Halibut commission recommends longer season, discusses year-round fishing
Posted by Joe Viechnicki | Feb 5, 2021
Sport caught halibut from Frederick Sound near Petersburg from July 2020 (Joe Viechnicki/KFSK)
The U.S. and Canadian commission that regulates fishing for halibut in the Pacific Ocean approved a longer season for 2021 and had discussions last month about year-round fishing.
The International Pacific Halibut Commission held its annual meeting by video conference in late January. It voted to recommend a commercial season start date of March 6
th and end date of December 7
th. That’s around a month more fishing time than last year for most areas.
Pacific Halibut Commission increases allowable catch February 5th |
Pacific halibut harvesters got some rare good news last week: increased catches in 2021 along with a longer fishing season.
At its annual meeting that ended on Jan. 25, the International Pacific Halibut Commission boosted the coastwide removals for 2021 to 39 million pounds, a 6.53% increase over last year. It includes halibut taken in commercial, sport, subsistence, research, personal use and as bycatch for fisheries of the West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska. A total of 278 individual Pacific halibut stakeholders attended the meeting via an electronic platform.
For commercial fishermen, the halibut catch limit of 25.7 million pounds compares to a take of 23.1 million pounds in 2020.
Halibut commission boosts 2021 catch and OKs longer fishing season
Print article Pacific halibut harvesters got rare good news last week: increased catches in 2021 along with a longer fishing season. At its annual meeting that ended on Jan. 25, the International Pacific Halibut Commission boosted the coastwide removals for 2021 to 39 million pounds, a 6.53% increase over last year. It includes halibut taken in commercial, sport, subsistence, research, personal use and as bycatch for fisheries of the West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska. A total of 278 individual Pacific halibut stakeholders attended the meeting via an electronic platform. For commercial fishermen, the halibut catch limit of 25.7 million pounds compares to a take of 23.1 million pounds in 2020.
The International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) finalized the commercial harvest limits for the prized flatfish on Friday, agreeing to a slight increase in
In the next few weeks, the Biden administration is expected to take sweeping climate action as promised. The president has already done so on day one, including laudable actions such as rejoining the Paris Agreement and promulgating systematic review of Trump administration environmental rollbacks.
But very soon, we expect to see an executive order advancing an initiative called 30x30′′ (pronounced thirty-by-thirty ) that calls for the protection of 30% of the world s oceans to commercial extractive use by 2030. For Americans, this could mean sealing off our access to an area of the ocean larger than Texas off the continental U.S. and Alaska. The move is staggering in its scope, and it could do severe harm to fishing communities.