The new approved groundfish quotas will start from 2011. Astoria and Warrenton trawl fishermen are looking forward to bringing more of their catch to shore – and dumping less overboard to satisfy regulations. The Pacific Fishery Management Council approved an individual fishing quota program for groundfish – the West Coast’s biggest fishery.
The new plan will allow fishermen to fish when they please for their own specified share of the total catch. Fisheries in New Zealand, Australia, Alaska, and British Columbia have adopted similar systems. It is found that groundfish include 82 species, caught mostly by trawlers hauling nets along the ocean bottom, that are sold in U.S. fish markets as sole, flounder, lingcod, snapper, and imitation crab.
For the last few months the fishery has been troubled by low prices and the collapse of some stocks. In recent years, tighter restrictions have created a derby fishery that rewards the boats that catch the most fish first. The new system is expected to prevent overfishing, increase prices to fishermen and reduce bycatch – the netting of unwanted fish that get thrown overboard dead. There was a major dispute arise over the council decision whether to give West Coast fish-processing plants a cut of the roughly 100,000-ton catch to be allocated to trawl fishermen under the plan. Fishermen pressed the council to drop a draft provision adopted earlier this year that would give a 20-percent share of quotas to processors.
