Council Unanimous on West Coast IFQs

The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted unanimously at its meeting in San Diego on Friday to give individual fishing quotas (IFQs) to commercial fishermen from Morro Bay, Calif., to Washington's Puget Sound.

Beginning in 2011, the IFQs will allow fishermen to fish when they want for their share of the overall quota. The new system is expected to prevent overfishing, increase boat prices and reduce bycatch. West Coast groundfish species include whiting, sole and black cod, among others.

West Coast processors, which worked under the group Coastal Jobs Coalition (CJC), had argued processors should be included in the estimated 100,000-ton quota allocation. However, the council voted to give fishermen the entire non-whiting part of the fishery to fishermen, and processors were given 20 percent of the whiting quota.

CJC last week claimed that Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) of New York had admitted to offering payment to current and former elected officials from Oregon to attend the meeting and testify against them.

CJC demanded EDF reveal who they have paid and how much to testify and travel to the Council's meeting in San Diego. EDF, which says most fishermen and environmental groups oppose allocating groundfish resources to processors, strongly denied the claims.

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