Meateater- Trawl Bycatch

[OXN939]

Glad to see this issue getting some high level national exposure. If you've ever though it's a little weird that you as a fisherman will catch a criminal charge for misidentifying and retaining one (1) single king salmon, but industrial trawlers are legally allowed to kill and dump tens of thousands of them overboard as bycatch, this has a lot of the answers about how that came to be.

If anyone from Trident seafoods is reading this, I want you to seriously look at how many views this has gotten in 36 hours. No amount of lobbyists or well placed donations to politicians can beat this. The public has learned the truth about what trawling does to our fisheries, and you will be out of a job soon.

Thanks to Meateater for helping get the word out.

 

[yfarm]

Is a problem in multiple fisheries. Shrimp trawling in the Gulf of Mexico(Am) ranges from 8-22 lbs of juvenile finfish per lb of shrimp.

 

[Elkman17]

I’m glad this is getting more attention and hopefully it will get shut down sooner rather then later.

 

[Slickhill]

If only this was getting traction 20 years ago. I remember days of C&R a bunch of kings on road system streams until getting a nice buck to keep, off the bank with no boat. Or fishing out of a boat in a river accessible from the road and catching 2 dozen kings in a single day, just me the others in the boat caught their own, before high grading one buck out for the table.

None of those places are open for kings anymore I don’t think. It hasn’t been that long ago since I moved up and heard how good it used to be, never crossed my mind that I was experiencing “the good old days”.

 

[chancey]

I spent many years working on the ocean. There are lots of “sustainable” ways to commercial fish, most are more focused on providing for a local community or exporting to a non local community that wants something the locals don’t. The amount of bycatch from any form of net fishing is astonishing. If it goes on unchecked the oceans will be devoid of anything to eat. Imagine planes and helicopters spotting, and then circling herds of elk so you could drive a net around them in your sxs.