Pollock A season is quickly coming to an end. Crews are going home, roe has been auctioned off, and industry players are already looking ahead to what B season will bring.

As of mid-March, the fleet had taken 85 percent of their 472,000 metric ton allocation. They moved at a slightly faster pace than last year, despite having a smaller quota available. They also didn’t have too much trouble with Chinook bycatch – they’ve taken about 6,500 fish so far, and their bycatch rate is comparable to last year and well under the 62,000 fish hard cap that would shut the fishery down.

Sylvia Ettefagh is the manager of the Unalaska Fleet Cooperative, which delivers to Alyeska Seafoods. She says that this A season was a definite improvement over the last B season, when the fleet struggled with high chum bycatch and slow fishing.

“What we saw this A season, especially going into it with some of the negative expectations that people had, left us optimistic,” says Sylvia Ettefagh, manager of the Unalaska Fleet Cooperative. “It showed that the future of the pollock industry on the fisheries side, without all of the politics involved, is pretty good.”

The fleet will take the remainder of there 1.2 million metric ton quota starting on June 10.