The Alaska Board of Fisheries begins its round of winter meetings in just over a month with a session in Anchorage Oct. 14-15 at the Howard Johnson hotel. On the agenda for the first meeting are proposals for trawling in state waters in the Cook Inlet and Adak areas.

The six proposals on the agenda include a series of changes aimed at increasing opportunity for the smaller boat fleet, including one that would establish a state-waters (inside 3 miles) pollock fishery with a 60-foot vessel size limit, create a 60-foot vessel size limit for state-water cod fishing with pots west of 170 degrees longitude (waters around Adak), and a 125-foot vessel size limit for state-water cod fishing with trawls in those waters.

Also on the agenda is a proposal to allow pollock fishing with trawls in Cook Inlet waters near Seward, waters that are currently closed due to their proximity to Stellar sea lion haul-outs. The proposal would allow trawling within 3 miles of the Rugged Island, Chiswell Island, and Seal Rocks haul-outs. Currently trawling is prohibited within a 20-mile radius of all Stellar sea lion haul-outs.

The proposal states that a historic pollock fishery occurred in state waters in and around Resurrection Bay prior to fishing closures resulting from the 2001 Biological Opinion, designed to protect Stellar sea lions within critical habitat in the Cook Inlet management area. It says that the average harvest from the affected area of 2,000 metric tons from 1996 to 1999 represents lost local opportunity to harvesters and processors, particularly in Seward.

According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game management biologist Charlie Trowbridge, the proposal has been kicking around for a few years but has not received much attention from industry. He also said that it is a troublesome proposal to try to push through at this time, while the National Marine Fisheries Service is working on a new Biological Opinion.

“There are controversial elements here related to protected species,” Trowbridge said.

The Board of Fisheries meeting will be preceded by a work session Oct. 12-13. Public comment deadline is Sept. 29. Proposals can be viewed and comments made at the BOF Web site, www.boards.adfg.state.ak.us/ fishinfo/index.php.

NOAA Fisheries scientists are using a gentler and more efficient way to capture salmon at sea for tagging and release — a live box. Scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Auke Bay Laboratory tried the new gear on the NOAA ship Miller Freeman in July while tagging fish for the Bering-Aleutian Salmon International Survey (BASIS).

Before using a live-box, BASIS researchers caught salmon with sport fish or other surface gear, slowly, one fish at a time. “We designed the live-box large enough to easily capture a hundred salmon at a time,” NOAA Fisheries research biologist Jim Murphy said in a press statement. The live-box is Murphy’s modification of smaller live boxes used with trawls in juvenile Atlantic salmon research in the eastern United States and Norway.

A live-box is an aluminum box that is attached to the “cod end” of a trawl net. “When fish tire inside the trawl, they are herded into the cod-end where turbulence and abrasion can cause significant post-capture mortality due to stress and loss of scales. The live-box retains salmon in a calm environment, reducing capture stress and scale loss. The live-box also protects the salmon when the trawl is brought on-board by keeping them in water until they can be tagged and released,” explained Murphy.

“Scales and the outer mucus layer provide an important protective barrier in salmon, much the same way our skin provides protection against infection. Salmon with significant net abrasion and scale loss are not expected to survive,” Murphy said.

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. She can be reached at cristy-fry@excite.com.