Federal Fisheries Council Continues to Wrestle With Halibut Bycatch Issue
Concerns over the fate of the directed halibut fishery in
the Pribilof Islands prompted lengthy discussion during the December meeting of
the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage.
Council member Duncan Fields of Kodiak introduced a motion
for emergency regulation to reduce the 2015 BSAI halibut bycatch allocation by
33 percent, out of concern for harvesters in areas C, D and E, saying that to
avoid such emergency action would be shirking the council’s responsibility for
fisheries management.
The council should not stand by while, he said, in 2015, the
non-directed halibut fishery discards over 90 percent of the available Bering
Sea/Aleutian Island halibut resource and the Area 4CDE fishery is almost
non-existent.
The motion failed in a vote of the council, and...