Anchorage Daily News

Large bottom-trawling vessels fishing off Alaska will be required to retain more of the fish they actually catch instead of throwing unwanted species overboard.

A federal appeals court let stand measures requiring large bottom-trawler and processor vessels in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands to keep more of their total catch. The rules require the boats, which drag huge nets along the ocean floor, to retain 65 percent of their catch in 2008 and 85 percent by 2010.

The ruling is a victory for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries, which came up with the new regulations to address the problem of bycatch -- nontargeted species brought up in the nets with the "money fish" or fish otherwise rejected because they are undesirable. The unwanted fish are dumped back in the ocean, often dead or dying.

"Right now they can kill and dump," said Jim Ayers, vice president of Oceana, which supported the federal government in the lawsuit. "All across the country this is an issue we have been fighting for years."

Ayers, citing NOAA estimates, said Thursday that the new rules when fully implemented mean that 110 million pounds of fish a year won't be thrown overboard. Of particular concern were the large amounts of pollock, Pacific cod, rock sole and yellowfin sole being discarded.

Two commercial fishing companies challenged the regulations last year. The Legacy Fishing Co. owned a 132-foot vessel that targeted high-quality groundfish such as rock sole, rex sole and Pacific cod and sold mostly to the Asian restaurant and sushi markets.

The Fishing Company of Alaska, based in Seattle, has six vessels that harvest Atka mackerel, yellowfin sole, rock sole and rockfish.

In the lawsuit, Legacy, which retained only 48 percent of its catch, maintained that the new regulations would force it out of business because it lacked both the storage space and the market demand for the unwanted fish.

FCA, which refused to comment Thursday, already meets the most stringent of the retention standards. However, the company was worried about the cost of enhanced monitoring and enforcement measures aboard its vessels. The measures included additional observers and flow scales for weighing fish.

The council also required that each haul of fish be weighed instead of mixing hauls on the deck and coming up with an average. It also banned the simultaneous running of two conveyer belts from the fish bin to the factory.

Ayers said the measures are designed to cut down on cheating when satisfying the increasingly strict retention standards.

FCA said it would have to cut its production in half or spend $5 million to retrofit each vessel to satisfy the standards.

While upholding the standards, the appeals court Wednesday sent the monitoring and enforcement provision back to the council for a proper review of what vessels will have to do to comply.

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