Conservation groups intervened in a lawsuit filed by the bottom trawlers to defend the federal bycatch regulation. The conservation groups told the court that the federal government is right to mandate a decrease in the amount of fish bottom trawlers are currently throwing overboard.  

The boats are discarding fish deemed uneconomic due to wrong sex, size or species.  Hundreds of millions of pounds of wasted fish and other marine life are thrown over the side of bottom trawl vessels every year.  The trawlers typically fish for rock sole, yellowfin sole, flathead sole and Atka mackerel and dump more bycatch overboard than any other segment of the North Pacific groundfish fishery.

On May 5, 2006, two commercial fishing companies, the Legacy Fishing Company and the Fishing Company of Alaska filed the suit in the District of Columbia District Court to overturn Amendment 79 and its implementing regulations. The companies are based in Washington state but fish in the federal waters off Alaska. They claim that the bycatch reduction measures would be too costly.  

In response to the suit, Oceana and the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, with legal representation from Earthjustice, joined the federal government in defending Amendment 79.

Trawler bycatch has become an issue in the charter halibut management battle, with some charter owners questioning why trawlers are allowed to throw overboard dead more halibut than is allocated to sport fishermen.

Trawler bycatch is also an issue in the Area M salmon fishery, where a cap on the amount of chum salmon caught by seiners and setnetters can shut down the lucrative June sockeye salmon fishery in an effort to protect weak chum runs in the Yukon/Kuskokwim Rivers.

The incidental catch of chinook and chum salmon in the Bering Sea trawl fisheries has been on a steep rise the past few years, reaching an all time high of 62,493 chinook and 465,650 chum salmon in 2004. It is not known how many of those fish are bound for the Y/K system.

“The reality that hundreds of millions of pounds of wasted fish and other marine life are thrown over the side of bottom trawl vessels every year is completely unacceptable to most Alaskans.  Management measures that set at least a minimum standard for reducing excessive waste in the Bering Sea fleet are long overdue,” said Dorothy Childers, program director for the community-based Alaska Marine Conservation Council.

Gov. Sarah Palin has joined the call for slowing down or stopping offshore aquaculture in federal waters (beyond 3 miles).

Palin outlined several specific concerns that she has, based on extensive public comment from Alaskans in recent years, including marketplace confusion about Alaska’s healthy, wild seafood resulting in lost fisheries value; disease and parasite transmission; escapes/releases leading to potential colonization and genetic impacts; and environmental effects.

She has asked Alaska’s congressional delegation to include provisions in the Aquaculture Act to prevent potential damage to the state’s fisheries. The Palin administration is requesting that the legislation include a five-year moratorium on new offshore aquaculture development until environmental and socio-economic impacts are adequately evaluated.