Over the past decade, it's become more difficult for commercial halibut fishermen off Alaska's coasts to catch enough to meet their quotas, as the flat whitefish have become less abundant and smaller.
That's according to a recent series of stories from fisheries reporter Hal Bernton, published in the Anchorage Daily News, Seattle Times and Northern Journal.
Bernton says the potential reasons for the decline include a warmer ocean leading to less food for young halibut, as well as a flawed model used for managing the fishery.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Hal Bernton: While the resource was in a cyclical decline, the models that the International Pacific Halibut Commission were using to basically estimate how many fish are out there and what's the future, they were significantly flawed. And there was one scientist who was very outspoken about flaws in the model, and it wasn't well received, and he ended up getting fired. Then they developed new models that really bore out some of the criticism that he made. So there's a mix of environmental conditions, and then some would say, also, there have been some fishing pressures as well that have contributed to the decline.
Casey Grove: So for commercial halibut fishing, the folks that you talked to, they're doing longlining, so they've got, you know, hundreds of baited hooks out. But then in some of the same areas, you've got folks that are bottom trawlers that are catching fish with nets. And you talked to a captain of one of those boats, who essentially said one of the things that keeps him up at night is catching too many halibut. I wonder if you could explain how that works.
HB: Well, there's been a fierce battle over the impacts of bottom trawling, particularly on halibut. And remember, the bottom trawlers are not allowed to keep the halibut or market them. They toss them overboard, and there's a certain amount that survive and a certain amount that don't, and that's calculated. And if they catch too many, then the fleet can get shut down. Just what is too many has been a matter of great debate as well, and resulted in a federal fishery council action to further reduce that limit.
So, yeah, halibut is something that the trawlers that I talked to say they do a lot of different things to avoid. They don't always avoid them, and if they catch too many, the people I talked to said that they would move to another area to try to stay within the limits that they have now to follow.
CG: Gotcha. A couple parts of the series look at impacts from, and to, orcas, and first, for the halibut longliners, what are they trying to do to prevent orcas from taking fish just right off their lines?
HH: There's been a lot of frustration through the years, and lots of different things that people have tried, like moving quickly to another area, fishing in certain areas that the whales typically don't come to, but not other areas where they encounter them, rock 'n' roll music, a lot of unsuccessful things.
But I was really intrigued that when I went out on this assignment, the skipper had just finished an experiment that was a collaboration with the International Pacific Halibut Commission, actually funded through federal taxpayer dollars. Basically, it looks almost like a submarine, a silver submarine, and it's developed by a Norwegian company called Sago Solutions. It uses gravity, you basically put it on your line, and it slides down the line, and as the line is brought up from the bottom, it basically grabs the fish off the line, and it stores the fish within this shuttle, this capsule-like creation, and brings it up to the surface, where whales aren't able to grab the fish.
And then, you know, in rough weather, it's hard to work. It's in a very early phase of experimentation, so there's a lot of questions, but to me, it was pretty remarkable that it's come to this, trying something like this silver capsule that you haul out to sea and and put on your line.
CG: Yeah, it really is interesting to look at, just in the the photos that accompany the story. It's like this silver space shuttle looking thing, almost.
And I should mention there are some great photos in this series. Some folks will remember other visuals, though, of an orca being caught in a ground trawling net, and that was something that you talked about in part of this series, too. So what's the situation with trawlers and orcas ending up in their nets, and what are they trying to do to prevent that?
HH: Yeah, I had reported on that several years ago when a bunch of orcas came up in the bottom trawl nets. Well, the fleet developed a kind of barrier in the front of the net. The net has echo-reflective material on it, which allows the whales to pick up, through their sonar system, the fact that it's there. It's like a fence that allows fish to go into the net, but hopefully, and so far, it appears it's worked.
CG: Interesting, yeah. So to do some of these reporting projects, you, of course, go out on the sea, you're in these boats. Can you describe your experience going out on these boats and doing this reporting?
HH: Well, to me, it's been a real privilege. It's always a little bit of an adventure. I'm very aware that I'm kind of an imposition, you know, a journalist. And then Loren Holmes, who's probably less than an imposition than me, because he's not always asking questions, but he's a wonderfully talented photographer I've been really fortunate to collaborate with, from the Anchorage Daily News. So it's been a real learning experience each time I go out to sea, and each time to really get past whatever sort of stereotypes people have to what is actually happening. And I hope I'm able to show a little more closely and accurately what does happen on some of these fishing vessels.