Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Rich
Did you know that bycatch shoveled over the side is considered "released alive " ??!!
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In the case of fluke, don't think they are. Believe they assign a 90% discard mortality rate. The problem is the amount of discards is hugely under reported by operators on their VTR's. Honor system, fox guarding the hen house type situation.
In the below chart, the black lines are discards reported by federal observers, blue lines are discards reported on same trips by operators. The differences are in some cases over 100% which means the commercial quota is essentially being doubled but not reported and reduced from their harvest quotas. Believe this was from the 2017 stock assessment and when I brought it to the attention of NMFS, ASMFC and MAFMC, they removed the chart from all subsequent stock assessments.
