The Boat Company, a non-profit educational organization that
provides luxury eco-cruises throughout Southeast Alaska, filed a complaint in
US District Court in Alaska this past week over the new observer program.
The Boat Company is asking the court to remand the final
rule on the observer program back to the National Marine Fisheries Service to
develop a monitoring program that ensures that NMFS had adequate data regarding
the discard of halibut, salmon and other species valuable to commercial, sport
and subsistence harvesters.
The Boat Company’s attorney, Paul Olson, said there are
serious concerns about the level of discard that results from deployment of
non-selective trawl gear in federal fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska.
Without adequate data, fishery managers will not be able to
make scientifically sound decisions to arrest substantial declines in king
salmon and halibut populations that inhabit or migrate through the Gulf of
Alaska, he said.
“The Boat Company,” said the 29-page complaint, “is injured
when fish populations that are targeted by recreational fishermen are depleted
to a level that the allowable recreational catch of such fish is reduced, as
has happened here.”
Olson said he expects it will be a month or so before he
gets a response from NMFS, and then it will take a few months to see how the
case will proceed.
NMFS published a final rule in November implementing changes
to its observer program, which went into effect Jan. 1.
Olson said cost is a big issue and there is a need for a
cost efficient program for monitoring systems appropriate to different scales
of vessels.