Second Public Meeting

[black magic]

Astoria meeting 7/7

I attended both sessions in Astoria with Mr. corrirod. We were joined in the second session by Pilar, Puffin, and Puffin Jr.

The things that I learned are:

Harvest levels for 2003 are to be determined from stock assessment numbers. The stock assessments for 2003 are done. The harvest levels are open to debate within limits.

There are three levels of harvest being considered based on past history of bycatch of a particular fishery. These options are listed on the PFMC website.
They are labled as 'Most Conservative', "Intermediate", and "Least Conservative".

Gear restrictions to reduce recreational bycatch are not an option for 2003. They are encouraged for future years, but any ideas for alternate gear must go through a proving process by ODFW complete with data collection to prove the viability of the gear, including its inforceability.

There are are currently stock assessments for ( I believe) only 16 species of groundfish out of a total of over 80. I asked if there was funding for more stock assessments and the answer was no. The harvest levels of the lessor species is being determined with little knowledge of their populations, which makes me very nervous. I also asked if user fees could be implemented to help with costs and the answer was that the money could be taken away by the State general fund. The same problem with hatchery funding I suppose.

There was a report from Garibaldi charter skippers that there is an increasing abundance of fish traps with floats and lines being placed on nearshore reefs by live fishery people which essentially lock out large portions of the reef due to risk of fouling running gear.

This is all I have time for right now. I believe that recreational fishers can have the most impact by attending the meetings first and writing letters second to state your preferences or offer new proposals. The deadline to write to PFMC was stated as Aug. 22.

[ 08-08-2002, 11:07 AM: Message edited by: black magic ]

[craigc]

Black Magic,
Thank you for taking the time to go to the meeting and post your notes this morning.. Craig

[corrirod]

Black Magic, Pilar, Puffin/Puffin Jr.,

I'm glad I made the trek to Astoria to learn more about these issues and I would encourage everyone from this board to do the same. On various occasions the commercial guys made reference to the fact they had never seen so many recreational fishermen and charter interests at the meetings previously and this was duly noted by all the ODFW group, as well as the NFMS members who were on the panel. There seems to be some compassion towards the recreational fisheries. This will only continue to get better as our attendance increases at these meetings.

Black Magic and myself attended both meetings and there were less than a handful of commercial fisherman at both meetings. In fact, without a doubt, we(rec. fishers and charter fishers) had a larger presence in the second meeting and were able to hog the majority of the meeting with our issues vs. commercial issues.

I don't envy the ODFW and the Council's job of having to come up with such radical restrictions in such a short amount of time. It appears as though the Feds are forcing them to make a decision based on outside factors and poor data that we have no involvement in.

I think the consensus from both meetings yesterday is something needs to be done about the by catch waste. Unfortunately I don't have the solution but some of you might so please attend the meeting and give your feedback. Unfortunately your ideas cannot be implemented by simple word-of-mouth. They need to be rammed down the throats of our public officers so they have no excuse not to swallow.

Pilar made some great suggestions to the panel and was well recieved but unfortunately there is some homework and research that will need to be done. Pilar, please let me know if I can help in any way.

[Pilar]

Hello, I was fortunate and untangled myself from a last minute 'Computer problem' at the sawmill in Lyons.

After much tire squealing and general driving lawlessness I missed the first hour of the meeting and was resigned to listening carefully and trying to catch up. Since the content and character of the meeting up to that point was somewhat of a mystery I spent my time reading the participants.

Some observations......

The folks conducting these meetings are in a sense fishing (forgive the pun) for ideas on how to alleviate the impact. What they are catching is the emotional outfall of those affected by the proposed closures. I watched time and again the 'here we go again' looks and glazed eyes on the faces of the panel as the trawl fishers bemoaned their fate.

Although the emotional accurately depicts the impact it does not travel well. The members of the panel need something concrete to take to their higher ups to suggest changes to the proposed restrictions. They will tell of the pain and anguish but that needs to be followed by some alternatives. Or even better ... alternatives that have broad support in the fishing community.

Concrete means ideas on paper. Timely means that you must get delivered before August 21, 2002 1630 to be included in the handout that will be distributed at the PFMC meeting on Sept 4. Any submissions before Sept 1 will be distributed at the meeting at the last minute.

Over and over again it was stressed that meeting attendance is only part of the picture. You must collect your thoughts and write them down. Send your comments to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, e-mail or call

pfmc.comments@noaa.gov

letters addressed to the Council Chair, Dr. Hans Radtke or Executive Director Dr. Donald McIsaac should be sent to the following address

Pacific Fishery Management Council
7700 NE Ambassador Place, Suite 200
Portland, Or 97220-1384

or call

(866) 806-7204

Others are fair game as well. Your local legislator, Federal legislator and The Governor are all good targets for mail and email.

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More observations ....

NMFS has money to spend on research directed at targeting healthy stocks and avoiding the damaged ones. I had thought this was for the draggers to try new nets .. but Steve Copps told me that this money can be spent on recreational fishers too.

Bycatch and discards was a very tough thing that would not go away. The draggers are very frustrated with taking the blame for stock declines. The gist of it is that the rules they fish under encourage the wasting of fish to avoid potential fines if the ratios are not met. Several times I heard some of them say 'I dumped 10,000 lbs of 'Name a fish' because I did not have enough flatfish to cover it.'

Arrgghhh! Some of our coast wide quotas for the troubled fish are just a few tons. The draggers were dismayed that the incidental had to be wasted because they could not land it without consequence. But even more interesting is that I got the sense that the waste is widespread. Any question about exceeding quota is solved by dumping the fish over the side.

My comment to this was that the fish are being wasted and that is bad. What is worse is that there is no accounting for the dumping. All that information about stocks is lost as the
'wrong' fish goes over the side. In MHO this borders on the criminal. We have no idea how many fish are out there or how many are being caught. All we know is how many make it to the dock!!!

There are, according to Mark Saelens, computer models that account for the bycatch. I have to believe that these are estimates, optimistic estimates. Mark as much as admitted that landing the Bycatch and accounting for it might force early closures, season closures and quota adjustments.

Does anyone still wonder why the fish are in trouble?

The panel is looking for answers. I suggested that maybe we should all be looking for something similar to the barbless and fin clip approach used for salmon. This allowed fishing for Coho to continue based on escapement of 'wild' fish by C and R. Gear restrictions allow salmon fishers to target Chinook and avoid Coho. Hey, we could do that here too!

'What if we could find gear restrictions or methods that avoided catching the restricted fish?' I asked this question and the panels eyes collectively flew open. Hello! a non belly ache comment. A call for solution not bemoaning the problem.

'Would the PFMC be interested in allowing sport fishers to fish using gear restrictions or method changes if we could stop catching the damned red fish?'

Steve Copps then offered the bit about NMFS funding research into these methods. I about fell out of my chair.

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Last thing .. ok i said that before.

There are more meetings. Please attend any you can, the ODFW, NMFS and PFMC are glad to see you the sport fisher at these meetings. You give them something to do besides mop up the gallons of tears being cried by drag net boat operators.

[blubeast]

Thanks to all for attending and keeing the rest of us updated.

I'm still planning to attend the Friday meeting in Corvalius... any update as to a time projection as to when 'our' topics will get discussed?

Thanks again to all for your efforts!

[OceanBlue]

"Our" agenda topic is scheduled for the afternoon. Unfortunately, I can't say when with any better accuracy than that. I'm planning on being there by 1pm.

See you there!