According to Manny Soares with DEC, the change has been needed ever since the last revision of the seafood processing regulations several years ago that included an exception for fishing boats allowing fish to be gilled and gutted if necessary to preserve the product on extended trips. However, the rule didn’t work quite the way DEC had planned, according to Soares.
“The way it’s worded, and the way people have interpreted it, they’ve done it any time, for any purpose,” he said. “And granted, it definitely is better for the fish if you can gill and gut it, but it becomes questionable whether it’s beneficial if you don’t do it under sanitary conditions.”
A key part of providing sanitary conditions is to gut the fish on a hard surface.
“What we were looking for was that vessels have a cleanable surface,” Soares explained, “whether it’s a cutting board or a trough made out of cleanable surface. It could be plastic cutting board material like the processors use, or it could be something made out of aluminum or stainless steel, or made out of fiberglass, so long as it’s a smooth, impervious surface and easily cleanable.”
What that means to most halibut fishermen is no more coco-mats, the pads made of coconut fiber that nearly all fishermen use as a gutting surface. The fibers help keep the fish from sliding around on a rolling boat.
“The coco-mats that are commonly used by most vessels are not a cleanable surface,” Soares said. “Another problem with coco-mats, you may have even seen it down in the Homer Harbor when some of these boats come in, and they’ve got a line hung down in the harbor, and here’s the coco-mats suspended in the harbor. And of course I’m sure you know what harbor water is: some of the grossest, most polluted waters you’d ever want.”
The proposed regulations include other provisions as well, Soares said.
“The other thing was to have the cutting surface covered, protected from overhead, so that you don’t have bird feces coming down onto the fish or the cutting surface, introducing that bacteria into the actual flesh of the fish. Obviously we don’t want it on the round fish, either, but it’s much worse if it gets onto the actual tissue of the fish.”
Another issue is using clean water for washing the fish and the cleaning surface. Boats must have a means of containing their sewage so that they are not discharging raw sewage while they are taking up water to wash down the product, Soares said.
The original regulation proposal also included a requirement to hold the fish in the round if the boat was going to be gone less than three days, but Soares said that the department is moving away from that and just spelling out the conditions that would be needed to gill and gut.
Enforcement of the new regulations, if they are passed, will mostly be on the honor system, according to Soares.
“We won’t be doing routine inspections,” he said. “It would be by complaint. If we got a complaint that such and such a boat had unsanitary conditions on their vessel and was gilling and gutting, then we would check on that.”
Soares wouldn’t speculate on whether anyone had ever gotten sick from eating halibut that had been mishandled on a boat.
“We don’t have any direct reports,” he said, “but once people get sick from having a meal out, it’s very difficult to pin down exactly what it was in that meal that made them sick. A lot of times, if it’s widespread you can pin it down, but one or two illnesses, then no. In fact, a majority of food-borne illnesses go unreported.”
The comment period for the proposal closed March 2, and Soares explained what happens next.
“The status right now is that we’ve gotten the comments, we’re in the process of reviewing the comments, and then the decision will be made on what the department wants to do on each section of the proposed regulations,” Soares said.
The Washington Sea Grant program has issued a 28-page report on seabird avoidance measures for small boats fishing with longline gear in Alaska.
Produced in cooperation with the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Associ-ation, Cordova District Fisheries United, Petersburg Vessel Owner’s Association, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the booklet outlines recommendations for a variety of vessel and gear types to reduce the killing of seabirds when setting longline gear.
The report states that seabird mortality is a worldwide marine conservation problem. While no comprehensive estimates of the total take of seabirds are available, hundreds of thousands of seabirds probably are taken annually by longline vessels around the world. Because seabirds are long-lived species with delayed maturity and limited reproductive capability, they are highly vulnerable to adult mortality. Even low levels of adult mortality can halt population growth or cause decline, according to studies cited in the report.
The North Pacific Fisheries Manage-ment Council has issued regulations for Alaska longliners to help prevent the taking of seabirds. The regulations call for vessels to deploy a streamer line, also called a tory line, while setting gear in order to scare birds away from the baited hooks. They also recommend snapping weights onto the groundline to help it sink out of range of the birds more quickly.
The Sea Grant booklet contains finalized regulations as well as diagrams for properly deploying tory lines and using skate weights. It is highly recommended reading for all longliners. It can be viewed online at www.wsg.washington.edu/, or contact the Washington Sea Grant program for a copy by mail at (206) 543-6600.
Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She also designs and builds gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and gillnets salmon in upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist.
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