The unique characteristic of the pollock fishery in the Gulf of Alaska includes being rationalized so that permit holders are allocated a certain amount of catch for the season.
The fishery is open access, so vessels compete for catch, according to a Jan. 11 NOAA Fisheries news release.
“Why not put all the data we have in logbooks — bycatch, target, location — and make it public so we can use it to avoid bycatch?” fisherman Kiley Thompson said in the release.
Typically, 20-30% of fisheries are assigned a fisheries observer responsible for tracking things like catch and bycatch, the release reported. The issue with some fisheries is that they are remote or only accessible by air or boat. This makes observer availability difficult to guarantee, which can delay fishing fleets.
These challenges caused the Gulf of Alaska fleet to adopt emerging electronic monitoring methods to make up for the lack of human observers, according to the release. In 2019, the fleet and other trawl organizations across the state piloted EM systems. For the first year, these methods were used alongside observers, and after by themselves under exempted fishing permits.
"For small Alaska ports, electronic monitoring makes so much sense," Thompson added, according to the release.
