Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska The Insanity- Trawling

Killed 9 killer whales this year as well as crazy amounts of bycatch. System is so rigged.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/science/9-orca-whales-died-fishing-gear-alaska/amp/



Apparently they throw over so much bycatch the orca’s now swim behind them.

No argument here. I can send you a couple Benjamins if you want to rig up for torpedos.

It is beyond just crazy...

Big money plunder and pillage.

One thing for sure, if the sport fleet killed even 1 killer whale a year, we would be chained up to the dock.

Screw the Orcas. Trawlers fug up the ocean bottom big time, affecting many species besides crab. And yeah - the by catch is significant also.

Working on a Gulf of Mexico trawler was my first real job as a teenager and off and on into my 20s. Tons and tons of dead bycatch went back overboard.

Commercial guys hate sport fishermen and the opposite is also true, in a general sense. It has been that way as long as I have been fishing the ocean.

For what it is worth, more than once I have seen lines of floating fish miles long of yellow eye, ling cod and a few other species that were 'released' by charter boat fishermen because they weren't in season or they already had limits. For whatever reason I have noticed it is especially bad out of Valdez. Whether X% of those fish survived or not I can't say, but it sure looked bad. Times that by however many boats were on the water that day.

That doesn't touch on the killer whale issue but it is something to consider.

Lingcod sink.

The Fish Board (mostly commie fish guys) decided to cut the yelloweye limit for sports from 10 per day to one... and then went on to say it was not for biology, but rather to "disincentivize sports fishing."

I have seen the long lines of yelloweyes behind longliners...

Lingcod may not have been floating in those lines...I never paid too close attention but some species darker than yelloweye were...and the yelloweye could be seen for a LONG ways.

It’s truly disgusting and CRIMINAL! It’s hard to believe that in a world where climate change, save the whales and vegan food is the pinnacle of virtue signaling that the death and destruction that’s completely WASTED is allowed to fish 1 minute longer! The trawlers should be banned immediately!

This could be the event that precipitates a major paradigm shift in acceptable bycatch?….if the right “news” outlets, journalists (if there are any left), conservation groups and other “media” outlets can get traction against the trawl industry and the corruption endemic within it over the multiple deaths of cute innocent Orcas…..FREE WILLY!…but Willy can’t be freed if he’s been drowned in a net or chopped by the prop. Between the dead whales on the east coast and the dead cute orcas we’re seriously cutting into the menu options in Asia. 😀

If 9 dead FEDERALLY PROTECTED orcas don’t get the attention of the people then I don’t think anything will.

Trawling shouldn’t be lumped into the same category as other commercial fishing. Trawling is legalized destruction of the ocean.

Yellow eye is another issue. The science on the them all wrong. You can’t avoid them and unfortunately they have swim bladders and they bite. We are required to deep water release them but the big ones sometimes they don’t want to stay down. In the 20 years I have fished 70-80 day seasons i have never seen what you have described with mile long lines of them floating.

Then our experience differs.

I am unsure if those charters out of Valdez aren’t required to deep water release yelloweye, maybe the charters there ignore any such regulation, or maybe there’s something different about the conditions there. Maybe I am just more observant than others.

I am unsure but I have seen a lot of floating fish behind those charter boats. I doubt it compares to trawlers in the big picture but I do try to consider all sides of an issue.

The deepwater release reg is relatively new, so the timing of your observation could be a factor as well. The unfortunate thing about the yelloweye deal is the same prohibition can't/won't be applied across all gear groups. So while sport fishermen have a prohibition, retention is allowed for subsistence skates and bycatch is allowed for commercial fisheries.

Makes sense (your observations, that is) as unfortunate as that double standard is.

Is the deep water release rig for "sport" yellow-eye mandated now? And do all the charters use it if no one is looking?

Pissed off the Cap't on a halibut charter off Montegue some years ago when all we were catching were yellow-eye, and I suggested we move elsewhere, then, when he got snarky, I hung up my rod. We had that line of floating yellow-eye stretching way back. I didn't tip him after, either.

IIRC, the deep-water release had just come out that year,, or perhaps the year after.

And possibly that's an inaccurate assumption.

Orcas in Alaska are stealing fish right from the lines — and the new behavior seems to be killing them

Orcas in Alaska are exhibiting a "new behavior" that may be getting them in trouble, a local fisher's association has said.

They've been known to pluck fish off from commercial fishing gear for decades. But recently, they've been spotted lingering by the boats more often, appearing to "be feeding in front of the nets while fishing," the group said.

The Groundfish Forum, a Seattle-based trawl group that represents members operating 19 boats in the area, gave the warning in a statement shared by the Anchorage Daily News.

"This new behavior" has never been documented and has marine scientists stumped, the Groundfish Forum said in the statement, dated September 21.

The news came as more orcas have been getting tangled up in trawling gear in the area, leading to nine deaths in Alaska in 2023 so far, the US federal fisheries agency said on September 21.

LINK

WA coast has been yelloweye non-retention for a while, and BC moved to it a couple years ago. This year off vancouver island I spent a lot of time tending the release clip and the downrigger while the boys jigged up lings and yelloweye from 250' - 300'. Not a real big deal, but holy smokes those were some big yelloweye.

Most of the time we could see the yelloweye come off the downrigger release at depth and swim downward.

It's not just charters that sport fish out in the ocean. The army of private boats is huge and growing by the year. I am not aware of any sport or charters not using the deep water release on yelloweye, expectially with electric downriggers and hydrostatic releases. Only a moron would leave a trail of highly visible fish behind the boat in this day an age.


The problem with yellow eye is that they are everywhere there is a rock offshore, they bite like crazy, and there isn't reasonable harvest for them for sport fleet. There are so many yellow eye offshore right now after 3 or 4 years of closure we don't fish our traditional lingcod spots anymore, as we would have to release 20 or so yelloweye which really is a time suck.

Not sure what the answer for yellow is, and why fish and game is so gung ho to have a crazy high population. Longliners say they can't avoid them, we can't avoid them if we are close to any rocks, and yet they are in "trouble".

The science on them is completely wrong. Everyone knows it.