After one year of federal observation, results indicate the Kodiak set gillnet fishery will probably stay in Category II, Bryan Belay, field manager for the Alaska Marine Mammal Observer Program, confirmed at a ComFish seminal Friday.

A similar but smaller gillnet fishery in Cook Inlet was reclassified as category III after observers documented no mortality to marine mammals from interactions in 1999 and 2000.

A Category III fishery has only “a remote likelihood of, or no known incidental mortality or serious injury to marine mammals,” according to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

A Category II fishery, on the other hand, is one that is expected to have “occasional, incidental mortality and serious injury to marine mammals.”

Kodiak gillnetters were hoping for reclassification after observation, but even one mortality can move a fishery into Category II.

The Kodiak set gillnet fishery is much larger than the Cook Inlet fishery, Belay explained. The observations from the first year of the Kodiak set gillnet fishery are more like those from the Cook Inlet driftnet fishery after the first year, Belay said.

Typically, 100 permit holders fish in the Northwest Kodiak District from Spruce Island to the south side of Uyak Bay. The Alitak Bay District, which includes Olga, Inner Moser and Outer Moser Bay has about 70 permit holders, according to the Kodiak Island Bycatch Report 2002. For observation purposes, the south-end gillnetters did not fish in 2002.

Last season, observers in the Northwest Kodiak District documented four otters entangled in gillnet web. All were released unharmed. Observers recorded two harbor porpoises in the same district caught in gillnet web; both were dead when found.

All bird interactions were also recorded in 2002. Observers documented 35 birds entangled in nets with three released alive. The species most impacted was the common murre.

In addition to raw data, the small-boat bycatch report projects a broad estimate of bycatch for each species along with the standard of error and the approximate confidence interval. Projections are for the whole fishery.

AMMOP will conclude its first, two-year cycle of observation for the Kodiak set gillnet fishery in August.