Capt Bill Hayes Vaerdal
Amendment 80 Captain Gives His Take on Halibut Bycatch issues in 2 part Op-Ed
SEAFOODNEWS.COM March 31, 2015 [Opinion] by Bill Hayes
Bill Hayes is captain on the Vaerdal, a 124-foot catcher processor owned by United States Seafoods, one of the larger companies in the Amendment 80 Coop. As the Council begins working on draft documents about halibut by catch, a number of Amendment 80 Captains have been publicly testifying about their need for halibut and their view of the history of their halibut bycatch allocations. The Opinion piece below, which we will run in two parts, is based on Bill Hayes' testimony before the council in January.
I have participated in the groundfish fisheries from the very beginning. After starting my career crabbing, I moved to a Joint Venture catcher boat in 1983 before being hired on to captain the Vaerdal, a 124 foot trawl catcher/processor in 1986. I have worked there ever since (closing in on 30 years). I’ve been part of the agony and ecstasy of an industry that has gone through extraordinary changes. Extra ordinary has been our response to changing regulatory requirements.
In 1988, when halibut bycatch quotas were initiated for the trawl fleet, we lobbied for a cap that would float based on the biomass of the halibut stock. That was summarily dismissed and a fixed, hard cap was instituted. It was anathema to the halibut interests that our fleet might benefit from a potential increase in the stock. It was much easier to pick a number and call it good.
Of course, now that stocks are falling, we’re hearing a very different story. While a fixed cap might insulate the halibut fishery from trawlers in a rising biomass, it also insulates trawlers from any effect they have on the biomass. That’s not good for anyone, especially trawlers.
Through the 90’s and early 2000’s, halibut constrained flatfish harvests. It was a race for bycatch, not target species, often driven by a few bad players who disregarded bycatch and others’ interest in a longer fishing season.
Our bycatch avoidance efforts finally started to be rewarded in 2008, when the North Pacific Council rationalized the Bering Sea multispecies fisheries under Amendment 80, allocating a specific share of each target and bycatch species to each boat. It has been an unreserved success. As our fleet continued to invent ways to avoid halibut, our bycatch rates have declined to near 6kg per ton of groundfish (a half of a percent) – a rate comparable to any other Pacific fishery, including the British Columbia trawl fishery that is often held up as the model by the Halibut Commission.
Our coop has used a variety of measures to minimize halibut bycatch. We choose fishing time and location based on our experience and information from other boats; we use halibut excluders that allow halibut to avoid capture; and we have real-time catch monitoring to identify bycatch hotspots.
That all sounds good but it doesn’t tell the true story of the time, effort, and cost that America’s Amendment 80 fishermen have devoted to bycatch avoidance, the complexity of which makes other fisheries look like a walk in the park.
Captains choose where to fish based on years of experience and knowledge of where halibut bycatch occurs. Our decisions are based on that we see, as well as what we hear from other boats. These communications are a part of our daily lives on the water and essential to what it is to be a co-op.
I have built and used numerous halibut excluders. I regularly modify them in an attempt to save a few more halibut. While my boat has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on excluders, I have lost much more than that in target flatfish I didn’t catch when my ideas didn’t pan out. The excluder now favored by the rest of the fleet can barely be towed by my small horsepower boat but I would not leave town without one…or two. Excluders work some of the time but can be totally ineffective at other times, so they are not the only answer.
Our fleet catches over 160 pounds of groundfish for every pound of halibut bycatch. That’s 160 people we feed for each meal of halibut lost to our bycatch. Those 160 people who won’t get that meal are the true losers if the Council chooses the simple path of just cutting our bycatch number. It’s to those people that the Council owes the most. With that much at stake, you can do better than a simple cut in the number. Our sector has a record of doing our part – give us rules that give us a chance.
My father had a saying: When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. I’m afraid the rope is pulling through our hands too fast and the water’s really deep and cold.
Amendment 80 Skipper Suggests Some Creative Solutions to Halibut bycatch Problem (Op Ed)
SEAFOODNEWS.COM April 1, 2015 [Opinion] by Bill Hayes (part 2)
Bill Hayes is captain on the Vaerdal, a 124-foot catcher processor owned by United States Seafoods, one of the larger companies in the Amendment 80 Coop. As the Council begins working on draft documents about halibut by catch, a number of Amendment 80 Captains have been publicly testifying about their need for halibut and their view of the history of their halibut bycatch allocations. The Opinion piece below is the second part of Bill's Op-Ed, in which he suggests some creative solutions the Council and NMFS might consider as alternatives to simply cutting by catch allocations.
In my view, something about the halibut emergency smells funny. Fishermen of all gear types are paying a big price for the ongoing disputes and uncertainties in halibut management.
Halibut IFQ share owners in the Bering Sea are in another year of a reduced fishery. Likewise, long-line and trawl fishermen are under huge pressure to reduce their halibut bycatch because, after all, we are share-holders as well. This after a handful of years of halibut catch limits that the new stock assessors are now saying were excessive, while large numbers of small halibut are on the trawl grounds.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is looking at slashing the trawl halibut bycatch limit, when what we really need is a willingness to look for long-term solutions that keep all of the fisheries viable.
Regulations to close areas to fishing box us into corners with few alternative locations to move to avoid halibut. It would greatly help if existing time and area restrictions were removed. Many were enacted to restrain the derby style fishery of the 90’s and are now obsolete. Everyone recognizes that fish move and are not always where they were last year; it’s time to acknowledge it with changes in the rules.
A system to allow trades of halibut between Amendment 80 fishermen and halibut IFQ holders could also benefit both sectors by mitigating losses to halibut fishermen from smaller allocations while allowing other fisheries to take place.
While directed halibut fishermen have an interest in protecting their place in halibut markets, it is time to stop the wanton waste of halibut by removing regulations that require us to discard halibut that won’t survive. All those fish should be processed just like any other fish. This will also ensure that every halibut that we catch is counted, removing the bias of sampling that we all suffer from currently.
Our sector has been working for 20 years to develop a program to rapidly return halibut to the water by sorting them from the catch on deck. To deck sort we’ll need to change our fishing operations, not to mention deck layouts. Canadian regulators have allowed deck sorting for years, relying on a single observer on each vessel. This year, NMFS will only allow us to deck sort as part of yet another experimental fishing program and is requiring us to carry at least 3 observers along with a camera monitoring system.
Newer excluder designs look promising for keeping bigger halibut out of the catch. However, since these are the sizes that are likely to be sorted on deck, excluders may not add to savings from deck sorting and vice versa.
Don’t think these tools and improvements will give us a free ride. Deck sorting will cost the boats time and money as will further efforts in excluder design. Putting our efforts into these developments is the price of participating in the fishery. Others need to put in the effort too.
Right now, it’s easiest for the Council to pull out a red marker and slash numbers. It doesn’t take very much work, they have the power to do it, and they can declare victory on behalf of the halibut IFQ holders.
But, why not consider options other than short term adjustments that are likely to necessitate further action later on. The North Pacific Council is known for taking a broader view than just picking winners and losers. It seems that the voices advocating the easy way have gotten amplified.
It is time to move beyond that here. I think its time to make everyone a winner. It is encouraging to see the Halibut Commission studying and moving toward a system that fully estimates the biomass of its fishery and fully accounts for all mortalities. The long line survey used to estimate halibut biomass is known to miss the smaller sizes that the trawl fleet is seeing in abundance. A shift toward accounting for the smaller fish will allow us to move to an abundance-based limit that makes sense for all sectors.
Changes like these would require some out-of-the-box thinking and would require fishermen and regulators to abandon the longstanding halibut management policy that has kept longliners and trawlers separate and competing over regulations. Let’s work on a system that makes us just fishermen and businessmen, rather than making us parade in front of the Council every few years to plead for yet another fix. Fishermen deserve the effort.