In case you had forgotten - Tangle Nets

[Kevin Newell]

April 25 2002 Tacoma News Tribune- By Bob Mottram


Recovery box snafus blight tangle-net fishery

Bob Mottram; News Tribune outdoors writer


It shouldn't be this hard to manage a fishery.

R.P. Van Gytenbeek, a Fish and Wildlife Commission member from Seattle, was the first to call attention to the situation. He did so at a commission meeting in March when he pointed to the experimental tangle-net fishery then under way in the Columbia River.

This is the second year that Washington and Oregon have tested tangle nets there in the hope they will allow more commercial fishing. They're under study as a possible replacement for gillnets in at least some commercial fisheries, because gillnets usually kill fish by depriving them of oxygen.

Tangle nets are designed to entangle only a fish's jaw, allowing it to breathe.

The idea is to use the new nets in places where selective fishing is required in order to protect threatened stocks. In this case, the aim was to take fin-clipped hatchery spring chinook in the Columbia while allowing safe passage of steelhead and wild spring chinook.

Commercial fishermen must pull their tangle nets within a certain time after setting, and remove the fish from it. If the net contains nontargeted fish that appear to be in distress, the fishermen must place them in an on-board recovery tank to resuscitate them before letting them go. Oxygenated water is pumped through the tank from outside the boat.

During the first week of the commercial spring chinook fishery on the Columbia, Van Gytenbeek said, commercial fishermen caught about 10 steelhead for every chinook. That was part of the problem. The rest of the problem, he said, was that a lot of the commercials out there fished with no recovery tanks on board or with inoperative ones.

Van Gytenbeek said that information came from reports distributed by chief Bruce Bjork, the department's top law enforcement officer.

"What they did, they issued warning tickets the first week," Van Gytenbeek said, "then the chief said they would enforce it hard-nosed from that point. I'm assuming they did."

But they didn't. The number of citations issued has been zero.

By March 22, enforcement people gave 25 verbal warnings to fishermen whose recovery boxes were not operating, said Capt. Murray Schlenker, enforcement supervisor for the department in Vancouver. But, after discussions with department lawyers and the local prosecutor's office, the agency decided it couldn't issue citations because of the way the regulation was written.

"It said (the boxes) had to be 'operable,'" Schlenker said, "but not 'operating.' Many of them had operable boxes, but didn't have them turned on."

Later in the season, fishery managers changed the rule to require that the boxes be operating.

That still didn't eliminate the problem.

"According to (the rule), if the fish was lethargic it had to go in the boxÊ," Schlenker said. "But define 'lethargic.' It was (the fisherman's) definition."

Washington enforcement officers found no one on the water without a box, Schlenker said, and as the season progressed officers did see fish in them.

"We boarded enough boats and talked with enough (people), we were getting these guys to turn them on and keep them running," he said.

Cindy LeFleur, who helps manage the fishery for the department, says the netters caught and released more than twice as many fish as they caught and kept. They kept 14,797 hatchery spring chinook during a 15-day fishery that started on Feb. 25 and ended on March 27. They caught and released 14,975 spring chinook that had not been fin-clipped, and caught and released 21,600 steelhead.

The department estimates the "immediate mortality" at less than two percent for steelhead and less than one percent for spring chinook, but Van Gytenbeek said that number is "under severe question by a lot of people."

Van Gytenbeek wasn't happy about the lack of use of recovery boxes. He also wasn't happy about the ratio of steelhead to salmon caught, especially in the first week of the fishery.

"The thing it tells me is we should have looked at it the first couple of days and said the chinook are not here, and have shut it right down," he said. Managers then could have sampled the run until chinook arrived in larger numbers.

"I'm sure that's something we'll have in place next year," he said.

[Thumper]

Given that this information is several years old, it still points out the central issue of bycatch.

Using tangle nets, 51,372 fish were caught. Only 14,797 were targeted. Over 71% of the fish were "bycatch".

That is simply amazing.

[Splash]

Considering tangle nets are just miniature gillnets is there really any surprise this "method of harvest" has apparently failed to meet expectations?

Recovery boxes are, and always have been, a band-aide to the problem of a non-selective harvest tool. They do serve a purpose and I support/encourage their use but they are not a gillnet fix.

WAKE UP FISHERIES MANAGERS!!!

[Amerman]

Originally Posted by Thumper

Given that this information is several years old, it still points out the central issue of bycatch.

Using tangle nets, 51,372 fish were caught. Only 14,797 were targeted. Over 71% of the fish were "bycatch".

That is simply amazing.

You forgot to add that about 3 million dollars was spent to kill these other 21,000 wild winter steelhead and 15,000 wild spring chinook. So they could sell 15,000 fish, Basically if those fish were 20 pound each ( I am sure they weighed less) and they were sold for $10 per pound ( I doubt they got that much). It means we spent 3 million dollars so a comercial fisherman could make 3 million dollars. We could have gave them the 3 million and they would have made more money (no expensise) and we would have save 51,372 fish.

[wayout]

Originally Posted by Amerman

You forgot to add that about 3 million dollars was spent to kill these other 21,000 wild winter steelhead and 15,000 wild spring chinook. So they could sell 15,000 fish, Basically if those fish were 20 pound each ( I am sure they weighed less) and they were sold for $10 per pound ( I doubt they got that much). It means we spent 3 million dollars so a comercial fisherman could make 3 million dollars. We could have gave them the 3 million and they would have made more money (no expensise) and we would have save 51,372 fish.

[AuntyM]

Anyone else hearing "crickets" from the pro-gillnet faction? Even WDFW admitted in their tangle net study

The tangle net has shortcomings. As expected, it captured many more non-target species than the conventional gill net. As with any selective fishing operation, fishers using the tangle net must learn and use careful handling techniques to maximize survival of released fish. These include significant changes to fishing practices, and successful implementation requires concurrent redesign of the fishery by managers to encourage a high-priced market for a steady, but lower volume, supply of fish. Enforcing these types of behavioral changes is at best difficult, and a

large investment in fishery observers will likely be necessary.

[stlhdrgrn]

Cindy LeFleur, who helps manage the fishery for the department, says the netters caught and released more than twice as many fish as they caught and kept. They kept 14,797 hatchery spring chinook during a 15-day fishery that started on Feb. 25 and ended on March 27. They caught and released 14,975 spring chinook that had not been fin-clipped, and caught and released 21,600 steelhead.

That explains what has been happening to the above the falls Wild Steelhead, The timing of this test fishery is when those fish are in the lower river. Bring on the Feb. 8 meeting, I just found another bullet point.
Mike

[fishskills]

Even IF the commercials could release salmon and steelhead unharmed from the tangle nets, the poor fish have a gauntlet of nets to swim through. They WILL get caught again in a very short time in another net and another and another and exhaust every bit of energy needed to make it to spawning. Sportfishers are encouraged not to tire the fish out by playing it too long, and not to net a native fish but leave it in the water and release it with as little handling as possible.
The gillnetting and tangle netting method of harvest defy logic and common sense, and since their conception have been based on lies. Gillnetts and its close relative the tangle nets are barbaric and inhumane. I can't understand how gillnetters can sleep at night.