OPINION: The tragic mismanagement of bycatch in Alaska

The commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s recent opinion piece on bycatch (ADN, Nov. 5) would make for good comedy if the topic wasn’t so serious. Doug Vincent-Lang extolled the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s handling of bycatch in trawl fisheries off the coast of Alaska. As examples, he mentioned existing bycatch caps for chinook salmon and halibut bycatch measures that are not yet in effect.

Other than that, here are the council “actions” he espouses. The council, of which he is a key member, has “initiated an analysis” concerning caps on chum bycatch, is “considering further fishing restrictions” related to crab in the Bering Sea and is “evaluating whether further protections are needed” for Tanner crab in the Gulf. He also notes that the council “support(s) further research” into the causes of the declines in these seminal Alaska fisheries stocks. “In the coming years,” he also says, the council “is considering looking at” gear modifications to address bycatch in trawl fisheries, and “will also be looking at” bycatch reduction measures for certain longline and crab fisheries.

Not much in the way of changes on the fishing grounds, near as I can see.

The severity of bycatch issues in trawl fisheries is not new. In fact, the immensity of bycatch in the trawl fisheries came to public light in the early 1990s — in 1994, for example, more than 17 million pounds of halibut, more than 15.5 million individual crab, nearly four million pounds of herring and 200,000 salmon were caught as bycatch and wasted in these fisheries.

In reaction, Sen. Ted Stevens, at the urging of Alaskans concerned about this bycatch, amended the relevant federal law in 1996 to require that federal fishery management plans “minimize bycatch” and gave fishery management councils 24 months in which to do so. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation in the North Pacific, Stevens also ensured that the law mandated the North Pacific Council to lower, “on an annual basis for a period of not less than four years,” the total amount of bycatch in these federally-managed fisheries.

Then, as now, the North Pacific Council supported, initiated and considered bycatch-related research projects, reports and analyses. What the council did not do was actually reduce bycatch in that four-year window, or meaningfully do so since then.

As the commissioner alludes to in his opinion piece, the general obligation to minimize bycatch applies “to the extent practicable.” While this qualification was not true of the North Pacific four-year reduction obligation, the council used it then, and still uses it now, to avoid action.

So, for nearly three decades now, the council has found it “not practicable” to meaningfully limit the lucrative trawl fisheries to conserve fish and protect other human uses of those fish — subsistence, commercial and recreational. I take it back; that Vincent-Lang characterizes what the council has done on bycatch as meaningful action is comedy of the tragic type.

Peter Van Tuyn is a conservationist and environmental lawyer, and one of the Alaskans that urged Sen. Stevens to act in 1996.

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