Last month\u2019s virtual meeting of the\u00a0Western Pacific Fishery Management Council brought few surprises, but the council did take two votes that should reduce the impact of longline\u00a0fisheries on protected species. It:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Voted to recommend a change in fishing rules for the deep-set (tuna-targeting) longline fishery, requiring the use of monofilament leaders instead of wire\u00a0leaders. The leader is the short length of line that dangles from the branch line to the hook. The change is expected\u00a0to reduce the fishery\u2019s catch of oceanic\u00a0whitetip sharks, a species federally listed as threatened; and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Gave preliminary approval to the use of tori lines to discourage seabirds from interfering with the setting and haul of longlines. A tori line is a rope hung with streamers that is deployed from a fishing vessel as baited lines are set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Monofilament Leaders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The switch to monofilament line was\u00a0proposed by the Hawai\u2018i Longline Association (HLA) last year. The organization, which represents most of the 146\u00a0or so permitted longline fishing vessels\u00a0in Hawai\u2018i, announced that by July 1, its members would convert from wire\u00a0leaders to monofilament to reduce the catch of oceanic whitetip sharks, which are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Each year, about 1,700 oceanic whitetip sharks are caught by the longliners; none is retained. The switch should allow the sharks, and perhaps other protected species as well, to bite through the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to HLA and Wespac, the wire leaders had been preferred over monofilament line, since they reduced the chance that the weighted branch lines could fly back and injure crew during hauling operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to requiring the use of\u00a0monofilament leaders in the deep-set longline fishery, the council recommendation to the National Marine Fisheries\u00a0Service, the agency that has final say over fisheries regulation, that it require clipping the\u00a0line close to the hooked animal in order to minimize trailing gear, which can impair the released animal\u2019s chance of long- term survival. This proposed rule would apply not just to the deep-set longliners,\u00a0but also to the shallow-set fishery as well, which targets swordfish. That fishery already uses monofilament leaders, so\u00a0the council opted not to include it in\u00a0the monofilament requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to developing gear that\u00a0will facilitate the switch to monofilament line, HLA executive director Eirc Kingma stated in written testimony, the organization is \u201cdeveloping crew training materials and a crew-dedicated web portal. Crew will login to a page on HLA\u2019s website and receive training on oceanic whitetip shark (OCS) handling and safety protocols as well as other information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In developing alternatives for council consideration, the staff included the option of removing shallow hooks from each \u201cbasket\u201d \u2013 the section of longline\u00a0extending between floats. About 40 percent of the oceanic whitetip sharks are caught on the three shallowest hooks on either end of the \u201cbasket\u201d (which consists of about two dozen hooks between\u00a0floats). But the council rejected this\u00a0option. In addition to catching sharks, these relatively shallow hooks also catch economically valuable species such as mahimahi, opah, and ono. The HLA has argued that this option would cost\u00a0the deep-set longline fleet more than $11\u00a0million a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brettny Hardy, an attorney with\u00a0Earthjustice, testified on behalf of the\u00a0Conservation Council for Hawai\u2018i and Moana Ohana, an ocean-oriented\u00a0nonprofit based in Kona. The groups\u00a0supported the requirement for monofilament leaders and removal of trailinggear, she said, but also strongly favored removal of the shallow hooks on either side of the basket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the final vote on the matter, the council approved just the monofilament and gear removal requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to needing to mitigate catches of the oceanic whitetip shark, the council was also required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. fisheries, to address catches of the silky shark, which is subject to overfishing in the western Pacific. The councildetermined that the same measures that it has recommended to reduce the catch of oceanic whitetip shark would also reduce the catch of silky shark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tori Lines<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For many years, tori lines have been used\u00a0by foreign fleets to discourage seabirds\u00a0from taking bait off the longlines as they are being set. While the council has had discussions over the years about requiring longliners to deploy tori lines, the council never fully embraced the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, though, increases in the bycatch of blackfooted albatrosses by longliners have prompted the HLA, the\u00a0council, the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, and NMFS to take another look at the technique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asuka Ishizaki, the council\u2019s endangered species specialist, outlined a possible regulatory approach to tori lines, requiring the attached streamers to be a minimum of 30 centimeters long and less than 1 meter apart. In addition to what might be required by rule, she proposed non-regulatory measures that\u00a0would give flexibility to vessel owners as\u00a0to the exact way in which the streamers are to be set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The council voted to approve Ishizaki\u2019s approach. Final action to forward a rule to NMFS will likely take place at a future meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BiOp Involvement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A long-standing complaint of council executive director Kitty Simonds has been that the council is not made party to early drafts of biological opinions prepared by\u00a0NMFS that describe impacts of fishing\u00a0on endangered species or other animals that enjoy federal protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the May meeting of the Council Coordination Committee \u2013 consisting of directors from all eight fishery\u00a0management councils plus selected staff and consultants \u2013 the group endorsed \u201cstrengthened relations between NMFS and councils on ESA [Endangered Species Act] consultations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under current policy, the council is given no special consideration, being allowed to comment on proposed biological opinions at the same time that they are made available for comment from the general public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simonds told the council that Sam Rauch, NMFS deputy assistant administrator for regulatory programs, had indicated he was open to this increased collaboration with councils in develop- ing BiOps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mike Tosatto, head of NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office, replied that\u00a0while Rauch had committed to reviewing the policy, \u201cthere are some core tenets\u201d that can\u2019t be changed. \u201cWe must have heard some different things out of Sam,\u201d Tosatto added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tosatto said he regretted what had been done with the BiOp for the shallow-\u00a0set longline fishery years ago, when the\u00a0council was allowed input in advance of the draft becoming public. \u201cWhat we did with shallow-set was wrong … I made that error. I won\u2019t make it again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In reply, Simonds noted how, in the past, when the council was denied an advance look at a BiOp, it did an end run around NMFS by getting it from HLA, which, thanks to litigation, had been offered an opportunity for input at an early stage of development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month’s virtual meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council brought few surprises, but the council did take two votes that should reduce the impact of longline fisheries on protected species. It: • Voted to recommend a change in fishing rules … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8,485],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-13711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-endangered-species","category-fisheries","category-july-2021","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}