Fishermen are looking forward to avoid bycatch while targeting only whiting bigger fish. Pacific whiting, also known as hake, is one of the largest commercial fisheries in Oregon and Washington. Astoria is home to about a half-dozen whiting processing plants. Whiting boats started fishing June 15 and quickly found there were too many small fish in their nets to make their trips profitable. Pockets of larger whiting off the coast turned out to be intermingled with canary rockfish, which has very low catch limits because it is considered overfished.
According to fishermen they did a voluntary stand down because they were landing the canary quota a lot faster than the whiting quota. They are ready to wait til July 20 for big fish and if it does not show up they will wait little longer. The precautionary stand down is designed to prevent an early season closure. In 2008, the whiting season closed with 60,000 pounds still uncaught when the fleet hit its canary rockfish quota.
Warrenton whiting trawler Gary Wintersteen said during the first two weeks of the season too many hauls were coming in half-full of whiting that were less than 14 inches long, which aren’t as desirable in the market and, hence, don’t pay the usual eight to 12 cents a pound that larger whiting do.
Brad Pettinger, administrator for the industry-funded Oregon Trawl Commission, told that there’s a lot of things going sideways with this fishery right now. He added that it is very unfortunate because the hake in the areas with known canary rockfish bycatch are really nice, big hake.
