Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola introduced two bills Wednesday that aim to deliver on one of her campaign themes: Reducing the number of salmon that the Bering Sea fishing fleet catches by accident.would curtail the use of fishing nets that scrape sensitive parts of the sea floor. It would require regional fisheries management councils to designate bottom trawl zones and limit that kind of fishing to those areas.
“I think 40 to 80% of the time, that ‘pelagic’ gear is actually on the bottom,” she said. “So I think that defining these terms and having a more accurate definition of what bottom trawl is, and the percentage of time that those nets are on the bottom, is really important.”would increase the money available for a grant program that funds research and equipment to help fishing fleets reduce bycatch. That program would get up to $10 million per year, $7 million more than its current cap.
“The fact that Alaskans elected a member of the congressional delegation who ran on a platform of fishing and bycatch — that fact alone has really caught the attention of many in the industry,” she said. “Fifty percent of bycatch has been reduced, especially when it comes to chum salmon.”The Alaska Pollock Fishery Alliance says the bottom trawling bill would impose “unworkable and burdensome new federal mandates on regional decision-makers.
“The council has been looking at pelagic gear definitions, the enforceability, and they continue to look at that,” Madsen said. “And that’s where we think the work needs to be done.”