KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Daysha Eaton/KMXT
A fisherman based out of Homer posted images on social media of halibut bycatch headed for the grinder at Kodiak’s Trident Seafoods processing plant.
The post got a lot of attention online and sparked criticism of Trident, the Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet and a body that regulates the commercial fishing industry.
A conveyor belt whisks bright red fish with bulging, quarter-sized eyes and spiny fins past workers inside Kodiak’s Trident Seafoods processing plant.
“Today we’re processing rockfish caught in the waters around Kodiak, ” said Paul Lumsden, plant manager for Trident Seafoods operations in Kodiak.
Trident is the largest primary processor of seafood in the United States and is heavily invested in Alaska.
“We’re a company built by fishermen for fishermen and we don’t just buy pollock or cod or crab or salmon or halibut, we buy everything that we can sustainably harvest and feed the world with. Halibut is a very important part of our business,” said Lumsden.
Longtime fisherman Erik Velsko says if Trident really cares about halibut and sustainability some things need to change.
He recently called out Trident on Facebook posting photos and video of excessive halibut bycatch at the plant that appeared to be from the local trawl fishery and which was going to be turned into fishmeal.
“Totes full of halibut and you know obviously they had some markings and looked a little damaged. They were not gutted or dressed, as we call ‘em, longline – so the only place they could have come off of was a trawl vessel,” said Velsko.
In all, Velsko alleges there were around 15 totes, each containing about one thousand pounds of fish. The images were taken in fall 2017, when a fellow fisherman captured them but wanted to remain anonymous, so Velsko posted the images to his Facebook page this May [11] with a paragraph alleging wastefulness.
“I just threw it up there not really thinking anything of it and the next thing I knew it was all kinds of people commenting and re-sharing it,” said Velsko.
At last check, Velsko’s post had been shared more than 500 times.
The Trident plant in Kodiak processes many varieties of fish from all gear types. The majority of the fish processed at the plant is pollock. But they also process a significant amount of fish caught with bottom trawl gear such as pacific cod, flatfish (like rock sole, arrowtooth flounder, rex sole, and flathead sole) and rockfish. Bottom trawling involves pulling a net along the ocean floor. Sometimes they haul up halibut too.
“Every fishery has some element of bycatch and it is impossible to just catch exactly what you’re after,” said Julie Bonney, Executive Director of Alaska Groundfish Data Bank and a paid advocate for the trawl fishery.
She says the trawl fishery operates under strict regulations. They’re not allowed to keep a single halibut. She says most are discarded at sea, but ones that aren’t sorted out end up at the processing plant.
“The plant is required to enumerate every one of those fish and it goes on a fish ticket. NOAA enforcement examines every fish ticket and if they feel that the vessel was egregious in terms of their sorting practices, then that vessel will get a monetary fine,” said Bonney.
There is an overall bycatch cap of 1,705 tons for the Gulf trawl fishery, said Bonney. It is hard to tell, she added, whether the halibut that appears in Velsko’s facebook post was collected into those blue totes over one delivery or many deliveries of hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish headed for market.
The Trident plant manager also saw Velsko’s post.
“I did see the photos, yes,” said Lumsden. “And that was alarming to me. It was disheartening to say the least.”
But he says the images were taken out of context.
“The frustrating thing is when you see a 30-second video like that and you don’t know the background,” said Lumsden. “When that video shows a full tote, a thousand pounds of fish being dumped into a truck [it] gives a false representation like there is just tote after tote after tote after tote and that is simply not the case.”
Velsko, the fisherman who posted the video, says he believes what is happening with halibut at the Trident plant in Kodiak is legal, but immoral and wasteful, and it was especially upsetting to him in light of recent restrictions on the halibut fishery due to conservation concerns.
And he says there’s a reason that he waited six months to post the photos and video. He wanted the issue to be front and center at the upcoming meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council which is scheduled to take place in Kodiak June 4 – 11. A report about observer coverage is on the agenda.
