Pollock B season: The good, the bad, and the mediocre

摘要

Few chum: Last September, Unalaska's docks were lined with idle boats. The Bering Sea pollock fleet was hampered by chum salmon bycatch, and fishing was scratchy, to say the least. This B season, most catcher vessels have hardly spent any time in town. A lack of salmon closures means fishermen are on the water, and long hauls northwest of the Pribilof Islands have kept them there." First, the happy news: Chum bycatch is barely a fraction of what it was last year. At the end of August, fewer than 9,000 of them had been taken by the whole fleet. Compare that to 124,000 chum in 2011.