Trawl meeting in Anchorage Oct. 16 will take no remote testimony

In March, the Alaska Board of Fisheries declined to act on proposals to rein in trawling in state waters. Next month, state and federal fishery managers will spend a day going over what's known about trawl nets touching the seafloor.

The Joint Protocol Committee, made up of members of the Board of Fisheries and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, meets Friday, Oct. 16, from 8:30 am to 5 pm at the Marriott Anchorage Downtown. The committee won't vote or write proposals. The Board asked for the meeting to discuss information relevant to the trawl proposals it considered in March, according to a Council staff memo, and the Council says the session is meant to inform any future proposals that come before the Board.

At that March meeting, the Board weighed four proposals that would have closed state waters west of 170 degrees west longitude to trawling, treated all trawl gear in state waters as bottom trawl gear unless approved otherwise, required midwater trawlers to monitor contact with the seafloor and required devices that help salmon escape midwater nets. The Board took no action on all four, each on a 7-0 vote.

The proposals drew sharp debate. Supporters, including a Kodiak fisherman who wrote to the Board, argued that midwater nets regularly touch the bottom even though the gear is supposed to fish above it. Members of Kodiak's Gulf of Alaska pollock trawl fleet, who wrote that they stopped fishing for three days so some of them could testify, asked the Board to take no action on all four and said they were tired of being targeted.

The federal Council is working on the same question in its own waters. In June, it voted to study ways to reduce how often midwater trawl gear touches the bottom in areas closed to bottom trawling, such as a limit on how often the gear can hit the seafloor or changes to the gear itself. The Council said any new measures would reduce that contact, not eliminate it, because some bottom contact is needed to catch pollock and avoid salmon, and because midwater gear touches the bottom less heavily than bottom trawls do.

The October meeting will include staff briefings on trawl fisheries in state waters in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska, federal protections already in place such as closed areas and salmon excluders, how the Council assesses fishing's effects on seafloor habitat, bottom contact sensors, and the Council's proposed performance standard for midwater trawl gear.

People who want to weigh in have two options. Written comments can be submitted through the Council's website until 5 pm Friday, Oct. 9. After that, the only way to testify is in person on the day of the meeting, with sign-up that morning. The committee won't take remote testimony, though the meeting can be watched online.