AuntyM
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If you harvest the salmon's food sources, you won't have any more salmon.
Fishermen in Alaska haul 14,723 tons of fish, making millions of dollars in a day
By Elizabeth Bluemink
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Article Launched: 03/30/2008 03:04:02 AM PDT
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- How about a job grossing half a million bucks in 60 minutes?
That's what some commercial seine fishermen in Sitka, Alaska, scooped out of the water on Wednesday -- in the form of fatty, silvery Pacific herring.
The Sitka sac roe herring fishery is already legendary for netting megabucks in minutes, but that day's catch was still a shocker -- for fishermen, regulators and seafood processors.
Expecting healthy numbers of spawning fish, state biologists are allowing seiners to harvest a record-breaking amount of herring in Southeast Alaska's Sitka Sound this year -- 14,723 tons.
But in just two stunning hauls on Wednesday afternoon, the fishermen netted more than 10,000 tons of fish -- most of their quota.
At a price of $550 per ton of herring, that was at least a $5.5 million a day.
Some eight to 10 boats each bulged their nets with 500 or more tons of Pacific herring in the first 30-minute opening, said Chip Treinen of Anchorage, Alaska, a seine fisherman who participated in the fishery.
That's like hauling up several blue whales or fully-loaded 747s. Ordinary seine boats can't carry that much weight. The fish have to be pumped out of the nets while they are still in the water, he said.
The commercially-caught herring, which are also highly valued by Southeast Natives for their eggs, are exported to Japan for their roe.
About 50 permit holders jockeyed for a sweet spot on the water near Kruzof Island on
Wednesday, fishermen and biologists said Friday.
But as usual, the big hauls were made by a few lucky boats. Treinen said he was one of the lucky ones but declined to reveal his total catch.
"For those of us who were in the area ... we were like kids in a candy store," he said.
The huge hauls were mainly due to the unique spot the herring chose to spawn, said Treinen, who has been involved in the Sitka herring fishery for about a dozen years.
Very dense schools of herring appeared in very shallow water next to Kruzof Island right before the fishery opened at 2:25 p.m., he said. Some of the crowded fish seemed to be dying -- they turned belly up in the water before the fishery opened, he said.
Because the fish were in shallow water, about three fathoms deep, they couldn't dive to try to escape the nets. "We could contain bigger sets than we've ever been able to contain before," Treinen said.
The state Department of Fish and Game wouldn't have allowed two fishery openings if managers realized how many fish were getting caught, according to Eric Coonradt, the department's assistant area manager for commercial fisheries in Sitka.
As it turns out, the concern wasn't about violating harvest levels. The main concern was the ability of processors to handle so much fresh herring, Coonradt said.
The massive amount of herring required extra work and coordination among seafood processors over the past few days, but everything worked out OK, said Jon Hickman, general manager for Sitka Sound Seafoods.
Some herring had to be sent to Canada for processing, he said.
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Quillback
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Commercial fishing at it's finest, when the system is set up so that the more fish you catch, the more money you'll make, the commies will catch as many as they can, future fisheries be damned. After all, if seasons are closed they can collect umemployment checks and whine until they get the politicians to send them "disaster" aid.
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jimh
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No problem. They are overharvesting the salmon too. Don't you feel better now? 
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alanmikkelsen
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The problem isn't just the herring harvest. In my opinion, herring numbers also have a correlation with salmon numbers, since they are a salmon food source.
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50 years of foolin' fish.
Bass Ackwards: The art and science of hurtling blindly in the wrong direction with no sense of the impending doom about to be inflicted on one's sorry ass. Usually applied to procedures, processes, or theories based on faulty logic, or faulty personnel.
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Tally
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And the salmon fishing has been shut down in some areas because of low populations..........hummmmm, coinsidence, I think not.
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There's only one other thing I'd rather be doing than fishing......Gettin' ready to GO fishing
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kwaj
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 uke:
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Trouthead
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Quote:
Quillback said:
Commercial fishing at it's finest, when the system is set up so that the more fish you catch, the more money you'll make, the commies will catch as many as they can, future fisheries be damned. After all, if seasons are closed they can collect umemployment checks and whine until they get the politicians to send them "disaster" aid.
I was talking to a reputable source at one of the larger sporting goods stores locally and he has a friend who is a Columbia River commercial fisherman. The commercial guy said that last week was one of the better commercial seasons on the Big C and that after all the boats were in, it was determined that they exceeded their quota again. I've heard this twice now with two totally different numbers but both say they exceeded. The next day they closed the recreational season, very weird? There is a problem in Alaska but we sure got a big one right on our front door.
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Trouthead
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jimh
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Isn't it funny how it seems to be just fine when netters catch too many, but sporties get $100 or more fines per fish.
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AuntyM
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The next day they closed the recreational season, very weird? There is a problem in Alaska but we sure got a big one right on our front door.
It was closed to us because if we continued to fish below Bonneville, we would have eaten up the buffer set aside for sport fishers above Bonne. The idea was to spread the season out more because the lower river fishers typically take too many and the upriver guys only get a week or so.
Had nothing to do with the commercials. If it did, you can be sure I would be the first to accuse them.
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AkKings
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Quote:
jimh said:
Isn't it funny how it seems to be just fine when netters catch too many, but sporties get $100 or more fines per fish.
Where did it say they took too many? the season (all 30 minutes of it) was open and I don't see where they did anything wrong/illegal, should the FEW boats that had banner sets be fined for that?
The state monitors the herring fishery very closely, so close that there annual seasons are measured in hour(s), not days or weeks.
After spending 17 seasons in various parts of S.E. Alaska I can tell you this, if a salmon is going hungry he deserves to starve to death, the schools of herring, candlefish, squid, shrimp etc. are healthy. It amazes me how many experts there are based on 1 picture.
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AuntyM
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It's never over harvest, until it is. We've been hearing the same song and dance for decades.
They never over harvested anything in AK before. Not king crab, not dungies either. 
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Gooose
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Plenty of food you say? The Alaskan Pink salmon factory fishery started complaining a decade ago that all of a sudden the average size of the returning adults had noticeably declined. The reason for this was that there was too many salmon for too little food. The very same food that herring and squid depend upon.
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Quillback
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They said the Grand Banks off New England could never be overfished, the commies were warned for years they were overfishing the Banks, they just kept on netting and trawling, then the fish were gone, now we're hearing the same thing from the AK commies, the supply of fish is endless and it can never be overfished. We'll see.
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Trouthead
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Quote:
AuntyM said:
Quote:
The next day they closed the recreational season, very weird? There is a problem in Alaska but we sure got a big one right on our front door.
It was closed to us because if we continued to fish below Bonneville, we would have eaten up the buffer set aside for sport fishers above Bonne. The idea was to spread the season out more because the lower river fishers typically take too many and the upriver guys only get a week or so.
Had nothing to do with the commercials. If it did, you can be sure I would be the first to accuse them.
The season closing might not have to do with commercials but the story is that they exceeded their quota again which seems to me would eat up the buffer. I don't see that as helping anyone. Is there a reason that no-one seems to want to address the netting problems we have in our own waters?
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Trouthead
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AuntyM
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Is there a reason that no-one seems to want to address the netting problems we have in our own waters?
Who is no one? CCA/PNW has chosen it's first goal and that goal is to get a change of commercial harvest on the Columbia to selective fishing methods. Live capture, safe live release of wild fish is what needs to be implemented. We will continue to challenge/fight commercial misuse/abuse in each and every fishery.
Within today's perimeters, the commercial gillnetter has done LESS damage to the resource than most previous commercial seasons. Exceeding a quota is not the same thing as exceeding the impact allowance and impact allowance is what gets us up in arms. This year, the mark rate was high, meaning like the sport fishers, we didn't slaughter the wild fish. It also means there may be fewer wild fish returning than we thought. We need to look beyond harvest in that case and figure out what's happening.
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Landslide: Stevie Nicks greatest song!
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The Monster Breathes!
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jimh
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Quote:
AkKings said:
Where did it say they took too many? the season (all 30 minutes of it) was open and I don't see where they did anything wrong/illegal, should the FEW boats that had banner sets be fined for that?
The state monitors the herring fishery very closely, so close that there annual seasons are measured in hour(s), not days or weeks... It amazes me how many experts there are based on 1 picture.
Of course, AKKings, that is the problem. Our licensing bodies make it legal...don't confuse legal with what the policy should be. I assume you don't think everything is going well for Salmon/Herring.
Now, who was saying anything about being an expert? I think our experts have created the problems we have. We probably have enough of them. 
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GrimmReaper
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According to the Loomis presentation I listened to a few weeks ago all of these fisheries are based on "best science"..."best science" meaning the science says whatever who paid for it wants it to say.
Another thing I heard about is the Federal Diaster "bailout" that is being negotiated on the closed Oregon & Cali commercial ocean seasons...$45mill to a fishery last year based on catch weight & market price grossed $4 maybe $5 mill...so I wounder what the extra $40 mill is for...pain & suffering?????
Plain & simple commercial fishermen care about $$$$ not fish!
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Gooose
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If Mr. Loomis ever makes such a blanket statement in front of me I'll call BS on it to his face and I don't care who it is in front of as an audience.
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Gooose
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A question for the crowd. If somehow we were able to significantly reduce the bycatch of Columbia River wild salmon in BC and Alaska to the point where we started to see corresponding increases in their return would you want to increase the lengths of our sport seasons and catch of marked fish knowing that by doing so the numbers of wild salmon that would die due to the increased effort would also increase. Or would you choose to not increase our season so that those increased numbers of wild fish would provide the greatest benefit possible by being allowed to spawn? When formulating your response assume that in this scenario there are no other fishery impacts other than sport fishing. Good luck. 
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Gooose
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Had an interesting conversation today with my assistant who
has a pretty good knowledge of herring fisheries. Yes Alaska does have some problems with some of their herring stocks. The example he gave me was in regards to the herring-hake-Stellar sealion connection. Stellar sealions have had problems with finding enough of their prime food source herring for years due to an increase in hake stocks which feed on herring. As hake increase in biomass there is a corresponding reduction in herring biomass followed by a decrease in Stellar sealion health. The sealions have to switch more and more to feeding upon hake but at a greater cost in energy to them as they have to dive much deeper to reach the hake. The inevitable result is a decline in Stellar numbers and increasing levels of effort to protect them. Apparently this has been going on for some time. Of course the one solution that many may point out would be to increase harvest of hake to take the pressure off the herring. Problem with that would be the increase in bycatch of other marine species. Simply stopping or curtailing fisheries may not always have the desired results.
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Quillback
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The whole ecosystem is a giant stringball, you pull out one string and it has unknown or unnitended consequences elsewhere. All is can say is we have a pretty dismal record at "managing" marine species, and when things get messed up, it seems nearly impossible to find a fix.
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AuntyM
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would you want to increase the lengths of our sport seasons and catch of marked fish knowing that by doing so the numbers of wild salmon that would die due to the increased effort would also increase.
Not necessarily so. You'd have to calculate the benefit of a higher harvest rate on marked hatchery fish/impact on wild fish to that of allowing those same hatchery fish onto spawning beds, competing with and/or spawning with wild fish. Remember, that's why sport fishers got the larger impact this year. WDFW admitted that those hatchery fish are, in many cases, not excluded by trapping and it is a matter of MAJOR concern. We need to keep those hatchery fish off spawning beds as much as we can.
The fact that sport fishers are MORE effective at harvesting their share while doing less damage is why Dr. Conrad Mahnken asked for a 65-35% impact allocation. We can take more hatchery fish while having a much smaller impact on wild fish than commercial gillnetters. FACT.
It's just NOT as simple as you made it out to be Gooose.
If we are able to effectively "exclude" hatchery fish from spawning beds (and WDFW is working on it) then any savings of impact should go to the wild fish, not a user group IMO. But we aren't there yet.
The only way we can justify producing hatchery fish for harvest is to make sure that's ALL we harvest to the best of our ability.
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Landslide: Stevie Nicks greatest song!
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The Monster Breathes!
"Don't fall in!" Doug Richert Sr. 10/18/2008
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AuntyM
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Had an interesting conversation today with my assistant who has a pretty good knowledge of herring fisheries.
The well used term, "everything in moderation" applies here. In AK, they don't "do" things at a moderate level. When you overharvest one species, you set in motion a chain reaction which compounds the problem as you then try to solve the problem you created in the first place.
As long as there is a "derby" type mentality in AK fisheries management, things like the above and the bycatch problems in the pollack fishery will continue.
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Landslide: Stevie Nicks greatest song!
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The Monster Breathes!
"Don't fall in!" Doug Richert Sr. 10/18/2008
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AuntyM
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Damn. No bites.
OK, let's do a little math, figuring and supposing.
Let's take an imaginary creek, we'll call it Steelheader.net Creek. It's on the Washington side. Let's pretend it's above 2 dams. Let's pretend it has OK habitat. Not horrible and not great. Now, let's say 100 fish make it back to SH.net Creek.
The mark rate is consistant with current WDFW estimates for this return. Meaning 20 of those fish are wild chinook. According to the HSRG estimates, 40 of those remaing chinook that are of hatchery origin make it to a collection trap and the remaining 40 chinook make it to the spawning beds.
What would be the effect of 40 hatchery chinook trying to spawn with 20 wild chinook? We know from numerous studies that hatchery fish interactions with wild fish lowers the fecundity of wild fish and basically cancels them out, Right? So how many wild fish were able to spawn in SH.net Creek without being molested by the hatchery fish?
Just some food for thought!
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Landslide: Stevie Nicks greatest song!
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The Monster Breathes!
"Don't fall in!" Doug Richert Sr. 10/18/2008
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Todd R
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Quote:
Gooose said:
If Mr. Loomis ever makes such a blanket statement in front of me I'll call BS on it to his face and I don't care who it is in front of as an audience.
I'm shocked! You're not suggesting that Gary Loomis might actually say something with a high impact emotional value that might not actually have any basis in fact, are you?
Be careful if you do that, Gooose...the last time I did that to Gary at a meeting I almost got run out of the joint by all the believers who assume that since Gary used to make great fishing rods, he must know what he is talking about.
Fish on...
Todd
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Todd R
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