SITKA, ALASKA
The writing has been on the wall for over a year now: onboard observer requirements are moving down into smaller vessels. Actually, ALFA executive director Linda Behnken uses a different analogy.
“We are staring down the barrel of being required on boats – everything over 40 feet – will be eligible, and at some point, will be tasked with providing observer coverage. Whether it’s a person that has to go out on your boat or a camera.”
Tracking bycatch is federal law, and having human observers is current practice on vessels from 60 to 125 feet, which have to have observer coverage on one-third of their fishing days. Everything over 125 feet has to have 100-percent coverage.
Forty feet is another matter. Dan Falvey longlines in Sitka from a 47-foot boat.
“There’s a lot of fishing situations where an extra person on board just isn’t going to be workable, or is going to force us to leave an extra crew member on the beach and cost a job. No one wanted that.”
Falvey says the International Pacific Halibut Commission conducted an experiment last year that proved camera coverage was just as effective in monitoring bycatch as human observers. But the test was derailed by equipment problems with the cameras, and seasickness among the people.
ALFA will use the $220,000 over two years. This summer’s task is finding a camera and recording system that will hold up at sea. Next summer, Falvey says ALFA will collaborate with the Petersburg Vessel Owner’s Association and the Southeast Fishermen’s Alliance to run a full-scale pilot project on at least twelve boats.
“Our job here is to engage the stakeholders and the fishermen all across Alaska to develop electronic monitoring that will work on our boats and is compatible with the systems we have. And then to test ways of rotating it among the boats so it can be done in a cost-effective manner now that we all have to pay for it.”
The federal observer program will be funded by a 1.25 percent levy on groundfish vessels, regardless of size, beginning in 2013.
ALFA’s electronic monitoring pilot project comes on top of two other sizeable studies. Sperm whale deterrence remains a top priority for the association. A joint project with the Ted Stevens Auke Bay Research Lab, the Sitka Sound Science Center, the University of Alaska Southeast, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has $353,000 in federal funding. Falvey says the study has resulted in the development of “bead gear.”
“Where we’re putting these small beads just below the hook. The idea is that the sperm whales, which use echolocation to find the fish, won’t be able to distinguish the bead from the fish. It becomes more confusing to them.”
The Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association is lending its support to the whale deterrence project with another $120,000. Falvey says the funding will allow deterrents to be explored that might prove useful in the Bering Sea.
“We’ll be testing this playback device here off of Southeast Alaska in the middle of May, where we’ll be looking for boats that are longlining and have sperm whales around them. We have a permit to go up and dip a sound-making device into the water near those boats. We can try several different kinds of sounds, including the sounds of killer whales as they go after sperm whales themselves to see if we can use those as ways of scaring the whales off of the boats.”
It all totals almost $700,000 in research funding, which seems unusual for a nonprofit trade association that gets by on the usual membership dues and donations. Director Behnken says longliners have a history of involvement in the management of their fishery. Taking a lead in research is not huge leap.
“I would say we do have a membership of people who are aware of conservation issues, they’re aware that it’s in their own best interest to be out front, to address some of these issues, to be proactive. We have some great minds – like Dan’s – who have good ideas on how we might develop strategies that are good for the resource, and make for more efficient fishing.”
Behnken says ALFA has organized those members of the fleet interested in participating in research into the Fisheries Conservation Network. The same group is also active in the second year of a community-supported fishery enterprise called Alaskans Own. Behnken says, “We’re always looking for more boats.”
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