Pay Doubled For U.S. On Board Fishery Observers ff

Workers who spend two months with individual boats are the best way to track fisheries’ health, ocean advocates and fishermen say.
 
U.S. Congress on Friday doubled the amount spent to put observers on fishing boats to monitor the catch, a move hailed by activists as a significant step toward improved management of the nation's fisheries.

The money isn't much; Congress set aside $29 million instead of $14 million. But ocean advocates and many fishermen consider such monitoring perhaps the single most effective way to both gauge the amount of unwanted fish taken with each legal catch and to stem illegal hauls.
 
“Surely, if we can go to Mars, then we can count our fish,” said Bianca DeLille, spokeswoman for Oceana, an international nonprofit group. “This doesn't bring us to the right level, but it's a big jump.”
 
Observers are typically placed on a small fraction of a fishery's boats and provide crucial information to state and federal managers on “bycatch” -- fish that cannot be legally landed yet end up in the net anyway. Such fish, often dead or dying, get shovelled overboard, but government biologists tracking landings have no way to establish how many.

Previous studies estimated bycatch at 16 or 17 percent of the total catch. A year's worth of observers' data off the California coast, however, suggests the actual number is higher, though just how much higher remains to be seen, said Tom Barnes, a senior biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

“This will help refine management decisions quite a bit,” he said. “It will be based on real information instead of old studies that may not have been that accurate to begin with.”
 
The National Marine Fisheries Service sets the standards for observers, who are then assigned randomly for two-month stays to vessels seeking groundfish such as snapper, halibut and shrimps.

In California, depending on the fishery, between 5 percent and 20 percent of the boats have an observer, according to the state Department of Fish and Game.  Of the extra $14.6 million Congress gave for the observers program, $9.5 million went to the New England groundfish fishery, which has never had a budget line item before.

West Coast fisheries saw an increase from $3.7 million to $5 million next year, while $3.8 million went to a national effort to reduce bycatch.
 
“You hear about fishermen not wanting observers, but there are an equal amount of fishermen who do want observers, because they give independent verification of what fishermen are saying,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. “It helps to have someone on board.”