Pacific Fishery Management Council Archives - Page 29 of 38

CALIFORNIA: San Pedro Fishermen Help Add to Sardine Stock Assessments

April 9, 2019 — Based out of San Pedro harbor, Nick Juril got his first fishing boat in 1982 and has been making a living ever since with a variety of catches including squid, mackerel, and sardines.

“I grew up with the fishery,” said Juril on the deck of his current boat, Eileen. “[It] goes back to my dad’s childhood. There’s still a handful of us left and we’re still, you know, hanging on. It would be a shame to see it go away.”

Sardine stock assessments are based primarily on acoustic trawl surveys conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to the administration, the sardine biomass has fallen short of the 150,000 metric ton threshold needed for commercial fishing to commence. Therefore, the Fisheries Management Council has prohibited a directed sardine fishery since 2015 to allow for stocks to bounce back.

“In 2014/2015 we weren’t seeing a lot. But since the water kind of changed, the water warmed up a little bit, there’s a lot of sardines around right now,” explained Juril. “So, we’re hanging on, but not having the sardines has been really, really tough.”

Joe Ferrigno, one of Juril’s neighboring fishermen, says the loss of the sardine catch has taken as much as half of his business away.

“There was some years we fish sardines all year long,” said Ferrigno. “Now, we go farther, and we work a lot harder to try to catch a little bit of squid to make up for it.”

Read the full story at Spectrum News

After bouncing back in numbers, groundfish trying to regain popularity

April 5, 2019 — On Pier 47, fishermen from the sustainable fishing company Pioneer Seafoods haul in their catch. In large blue bins, they unload thousands of pounds of groundfish — seafood that hasn’t been seen on San Francisco’s docks in these numbers since the 1990s.

Groundfish may not sound appealing, but for years they were the bread and butter of many coastal towns. These bottom-feeders encompass over 90 fish species, including cod, sole, rockfish and flounder.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, groundfish were in high demand. At its peak, the West Coast groundfish fishery was worth around $50 million, according to the Pacific Fishery Management Council. But with the over-expansion of fishing fleets and a lack of conservation efforts, their numbers started to dwindle. By 2000, 10 of the most popular species were completely overfished, leading to a huge slash in revenue and the eventual collapse of the groundfish fishery. The federal government declared it an economic disaster.

Today, with the help of annual catch limits and a better understanding of groundfish biology, the fish are flourishing once again. But consumer demand for groundfish is struggling to catch up. Fishermen and local organizations alike are working to market these fish as a sustainable and tasty option for restaurant menus and family meals.

Read the full story at The Mercury News

CALIFORNIA: Dramatic sardine population decline means likely West Coast fishing ban

March 27, 2019 — There won’t be any boats pulling bulging nets of fresh sardines out of the ocean along the West Coast this year after another dramatic decline in population virtually guarantees a ban on the commercial take of the tiny schooling fish.

The northern Pacific sardine population, stretching from Mexico to British Columbia, has plummeted 98.5 percent since 2006, according to a draft stock assessment released this week by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

It means regulators have no choice but to ban sardine fishing for the fifth straight year starting July 1 from Mexico to the Canadian border.

“We’ve been urging for an overhaul to the way sardine are managed for the last seven years,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist with Oceana, an ocean conservation advocacy group. “It is critical to hold fishery managers accountable for exacerbating this modern-day sardine collapse and seek management changes to use best available science to learn from our mistakes.”

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle

Fisheries Managers Face Mixed Forecast For Northwest Salmon, Concerns Over Endangered Orca

March 12, 2019 — About this time every year, the Pacific Northwest gets a report card from the natural world. It comes in the form of salmon run forecasts and gives us an indication of how healthy the Pacific Ocean and our rivers and streams are.

The grades are in, and here’s what you need to know about our scores.

How’d we do this year?

It’s definitely looking like we’re in for a “there’s room for improvement” kind of year.

Every spring, a group called the Pacific Fishery Management Council gets together and look at the salmon forecasts from the Puget Sound all the way down to the Sacramento River in California. They use this data to decide at a week-long meeting in April what overall catch limits will be. This catch allowance is then split between commercial, recreational and tribal fishermen in the Pacific Northwest. The goal is to make sure we don’t catch more salmon than the numbers can actually support.

Read the full story at KLCC

Feds could restrict Pacific Ocean fishing over endangered orcas, NOAA letter says

March 8, 2019 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is taking a fresh look at whether new fishing restrictions are needed to help prevent the extinction of endangered southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.

New evidence about the fish the whales depend on and the risk posed to orcas by depleted prey has caused the agency to write a letter of guidance to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, indicating the agency is examining whether new restrictions are needed — particularly on fisheries in the Lower Columbia and Sacramento River and on fall-run chinook salmon in the Klamath River.

NOAA in 2009 concluded fisheries did not jeopardize the survival and recovery of killer whales.

But since then, “a substantial amount of new information is available on SRKW (southern resident killer whale) and their prey,” and has the agency wanting to take another look at fishing, Barry Thom, regional administrator for NOAA’s West Coast region, wrote to Phil Anderson, chairman of the council, on Wednesday.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

West Coast Trawlers see Highest Groundfish Landings Since 2000 with Rockfish Resurgence

February 13, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Call it a rockfish resurgence — West Coast trawlers and processors are seeing the highest landings in groundfish since 2000, thanks in part to an ongoing exempted fishing permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service. At the same time, rockfish stocks are growing.

The EFP has allowed West Coast trawl fishermen to test changes in the fishery that increased their catch by more than 14 million pounds of fish in 2018, an increase of 300 percent from 2017.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issues EFPs exempting vessels from certain regulations on a trial basis to promote new gear types or methods, and allow industry to work cooperatively with the government and contribute to the scientific knowledge of the fishery and potential changes in regulations. Participating fishermen are able to harvest millions of pounds of abundant rockfish, allowing processors to stock retail markets and provide consumers with fresh, sustainable product – all with minimal bycatch of vulnerable species. Fishing under the EFP brought in roughly $5.5 million in additional revenue in 2018, according to National Marine Fisheries Service statistics.

The EFP program built on success from a similar permit in 2017, and the industry is off to a running start with this year’s EFP: More than 1 million pounds of groundfish have been landed under the EFP in January. Last year, 2018, the industry had the highest non-whiting groundfish landings since 2000, when several species were listed as overfished.

The EFPs follow the 2011 implementation of a catch share program for the West Coast groundfish fishery that substantially reduced discards of fish. Catch limits for several rockfish species have also increased dramatically as stocks listed as overfished have rebuilt. The industry tried for years to get archaic pre-catch shares trawl regulations abolished since fishermen were independently accountable for their catch and bycatch under the quota program. Finally, in 2016, the Pacific Fishery Management Council and NMFS worked with industry to identify trawl gear regulations that were obsolete.

The seafood industry was anxious to remove gear restrictions as the health of groundfish stocks improved, and because it would help assess potential impacts to salmon and other protected species. Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association; Brad Pettinger, former director of the Oregon Trawl Commission; Shems Jud, Pacific regional director, oceans program, Environmental Defense Fund; and Mike Okoniewski of Pacific Seafood; first applied for the EFP in 2016.

“We were eager for groundfish vessels to take advantage of healthy stocks and high quotas as quickly as possible while being sensitive to the need to minimize interactions with salmon and other protected species; NMFS stepped up and helped us design this EFP to provide fishing opportunities and collect important information the agency needed,” Steele, also the EFP coordinator, said.

NMFS was amenable to developing an EFP that would allow the industry to catch more fish while also providing insight into how regulatory changes would actually work with a subset of vessels before they were implemented throughout the entire fishery. NOAA Fisheries used data gathered from the 2017 and 2018 EFPs to permanently revise the trawl gear regulations for the start of the 2019 fishing year.

“The EFP provided the fishing community the flexibility to benefit from the rebound in many West Coast rockfish stocks, while continuing to protect those stocks and other vulnerable species such as salmon that need it,” said Ryan Wulff, Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries in NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “The results were just as we hoped: a more productive fishery, increased revenue, and improved regulatory flexibility for the fleet.”

Now, with the third year of the EFP program just getting under way, more than a dozen groundfish fishermen are filling their fish holds, processors are hiring workers and the government is getting much-needed information about the impacts of adjusting gear regulations. While the seafood industry worked hard to regain its foothold in markets and provide the public with fresh West Coast rockfish on menus and in stores, it was possible only because NMFS worked with industry to issue the EFPs. It’s a win-win-win-win. And based on the EFP results thus far, the future is looking bright for the groundfish fishery, the EFP applicants said in a press release.

“This EFP has been a remarkable success – millions of pounds of sustainable rockfish landed with almost no bycatch,” Jud said. “NMFS’ recent adoption of changes to trawl gear regulations will enshrine some of the benefits of the EFP, securing greater revenue for fishermen and processors and more abundant rockfish on menus and in seafood markets for consumers to enjoy.”

Of course, big projects like this one aren’t done in a vacuum. The applicants credit both NMFS and the West Coast lawmakers for getting the EFP approved.

“This EFP shows the value of diverse collaboration for solving complex issues,” Okoniewski said. “The genesis for the EFP originated in a conversation among [NMFS West Coast Regional Administrator] Barry Thom, Shems Jud, and me. Brad [Pettinger] became the data expert and adviser. The professional construction of the EFP itself was done by Lori who drove it across the finish line.”

The support of 13 lawmakers was instrumental in getting the project started. Reps. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.; Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash.; Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.; Jared Huffman, D-Calif.; Derek Kilmer, D-Wash.; Denny Heck, D-Wash.; Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore; and Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., all signed a letter supporting the trawl gear changes.

“This EFP is a collaborative success amongst processors, fishermen, an ENGO and National Marine Fisheries Service that added millions to our fishermen’s incomes, created processor jobs, and brought a great U.S. seafood item to the American consumer,” Okoniewski said.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Seafood Industry Harvests Success with Ongoing Pilot Program

February 12, 2019 — The following was released by the West Coast Seafood Processors Association:

An exempted fishing permit (EFP) program allowed West Coast trawl fishermen and processors to test changes in the fishery that increased their catch by more than 14 million pounds of fish in 2018 – an increase of 300 percent from 2017.

NOAA Fisheries issues EFPs, exempting vessels from certain regulations on a trial basis to promote the testing of new gear types or methods, allow industry to work cooperatively with the government and contribute to the scientific knowledge of the fishery and potential changes in regulations. Participating fishermen are able to harvest millions of pounds of delicious and abundant rockfish, allowing processors to stock retail markets and provide consumers with fresh, sustainable product – all with minimal bycatch of sensitive salmon stocks and certain fish species that aren’t as robust. Fishing under the EFP brought in about $5.5 million in additional revenue in 2018, according to National Marine Fisheries Service statistics.

The EFP program built on success from a similar permit in 2017, and we are off to a running start with this year’s EFP: More than 1 million pounds of groundfish have been landed under the EFP in January. Last year, non-whiting groundfish landings, at more than 66 million pounds, were the highest since the 2000 groundfish disaster when roughly 68 million pounds were landed. The average in the intervening years was around 45 million pounds and the low point was around 38 million pounds. When whiting is included, 2018 landings are the second highest on record, eclipsed only by 2017.

The EFPs follow NOAA Fisheries’ 2011 adoption of a catch share program for the West Coast groundfish fishery that substantially reduced discards of fish. Catch limits for several rockfish species have also increased dramatically. NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific Fishery Management Council worked with industry to identify regulations on the use and configuration of trawl gear that were no longer necessary under catch shares.

The seafood industry was anxious to remove gear restrictions as the health of groundfish stocks improved, and because it would help assess potential impacts to salmon and other protected species. Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association; Brad Pettinger, former director of the Oregon Trawl Commission; Shems Jud, Pacific Regional Director, Oceans Program, Environmental Defense Fund; and Mike Okoniewski of Pacific Seafood; first applied for the EFP in 2016.

NOAA Fisheries was amenable to developing an EFP that would allow the industry to catch more fish while also providing insight into how regulatory changes would actually work with a subset of vessels before they were implemented throughout the entire fishery. NOAA Fisheries used data gathered from the 2017 and 2018 EFPs to permanently revise the trawl gear regulations for the start of the 2019 fishing year.

Of course, big projects like this one aren’t done in a vacuum. The applicants credit both NOAA Fisheries and the West Coast lawmakers for getting the EFP approved.

Halibut Commission to Address a Request for Minimum Area Allocation Next Week

January 24, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The agenda for the week-long annual meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission is brimming with new ways to look at catch limits, new tools to assess risk, and new ideas for research, but the issue grabbing the most attention is allocation of this year’s fishery.

Which regional area gets how much of the coastwide catch is a perennial topic, but it’s sharper this year by a stock that remains low compared to a decade ago, little sign of recruitment, and the yet unresolved issue that created an impasse between Canada and the U.S. at last year’s meeting.

Indeed, progress at the 2018 meeting to reach an agreement on catch limits ran aground on the issue of Canada’s catch limit allocation. British Columbia longliners fish waters off the Canadian west coast that make up 12-13% of the total coastwide area fished by both countries. Yet their catch limit has persistently been higher than that based on the argument that much of B.C.’s halibut are resident and the Canadian authorities long ago implemented a robust accounting program for all mortalities, compared to what is being used in Alaska.

The two sides have met throughout the year since and are now considering a handful of options to use this year. Those options, and perhaps more, will be discussed at the meeting that begins Monday, January 28. The meeting is complicated by the US government shutdown. Two US commissoner terms expired at midnight on Thursday, and they will not be available to vote on final motions Friday. As a result, the Commission may skew its agenda so that all votes take place before the US Commissioners go poof.

This year’s meeting has only two stakeholder proposals, both from the Pacific Norwest, or Area 2A. The first, a request for a minimum fixed amount of 1.5 million pounds for commercial and sports fleets. That fishery amount would mean a total mortality of 1.67 mlbs, including subsistence, bycatch, and other incidental mortalities.

The proposal was initially made by the Makah Tribe but now has the support of most stakeholders in Washington, Oregon, and California.

Because it is the first official regional request for a catch limit floor — a minimum that fleets and processors can expect for years to come — it has garnered attention and prompted comments that if they are allowed a guaranteed miminum, what about other areas?

Supporters of Proposal 2A say conditions in that region support establishing a floor and add that 1.67 mlbs. is only a small percentage of any coastwide total. They say — and the IPHC agrees — that the proposal presents no conservation problems because of that.

“The Tribe’s proposal is based on, but less than, the average total removals from Area 2A during the seven-year period before the current coastwide stock assessment and distribution methodology was implemented in Area 2A in 2009. During that period, total removals from Area 2A averaged 1.79Mlb,” Patrick Depoe said in his proposal.

That is precisely the issue for Canada as well. When the IPHC moved from a regional to a coastwide assessment in 2009, there were winners and there were losers. Canada lost 5-7% of their average share of their apportionment. They have compensated for it ever since by setting higher than recommended catch limits for their area, 2B, than IPHC staff suggests.

The second stakeholder proposal was submitted by Michael Pettis, a Newport, OR longliner, and is in response to the IPHC’s request for a change from the current 10 hour derby fishery to a more extended fishery for safety and business planning reasons. The change would not affect that group’s allocation.

The Pacific Council’s Groundfish Advisory Panel discussed the issue and supported an analysis of longer periods. Fishermen on the GAP also proposed assigning the entire commercial halibut quota to incidental catch in the sablefish fishery.

In November 2018, the GAP supported the option again, “if the IPHC does not move forward with a 5-, 10- or 20-day season as discussed in or inferred from its report.”

The five Newport fishermen who submitted the proposal to the IPHC have not supplied public comment to the PFMC or the GAP.

However, since Area 2A is entirely within the U.S. EEZ, management of any system would fall primarily to the federal government. Some industry members have suggested the NMFS cost of establishing a quota system for Area 2A would be far more than the fishery is worth.

On Friday February 1, catch limits for the 2019 season, as well as opening and closing dates, and any proposals that make it through the meeting, will be announced.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Federal court upholds ruling in anchovy catch-limit lawsuit

January 22, 2019 — A federal judge in California on Friday, 22 January, upheld her decision from last year that claimed NOAA Fisheries did not follow the law when it set the catch limit on an anchovy stock in the state.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh means the agency will need to set a new limit on the central population of northern anchovy. Environmental advocates argued federal officials kept that figure stationary since 2000 and used nearly 30-year-old data in setting it.

“This decision holds [NOAA Fisheries] to fundamental standards intended by Congress, which require the government to sustainably manage our nation’s fisheries for the benefit of both fishermen and dependent species,” said Mariel Combs, an Oceana attorney in a press release.

Oceana filed the suit in November 2016, a month after NOAA Fisheries maintained the 25,000 metric ton (MT) limit. The environmental organization, represented by Earthjustice is the suit, argued that the catch limit was based on a 1991 study that reported a biomass of more than 700,000 metric tons.

Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director for the California Wetfish Producers Association, told SeafoodSource she was disappointed in Koh’s ruling. She added, however, that the judge did not set a catch limit and ruled that the agency needs to use the best scientific data available to set its limits.

“In any case, there is general agreement, even from Oceana, that the anchovy population has exploded and available data now find the biomass at historic levels,” Steele said.

Steele also noted that members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council management team will be meeting soon to discuss the next steps in wake of the ruling.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Federal court rules against NOAA Fisheries over driftnet regulation reversal

October 30, 2018 — A federal judge last week ruled that NOAA Fisheries illegally withdrew a proposed rule that would have placed hard caps on bycatch of protected species caught in California’s swordfish drift gillnet fishery.

The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner in the Central District Court of California does not immediately put the caps in place. However, his order on Wednesday, 24 October, requires NOAA Fisheries to either reinstate the regulations or discuss any potential revisions with the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Two years ago, NOAA Fisheries published a proposed rule to limit the amount of bycatch in the driftnet fishery. Federal officials opened a public comment period on the recommendations approved by the PFMC. Under the plan, the fishery faced closure if four bottlenose dolphins or short-fin pilot whales suffered injuries or died as the result of an encounter with a net over a two-year period. Closure could have also happened if two fin, humpback, or sperm whales; or two leatherbacks, loggerhead, olive ridley, or green sea turtles were injured or killed in the same time span.

However, in June 2017, the agency opted to not enact the regulations, which prompted the lawsuit from Oceana the following month.

“The court’s ruling protects whales, sea turtles, and dolphins and affirms the importance of public process and the role of the Pacific Fishery Management Council in regulating West Coast fisheries,” said Mariel Combs, the NGO’s senior Pacific counsel.

California’s swordfish driftnet fishery is considered controversial because the gear often ensnares animals other than what’s targeted. According to Oceana, the mile-long nets are used by 20 vessels and those boats discarded more than 60-percent of their harvest over a 13-year span ending last year. The number of marine mammals killed in the fishery outnumber those killed by all the other Pacific and Alaska fisheries combined.

Read the full story at Seafood Source