SEAFOODNEWS.COM by Peggy Parker — December 23, 2014 — The latest Halibut stock numbers discussed at the IPHC meetings in December represented a potential crisis for halibut in the Bering Sea, as the directed fishery levels were too low to support the small boat fishery and keep plants operating.
As a result, at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting last week, there was a motion to ask NMFS to undertake emergency action to adjust Bering Sea Halibut bycatch, so as to allow the directed halibut fishery to economically operate. But the motion failed by a vote of 5-5. This week six members of the 11-member North Pacific Fishery Management Council, who would constitute a majority if the vote were held again, sent a letter to the agency asking for emergency relief.
The sixth Alaskan was Ed Dersham, who was absent from the meeting and the vote, undergoing a critical organ transplant. Mr. Dersham, recovering from surgery, signed the letter along the other five Alaskan Council members.
The dramatic scenario began in early December, when the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC), released preliminary “harvest advice” for the 2015 season. The bi-lateral group, made up of three Canadian commissioners and three from the U.S., manages halibut stocks from California to Alaska.
Their catch advice is based on data from annual surveys, the commercial and recreational catch, observations on bycatch from the trawler fleets, and other research. It is released for review until late January, when the annual IPHC meeting convenes for a week and the catch limits for each regulatory area between California and western Alaska are assigned.
In general (the exception being small areas throughout the range of this large flatfish), Pacific halibut stocks have been declining in both numbers and weight for several years. There is currently no evidence of strong “recruits” coming into the fishery.
But the preliminary numbers for total exploitable yield in five of the eight halibut regulatory areas increased this year. The increase was slight, but good news for the halibut fleets and commissioners who have cut annual catch limits by 30-70% in the last decade.
In fish management, the total exploitable yield is calculated first to establish what is available to remove. Before catch limits are determined, the amount of “fixed” removals – mortality from halibut bycatch in other fisheries, wastage by the commercial and recreational fleet, removals for subsistence use – are taken off the top.
When those calculations were done in early December, the remaining fisheries exploitable yield changed dramatically in the Bering Sea, where a fixed number of halibut is allowed as bycatch in the process of harvesting much larger amounts of Pacific cod and flatfish.
The bycatch caps for these species were fixed some twenty years ago and, because the P-cod and flatfish fleets are shut down when the cap is reached, efforts to avoid halibut have been employed.
But the difference in volume of each fishery is massive. Some six million pounds of halibut is taken as bycatch in the process of harvesting two billion pounds of groundfish in the Bering Sea. The total catch of halibut by the small boats that are targeting halibut in the Bering Sea was about equal to the bycatch last year.
In the Bering Sea area called Area 4CDE, actual bycatch this year was approximately 4.8 million pounds, a third of which are under 26 inches, which is sublegal size for the halibut fleet. When those removals were applied, the commercial halibut fleet – from mostly small communities that have relied on halibut for generations – stood to receive only 370,000 lbs. in the coming season, a 70% reduction from 2014.
Fisheries management is complicated with many moving parts, but most removal decisions are tied in some way to the general health of the stock. For a few reasons, that has not been the case for halibut in the Bering Sea.
The federal North Pacific Fishery Management Council and the International Pacific Halibut Commission will begin to explore ways to rectify this in February, when a joint meeting will look at sharing data to account more accurately for removals.
Meanwhile, the six Alaskans on the Council are doing all they can to provide some relief for the small boat fleet in the Bering Sea. By their calculations, if an emergency action to reduce the actual halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea by 20% can be implemented, it will justify a larger catch limit for Area 4CDE to be set by the IPHC commissioners at their January meeting.
This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.