A U.S. federal court ruling has halted a lucrative troll fishery off Alaska’s coast, saying the permits enabling the fishery did not properly protect the endangered southern resident killer whale population.
“It’s a welcomed decision that is long overdue,” said Misty MacDuffee, wild salmon program director at Raincoast Conservation Foundation, a Canadian research and advocacy non-profit. She said the ruling would hopefully help rebuild and recover Canadian threatened and endangered chinook populations by allowing the migrating populations to reach their spawning grounds. “The proper thing to do is let those fish spawn.”and the Alaska Trollers Association announced in separate news releases plans to appeal the ruling.
“Any chinook not caught in southeast must travel some 700 miles [1,125 kilometres] past Canadian commercial and recreational fisheries, tribal fisheries, northern resident killer whale and steller sea lions, which are also predators of large chinook, and southern U.S. fisheries to reach the southern resident killer whale,” Mr. Vincent-Lang said in the release.