December 11, 2o23 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees the quota of the Alaskan pollock industry, decided to maintain the same quota for the species in 2024 at its recent meeting on 9 December – despite industry calls for a higher catch.
The council’s latest meeting decided that the total allowable catch (TAC) of pollock for the Eastern Bering Sea would be 1.3 million metric tons (MT), the same quota that it had last year. The flat quota is in spite of increases in biomass, which has increased the allowable biological catch (ABC) to 2.31 million MT – up from 1.9 million MT last year.