As Global Pollack Fleet Vacuums Up Bering Sea Salmon, Feds Mutter About Limits- J. Empire

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That the fish reach Eagle at all is a minor miracle. The dirt-road town is 1,400 river miles from the Yukon's mouth and for a variety of reasons, many salmon never make it back to the waters of their birth. Increasingly, they have been scooped up by the massive Bering Sea pollock fleet, a global source of frozen fish sticks, fillets and imitation crab, and the largest fishery by volume in the U.S.

The trend is deeply troubling for people living along the great rivers of western Alaska, including the Yukon. Salmon are a staple food and in some cases a primary source of cash for dozens of villages from the mouth of the 2,000-mile river to its headwaters in Canada. Wild Alaska kings also make up a small, but highly valuable segment of the worldwide fish market.
In recent years, the fleet of about 100 pollock trawlers have intercepted record numbers of salmon bound for rivers in Canada, the Pacific Northwest, Asia and Alaska. Federal laws prevent them from keeping the salmon, so fishermen generally throw the mostly dead and dying fish back into the sea, or donate a small fraction to food banks.

King salmon bycatch - fishing jargon for the unintentional capture of a species - in the Bering Sea pollock fishery rose last year to a record 122,000, up from a previous 5-year average of 57,333. The bycatch count for other salmon species hit a record 706,000 in 2005, according to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The salmon problem has gotten so bad that the management council, a federal body that regulates the region's fisheries, expressed tentative support this month for an unprecedented proposal to temporarily close the Bering Sea pollock fishery should king salmon bycatch exceed a certain number.

"We are working to balance the ability of the pollock fleet to optimize their catch while minimizing salmon bycatch," said Diana Stram, a fishery management plan coordinator for the council. Given the variety of market factors, there are no estimates on how fish prices could change if the restrictions go into place. There are also still several options for where to put the limit, which hasn't been decided upon.

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http://juneauempire.com/stories/062308/sta_294014313.shtml

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