The Seattle Times has an excellent story of the people employed in long line fishing (fishing with hooks not nets) here in Port Townsend, as they find themselves caught between the court battle between NOAA and the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC). The WFC has sued to stop NOAA’s supposed “safe catch” limits for harvesting Chinook salmon. The numbers, as the story mentions, are depressing, with chinook down 60% over the last decades. NOAA continues to act as if almost nothing is wrong, and yet the WFC found significant flaws in their arguments, which one judge agreed with, and other judges did not. While the battle goes on in court, the folks who take chinook are usually small boat owners, as documented by the Times. I know some of these people and they are struggling to maintain the catch in an environmentally positive way, while supplying the restaurants you eat at with salmon. As the catch declines, it’s a lose-lose-lose for all of us.
While this story is behind the Times paywall, you might get a free article before being shut out. But I highly recommend you subscribe to the Times, even if the online version. Do I like their politics? Nope. But they are the last major news outlet actually sending dozens of reporters into the field for pay. That’s worth supporting.
By Isabella Breda – Seattle Times staff reporter
PORT TOWNSEND — With her legs tucked to her chest in the wood-paneled wheelhouse of the F/V Nerka, steaming mug of coffee in hand, Tele Aadsen reminisced on the fishery that led her to meet her life and fishing partner, Joel, and helped her connect with the sea.
It has been an up-and-down year for Aadsen and other fishers who pilot their boats out of this port each June and head to the waters of Sitka, Alaska, to catch Chinook, or king salmon.
They’ve been embroiled in a court battle over the future of a fishery worth about $85 million a year, whose fleet trolls with hook and line instead of large nets, to catch salmon sold to restaurants and grocers all over the West and beyond.
Read the whole story with great photos of our local fisherpeople here>An Alaska fishery has been pitted against orcas. Can both survive? | The Seattle Times
Filed under: Around the Salish Sea, fisheries, fishing, Salmon | Tagged: Canada, Port Townsend, Puget Sound, Salmon |
