Last week, the northern rockfish fishery opened up in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. While rockfish is targeted out in Southeast Alaska, this small fishery operates differently and it’s under a somewhat new management style.

It’s only recently that northern rockfish have been treated as anything other than straight-up bycatch. Before the Amendment 80 fleet was established, catcher-processors had a set limit of how much rockfish they could take incidentally while harvesting Pacific Ocean perch or Atka mackerel.

“Anything above that amount that they caught, they would be forced to discard,” says Steve Whitney, an in-season manager for the National Marine Fisheries Service who oversees the rockfish pilot program.

That changed when the Amendment 80 program was set up in 2008, and all of the catcher-processors fishing in that region joined cooperatives.

“What industry did is they got together and agreed that no one would target northern rockfish,” says Whitney. “Under that agreement, they approached us and asked if they agreed not to fish it, if we could open it for them. That way, they wouldn’t be forced to throw all the excess bycatch overboard.”

According to Whitney, the program has been a success so far.

“These fish would have been basically wasted, and now they’re being retained and sold,” says Whitney. “Despite that, the same amount of fish that was always caught is still being caught. There’s still a constant level of bycatch.”

The total allowable catch for rockfish has been set at approximately 4,000 metric tons, with 3,400 metric tons available to harvest between July 1 and December 31. The federal government will be taking public comment on the rockfish pilot program and this opening through July 22.