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April 2015
| Business World
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competition, government agencies such
as the North Pacific Fishery Management
Council (NPFMC) and National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS) have adopted pre-
cautionary management principles. These
principles have restricted the harvest lim-
its of select species, as well as the combined
groundfish harvest limits in the Bering Sea
and neighboring Aleutian islands.
Before the advent of the AKSC in 2008,
those limits created a disadvantageous sys-
tem for competitive fisheries, whereby the
government would open a target allocation
for a prohibited species, usually halibut or
crab. Upon reaching the target allocation,
fishing operations were brought to an im-
mediate halt. In the course of fishing, the
fishery might avoid capture of other species,
but some are always caught – this is known
as bycatch, and bycatch is required to be dis-
carded.
Bycatch reduction has been a persistent goal
of bodies like the NPFMC and NMFS. To
achieve those reductions, they helped devel-