Bering Sea is a global source of frozen fish sticks, fillets and imitation crab, and the largest fishery by volume in the United States. Pollock trawling is not only affecting the sea creatures but also preventing the king salmon to return back to the waters for reproduction. It is said that in recent years, the fleet of about 100 pollock trawlers has intercepted record numbers of salmon bound for rivers in Canada, the Pacific Northwest, Asia and Alaska.
According to federal laws the trawlers are prevented from fishing for anything but pollock, so fishermen must throw the mostly dead and dying salmon back into the sea. This has left the enormous amount of king salmon “bycatch” in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, which rose last year to a record 122,000, up from a five-year average of 57,333. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council said that the bycatch count for other salmon species hit a record 706,000 in 2005.
To deal with this issue the federal body expressed tentative support recently for an unprecedented proposal to temporarily close the Bering Sea pollock fishery if king salmon bycatch exceeds a certain number. Diana Stram, a fishery management plan coordinator for the council, told that the authority is working to balance the ability of the pollock fleet to optimize their catch while minimizing salmon bycatch.
If this measure runs successfully then the limit on salmon bycatch probably would take effect in 2011 and, under some scenarios, could cost the pollock fleet more than $500 million a year. Ragnar Alstrom, executive director of the Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association, explained that pollock is where we get our royalty money from. He also added that both the subsistence and commercial salmon fisheries inriver are more important to us than the pollock.
