Tanner crab. (Photo: www.cf.adfg.state.ak)

NPFMC votes to protect Tanner crab

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) decided this week to close trawl fishing in one of four Tanner crab areas to protect stocks from being caught as bycatch and to develop limitations on trawl and codfish pot fishing in the three other areas. Further, the Council separately redrafted the observer scheme to charge vessels a uniform fee for the observers they must take with them in the other three areas.

Kodiak fishers found the closure and restrictions particularly touchy because they segregate fishers by gear type: crabbers usually supported more closures and restrictions, while trawlers and pot codfish fishers have claimed their operations do not harm crab stocks, reports Kodiak Daily Mirror.

“This has been one of the toughest issues, if not the toughest issue I have been involved in on the council,” said Duncan Fields, a Kodiak resident and one of 11 voting NPFMC members. 

“To say nobody is happy is, I feel, accurate. But I felt that we acted responsibly based on the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act,” he continued.

NPFMC started its meeting considering various actions regarding Tanner crab bycatch in four areas on the Kodiak’s eastern coast: the Marmot Bay area, the Chiniak Gully, the Sandbox and the Southern Sandbox. The closure to trawl fishing spans part of the Marmot Bay area and additional observer coverage and gear modifications involve the other three areas. 

Also, to both cut bycatch and gather supplementary data on the matter, NPFMC voted that trawlers must carry observers while fishing Chiniak Gully and the Sandbox all the time. Fishers seeking codfish with pots in about half of the areas must now carry observers 30 per cent of the time.

A process was initiated that may have trawlers put in floats on their gear when fishing elsewhere around Kodiak. This requires lifting the trawl ropes above the ocean floor, and Fields said 30 per cent of Kodiak trawlers by now include this gear modification.

NPFMC approved a new federal observer programme in which vessel owners in federal fisheries will not specifically pay for the observers assigned to them. 

But the changes will take effect years from now and come most slowly to vessels less than 40 ft, as the program is reassessing how to employ observers on small boats.

These changes constitute the first major modification to the observer programme in 15 years, Fields said.

All decisions reached by NPFMC must be approved by US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.

Related article:

- Researchers investigate crab bycatch mortality 

By Natalia Real
[email protected]
www.seafood.media

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