Snagged by Accident: Escaping the bycatch blame game to seek balanced solutions.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa
• Position: FISHERIES

Anglers talk about "the one that got away," but just as much of a headache for commercial fishers is the one caught accidentally. Bycatch occurs when fishermen unintentionally catch fish or other marine species that they do not want, cannot sell, or are not allowed to keep. What ends up in someone's trap, net, or longline might be someone else's harvest, gone to waste.

The issue of bycatch has grown more important as some fisheries get smaller and those who depend on the fish for their livelihood or survival find that there are not enough fish to go around. This raises the question of whether bycatch is at the root of the problem or if other issues facing fisheries must be addressed.

How Big a Problem Is Bycatch?

According to Karla Bush, extended jurisdiction program manager with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, bycatch occurs in all fisheries, so how "big" the issue is depends on a number of factors, including what species are taken as bycatch, the economic or cultural value of that species, current abundance levels, and what proportion of all removals of that species is taken as bycatch.

"For species such as halibut, the proportion taken as bycatch in recent years is at historically low levels. For other species, like sablefish, bycatch in some fisheries has increased because the sablefish population has increased," she explains. "For snow crab and many of the salmon species (such as Chinook [king salmon] and chum salmon) that have been negatively impacted by recent marine heatwaves in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, all removals--including bycatch--becomes a greater concern because there are fewer of them."

Bycatch is monitored in a combination of ways, through at-sea observers, electronic monitoring, seafood processing plant observers, logbooks, and fish tickets.

"In the Bering Sea, approximately 94 percent of all catch is observed, including 99 percent of all trawl catch," Bush explains. "In the Gulf of Alaska, 40 to 50 percent of all catch is observed across all gear types."

She adds that most of the groundfish harvest (cod, halibut, or sole) occurs under the full coverage monitoring program with either a human aboard or a camera turned on at all times. In the Alaska pollock fishery, cameras are used to make sure that nothing is discarded, and all of the catch is sampled when it is delivered.

"Most fixed-gear fisheries statewide and trawl fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska are monitored under the partial coverage observer program and have either a human observer or camera on for a portion of their trips. This information is used to extrapolate the bycatch on unobserved trips," says Bush, "and because these observed trips are assigned...