SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — Sept. 25, 2014 — At the Groundfish Plan team meeting in Seattle this week, NOAA scientists announced that this years trawl and acoustic surveys showed the second highest pollock biomass ever recorded in the history of NOAA stock surveys. The biomass was the highest since that seen in 1982, 33 years ago.
The Scientists from NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle conducted two surveys this summer that are regularly used in stock assessment: a bottom trawl survey and an acoustic survey. The bottom-trawl survey index for pollock was the second highest biomass since this standard survey began in 1982 and is 55-percent higher than the average. This survey appears to indicate more than one strong year-class. The 2008 cohort, as seen last year with near record age 5 abundance estimates, was a major component along with the 2006 and 2010 year classes.
The acoustic-trawl survey found significant concentrations of mid-water pollock (fifth highest in the time series since 1982 and 23-percent above the average). In particular, concentrations in the southeast portion of the eastern Bering Sea were found that have been largely absent since 2004. Also noteworthy was the large number of observations of 2 year-old pollock.
“This survey provides an important index of pre-recruit pollock,” said Jim Ianelli, NOAA’s chief pollock stock assessment scientist at the AFSC. “If the 2012 year class continues to remain strong, conditions bode well for the ecosystem and fishery in the near term.” Ianelli notes that conditions this summer were warmer than average, which may play a role in future recruitment and may affect concentrations and the distribution of pollock.
However, due to the conservative management strategy in place in the North Pacific, the big increase in biomass is not likely to lead to significant changes in the TAC or total allowable catch. The reason is that the N. Pacific Council operates with a 2 million metric ton cap for groundfish fisheries. This means that the total harvest of all species – pollock, cod, flatfish, and many minor species, must not exceed 2 million tons.
Because of the American Fisheries Act, the pollock fishery is allocated to co-ops where each company or vessel gets a specific share of the harvest. In return, these vessels cannot fish in other fisheries, and vessels fishing cod or flatfish cannot fish for pollock.
In recent years this has meant negotiations around harvest limits between the various fleets, as total sustainable levels of harvest have been consistently above 2 million tons. The Pollock fishery in the Bering sea has generally been around 1.3 million tons, or 70% of the total harvest.
This is reflected in this years catch statistics. Through mid-September, the cumulative catch reports for all Bering Sea groundfish reported by NOAA, totalling around 1.5 million tons, is 74% pollock, 11% cod, and 10% flatifsh.
In order for the pollock harvest to increase, fisheries on cod or flatfish would have to make room, and this is unlikely to happen as these fisheries are also healthy, and flatfish especially, is harvested at a level well below what it could sustainably support.
So in our view, this good news about the pollock fishery represents a continued vindication of the fisheries management strategies of Alaska and the North Pacific Council, and calls into question the judgement of those NGO's who have consistently claimed the pollock fishery was either unsustainable, or leading to depletion of forage fish for other fish species and marine mammals.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.