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Business World |
April 2015
110
dress the issues and challenges facing their
industry.
THE HALIBUT ISSUE
One of the current issues facing the AKSC is
the declining halibut bio-mass. The Interna-
tional Pacific Halibut Commission (IHPC)
is the body responsible for managing the di-
rected halibut fishery, and they have done
some research that shows halibut bio-mass is
steadily shrinking over time.
“There is a lot of political pressure on us to
reduce halibut mortality beyond what we’ve
already done,” Anderson said. “That’s one of
the big things we’re working on right now.”
Currently, the NHPFC is deliberating on
making cuts to halibut allocations for a num-
ber of sectors, including AKSC’s. Anderson
predicted those cuts will be significant.
“Knowing that, we’ve beenworking on a cou-
ple of things,” he reported. “The fishermen
have developed a ‘reverse hall way excluder.’
There are only two of these in the world, one
in Newfoundland and one in Denmark. It’s
a machine that passes water through it and
they can build these mini models of nets and
watch water go through, and they’ve figured
out ways to mechanically exclude halibut
from the catch.”
“In some fisheries, halibut are bigger than
target catch,” he explained. “And this sys-
tem – which also uses halibut behaviour