bill removes the tool in the tool box that allows those increases to happen. There are ways to work with the commercials to adjust but this is flat out to remove them and going to stop hatchery increases dead in its tracks.
“Our commercials are the ones tasked to clean up excess hatchery fish, allowing us to make more fish for our Orcas, communities, and fishers of Washington. This is law in today’s world that cannot be ignored, until newer science is adopted, which is being working on. While the general public thinks it is the right thing to do, they do not understand the full dynamics and end result it will be bring,” the letter continued.
The letter also showed a graph of orca populations trending down at the same time salmon hatchery production dropped off over several years.
Shortly after Moore’s testimony and mention of Garner’s letter, committee chair Sen. Kevin Van De Wege said Garner sent him an email rescinding that letter.
Some of Washington’s tribes also opposed the bill. The Lummi Nation representative, Lisa Wilson, said it would negatively impact the tribe, despite the bill’s wording of “non-tribal” gillnets. The Quileute Tribe also opposed the bill based on four premises: it did not acknowledge the status of tribes; it was written on the false premise that gillnets are non-selective; it also included the false premise that mark-selective fisheries would always protect wild stocks; and that it’s time for all fishermen — sport, tribal, commercial — to come together to work on the real issues affecting salmon management and orca declines.
Salmon For All’s Jim Wells, a gillnetter, made the point that there is “… no biological reason for banning gillnets.”
The committee room was packed, with several audience members seated in a nearby overflow room. More than 67 people signed up to speak. Due to time constraints, each person was limited to one minute of testimony. The future of the bill is uncertain and it may not move out of committee as it is rumored some of the co-sponsors are re-considering their supporting position.
This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
October 30, 2018 — A series of nets strung between pilings just off the Columbia River shore may offer a glimpse of the future of commercial fishing in the river, even though it harkens back to the fishing practices of a century ago.
But some gillnetters say that the experimental fish trap, also known as a pound net, is just another unworkable idea for catching salmon that threatens their livelihoods.
One morning last week, researchers from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Wild Fish Conservancy worked the fish trap set in the Columbia a few miles upstream of Cathlamet, near Nassa Point.
“There is no other site like this in the lower river,” said Adrian Tuohy, a biologist for the Fish Conservancy. “It’s a great scientific monitoring tool.”
One net blocks adult fish from swimming near the shore, steering them through a series of other nets that trap them. Then workers tug on lines and pulleys to dump the fish into a submerged sorting box about the size of a refrigerator.
Aaron Jorgenson, a biologist for the Fish Conservancy, donned waders and hopped into the box to identify the fish. Tuohy netted hatchery coho and dumped them into a box with ice — those fish are sold to a fish buyer. Wild fish are tagged and allowed to swim upstream. Tiny radio transmitters are implanted so the fish can be tracked as they swim past upstream dams.
October 11, 2018 — Money local commercial salmon fishermen will soon receive as compensation after reform policies pushed them off the Columbia River is “not nothing.” But it’s not quite something, either.
“It means a little bit of a paycheck,” said David Quashnick, a gillnetter who has been fishing since he was a teenager and now has two sons who run their own boats. “It’s not enough. I would rather be fishing and not having to worry about free money.”
Clatsop County informed 129 commercial gillnetters in September that they were eligible for a cut of the $500,000 set aside in the state’s Columbia River Transition Fund to compensate them for direct economic losses and reimburse them for gear.
This month, county officials said 124 fishermen had responded and applied for around $460,000 worth of the pot as of last week.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will give final approval for how the county intends to distribute the funds, but Theresa Dursse, executive assistant and clerk for the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, said the county hopes to start cutting checks to fishermen soon. Fishermen who applied for compensation for economic losses will receive checks ranging from a mere $56 to the maximum $8,750. Fishermen who applied for reimbursement for gear will receive up to $2,750.
Gillnets, which hang vertically in the water and catch fish by the gills, were phased off the Columbia River main stem after former Gov. John Kitzhaber introduced a harvest reform plan in 2012. The plan, commonly referred to as the Kitzhaber Plan or Columbia River Reform, was pitched as a way to protect wild salmon and steelhead runs by replacing gillnet gear with more selective types of equipment.
The remaining gillnet fishermen were shifted to off-river, or “select areas,” like Youngs Bay.
June 15, 2018 — Commercial salmon fishermen in Alaska have much higher rates of some health problems than the general population, a recent study has found.
The study, from the University of Washington School of Public Health and Alaska Sea Grant, surveyed and assessed gillnet permit holders in the Alaska Copper River salmon fishery in 2015.
“The prevalence of hearing loss, upper extremity disorders, and sleep apnea risk factors were higher than in the general population both before and during the fishing season,” the study found.
Exposure to noise, the demands of gillnetting on the body, and long working hours while fishing exacerbate those chronic health conditions, the study said.
About 80 percent of participants who had a physical exam for the study had hearing loss, compared with 15 percent for Americans between 20 and 69. About 40 percent of participants had rotator cuff problems, compared with 8 to 14 percent in the general population.
The health problems also included other types of upper extremity disorders and fatigue that could be associated with sleep apnea.