TRAWL MONITORING

Both wet deck and freezer trawlers are active in Haida territory. Wet deck trawlers do not process fish onboard. Fish are brought to onshore processing plants where fish are processed and packaged for distribution, supporting local businesses and livelihoods in these areas. Freezer trawlers have the ability to process and freeze fish on factory decks onboard while at sea (that is why they are often referred to as factory trawlers). Catches from these vessels often do not require processing at onshore plants, with the frozen blocks of fish offloaded from the vessel and directly distributed (often exported internationally), and therefore provide less benefits to local businesses and livelihoods than wet deck trawlers do. Freezer trawlers are not permitted to process fish at sea beyond what is permitted for other fisheries in BC. They can remove fish heads, tails and guts, and freeze at sea but they cannot cut the fish into pieces. This is consistent with other regulations for other fisheries such as halibut and salmon. Freezer trawl vessels are typically much larger than wet deck trawl vessels.

Bottom-trawl has gear that touches the ocean bottom, and catches species like Pacific cod, flatfishes including Arrowtooth Flounder (also known as Turbot), rockfish, thornyheads, lingcod, sablefish, dogfish and skate. The bycatch of sponges and corals are more common, although the trawl boundary avoids these areas, they are still caught alongside many fish species, such as halibut and species of rockfish.

Midwater-trawl catches species like Pacific Hake pollock. Bycatch of salmon, particularly Chinook, is more common in mid water trawl. There have also been reports of krill, eulachon and herring being caught.

Industry defines ‘Bycatch’ as the incidental capture of non-target species. What this essentially means is that a staggering amount of marine life is hauled up with each “catch”, and then discarded overboard dead or dying.  This is contrary to Haida practices and offends our Haida Ways of Being.  Thousands of miles of nets and lines are set in the world’s oceans each day. Modern fishing gear, often undetectable by sight and extremely strong, is very efficient at catching the desired fish species—as well as anything else in its path.

Industry has provided CHN with data on bycatch from some vessels trawling in Haida territory over the past two years. Rockfish and sablefish have accounted for the largest bycatch, along with halibut, flounder, lingcod and salmon. With the midwater trawl the halibut bycatch is retained, and for bottom trawl, halibut weight is assessed based on length, then an assessment factor is applied, and by-catch is accounted for as quota. Bottom trawl can retain all catch, except for prohibited species like halibut, salmon, eulachon, and SARA-listed species (i.e. some rockfish species). Salmon cannot be retained, but bycatch does occur in the mid-water hake fishery.

Trawl fisheries have a range of impacts. These include damaging sensitive seafloor habitats such as cold-water coral and sponge reefs, high levels of bycatch including salmon, halibut and lingcod, and removing large quantities of fish from a given area in a short time.

Trawl fisheries have a range of impacts. These include damaging sensitive seafloor habitats such as cold-water coral and sponge reefs, high levels of bycatch including salmon, halibut and lingcod, and removing large quantities of fish from a given area in a short time.