Hawaii Longliners Return to Fishing for Bigeye Tuna
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by Susan Chambers - October 7, 2016
Hawaii longliners can return to fishing for bigeye tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The National Marine Fisheries Service re-opened the fishery on Oct. 4.
NMFS closed the fishery in July, anticipating the 500 mt catch limit, established by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Association, would be attained. However, only half of it had actually been caught.
Bigeye catch in the EPO in previous years had been high and attained early, Hawaii Longline Association President Sean Martin said in an email, so NMFS proceeded to close the fishery to vessels greater than 24 meters, about 79 feet, out of an abundance of caution. The agency relied on landings, logbook data supplied by captains and other available data to make the closure.
An agreement between the HLA and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) would have allowed some of those longliners to fish for bigeye in the CNMI area, the western and central Pacific (west of 150 degrees west longitude), but it hadn’t been approved by July. The arrangement permits the HLA...
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