Unalaska, AK – Alyeska's pollock A' season is starting with a new approach to fishing. The pollock fleet is participating in the Salmon Savings Incentive Plan (SSIP) pilot program, one of the plans the industry is putting into place to reduce Chinook salmon bycatch.

Next year a new regulation will go into play that limits the industry's salmon bycatch to 60,000 fish, though they should aim for no more than 47,000. If a boat gets more than its bycatch allotment and cannot get more from another boat, then it has to stop fishing. One plan to keep fishermen below even their allotted number is the SSIP. For approximately every two salmon they do not catch this year, they have an extra in the bank for next year in case of emergency. Alyeska fleet manager Sylvia Ettefagh said her fleet has always tried to avoid bycatch, but they are testing the program this year to get ahead for next year when the rules go into effect.

"My co-op has always been instrumental, at the leading edge of using excluders, gear to get out of salmon, to think about how to stay out of salmon, and make those choices. But occasionally something happens. Just like you have a savings account in the bank for those rainy days, when something happens, that's what we have."

The fishermen are given reports after each delivery to help them keep track. "And in the information sheet they get, they also get how many salmon they've caught, how many they have remaining, and based on how many they have remaining, how many would go into their salmon savings accounts," she explained.

Ettefagh said her co-op is already out fishing this season, unlike other boats, and is striving to keep bycatch low.

"For example, in the tier system, we're a tier one co-op, which means we're not closed out of the rolling hot spot closures. But my boats still stay out of them. They might dip into the corner so they aren't within an inter co-op violation, but we don't automatically say, Oh we're tier one so it doesn't matter; we're gonna go fish wherever we want to fish anyhow.' We still honor that an area is closed because there are salmon there."

However, in all areas of the fishing grounds so far, the fleet is just scratching. She said her boats are burning a lot of fuel looking for any fish and aren't bringing back full loads, but she did not want to risk waiting until the entire fleet was trying for the same pot of fish late in the season.

The pollock season officially started on January 20. This year's quota is 813,000 metric tons of pollock - the lowest it has been in over 20 years.