November 30, 2018 — Managers of halibut in the Pacific Ocean are reporting another year of declining stocks in most areas of the coast. The International Pacific Halibut Commission oversees management of the fish along the coast from Alaska to California. The commission held its interim meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, November 27-28 in Seattle and heard about the latest stock assessment of the valuable flatfish.
IPHC scientists do annual survey fishing to come up with the stock assessment, along with information from commercial catches and other fisheries along the coast.
“We estimate that the stock went down until somewhere around 2010 from historical highs in the late 1990s,” said Ian Stewart a quantitative scientist with the commission. “It increased slightly over the subsequent five year period and around 2015 or 2016, the stock leveled out and has been decreasing in spawning biomass slowly since that time period.”
Spawning biomass is the estimated total weight of fish that are old enough to reproduce. The commission’s annual survey showed the numbers of halibut coast-wide dropped by six percent from year before. The estimated weight of fish legal to catch in the commercial fishery dropped by 19 percent from the year before in Southeast area 2C and three percent in 3A, the central gulf.
The commission has been expanding its survey up and down the coast. New survey points were added in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia in 2018.
Stewart told commissioners that there’s a high probability that halibut stocks will continue to drop at the current level of fishing because of less productive years for the fish between 2006 and 2010.