Wakefield Symposium Will Focus on Bycatch

Jay Barrett/KMXT
Seafood bycatch has long been a hot button topic in coastal Alaska, but knowledge of – and outrage over – has spread statewide in recent years with increased awareness of the sheer number of salmon taken on the high seas.
The Lowell Wakefield Fisheries Symposium in May will be exclusively dedicated to fisheries bycatch; the theme will be “Global Issues and Creative Solutions.”
Gordon Kruse, a UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences professor based in Juneau, is the organizer of the symposium.
“Obviously there are issues with bycatch in Alaska. And this is not unique to us, there’s issues with bycatch around the world," he said. "And in many different areas folks have found different solutions to it, so we’d like to learn from their experiences as well as share our experiences as well.”
A call for submissions went out last week, seeking abstracts for oral or poster presentations.
The symposium will be in mid May at the Anchorage Hilton.
We’ll have an expanded story about the symposium on Monday’s newscasts.