January 9, 2020 — Members of the Russia-based Longline Fishery Association (LFA) have earned Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for their Pacific halibut and Pacific cod fisheries in three zones of the Bering Sea.
Six fisheries got certificates: Interrybflot, YAMSy, Polaris, Sigma Marine Technology, Tymlatsky rybokombinat, and Dalrybprom. The certification covers the Chukchi, West Bering Sea, and East Kamchatka fishery zones of the Bering Sea.
December 6, 2019 — Lower catches for Pacific halibut are in the forecast for the foreseeable future.
That was the message from the International Pacific Halibut Commission at its November meeting in Seattle. The commission oversees halibut stock research and sets catch limits for nine fishing regions ranging from northern California to British Columbia to the Bering Sea.
There are fewer of the prized flatfish (down 4 percent), they weigh less (down 5 percent) and no big pulses appear to be coming into the stock, according to the grim summary of the 2019 halibut fishery. The assessment included the results of summer-long surveys at nearly 1,370 fishing stations, including 89 added to the Central Gulf of Alaska, the biggest halibut fishing hole.
The numbers of spawning halibut also appeared to continue their decline over the past year, said the commission’s lead scientist Ian Stewart.
The commission calculates the amount of removals of halibut over 26 inches for commercial, recreational, sports charter, subsistence and bycatch in other fisheries, called a total constant exploitation yield. For 2019, the coastwide TCEY was 38.61 million pounds. The decline was projected, Stewart said.
“This has been predicted for several years. This is projected to continue for all 2020 [Total Constant Exploitation Yields] greater than approximately 18.4 million pounds,” Stewart said. “It’s essentially the breakeven point over the next three years. So, we’re looking at a period of relatively low productivity for the Pacific halibut stock over the next three years.”
November 27, 2019 — Expect lower halibut catches on the Pacific Coast of North America in 2020 and beyond, based on the presentation given Monday at the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) meeting, in Seattle, Washington, by lead scientist Ian Stewart.
Based on a report by Alaska Fish Radio, Stewart — who was summarizing the outlook for commercial halibut fisheries from Northern California, in the US, and British Columbia, Canada, to the Bering Sea of Alaska — said:
“In short, the model survey trends as you’ve seen from the previous presentations are down both in numbers and weight per unit of effort. And what we’ve seen from the commercial fishery’s CPUE (catch per unit of effort) is we have mixed trends, however relatively flat at the coast-wide levels with some brighter spots and some not so good spots across the coast.”
Stewart said the central Gulf of Alaska (Area 3A) showed the biggest decreases in all measures based, but added that the spawning biomass of the coastwide Pacific halibut stock decreased from 2018 to 2019, as previously predicted.
September 6, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Last week, representatives of the Pacific halibut industries in Canada and the United States voiced their opposition to the Marine Stewardship Council’s consideration to award certification to Russian-caught halibut.
“We feel that the fishing practices of the Russian commercial Pacific Halibut fishery is substandard and deficient in the areas of stock rebuilding, harvest strategy, habitat management,” wrote Bob Alverson in a press release August 29.
Alverson teamed with Chris Sporer and Jim Johnson to submit their comments to the current draft report on the Russian fishery’s application for MSC certification. Alverson is executive director of the Fishing Vessel Owners Association and Eat on the Wild Side, which is the current holder of Pacific halibut MSC certification in the U.S. Sporer is executive manager of the Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia, also an MSC client for Canadian-caught Pacific halibut. Johnson is the executive director of the Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union and a trustee of Eat on the Wild Side.
“The Marine Stewardship Council is an independent non-profit organization which sets a standard for sustainable fishing,” said Alverson. “Fisheries that wish to demonstrate they are well-managed and sustainable compared to the science-based MSC standard are assessed by a team of experts who are independent of both the fishery and the MSC. Seafood products can display the blue MSC ecolabel only if that seafood can be traced back through the supply chain to a fishery that has been certified against the MSC standard.”
In Russia it is the recently organized Longline Fishery Associaiton (LFA) applying for MSC certification, with help from the Sustainable Fishery Partnership (SFP) to start a Fisheries Improvement Plan as early as May 2013.
The most recent report from LFA notes few improvements from earlier reports on fisheries management improvements for the Russian halibut industry.
As Sporer noted under the Stock Rebuilding section of the draft assessment, the “stock has been below Bmsy [a biomass that can support maximum sustanable yield, a Magnuson-Stevens Act standard] since 2011 and seems to have increased only slightly since 2013. The scoring does not explain a) what the rebuilding measure and timeframe for rebuilding are, or b) what is the evidence that continuing current F [fishing] levels will rebuild the stock to Bmsy within two generations time when there is no evidence of this happening to date.”
Alverson is currently a commissioner at the International Pacific Halibut Commission and Sporer has served as chairman of the IPHC’s Conference Board, representing fishermen, in the past. Their comments about harvest strategy used in the Russian fishery noted that it “… is not achieving stock management objectives for the P-K Pacific halibut stock” and ask, “Without evidence that stock rebuilding is to be expected for this stock” how anyone can they know the strategy is effective?
Under the section on Habitats Outcome, Sporer noted “In other jursidictions operating in similar fisheries, sensitive habitat areas have been closed to longline fishing by authorities or voluntarily. Even for non-VME habitats, an inabiilty to recover in less than 20 years should lead to explicit consideration of effects on such habitats. There is every indication that such sensitive habitats would be present, but no evaluation or management in place.”
The group also noted a concern about transparancy. PHMA of BC and Eat on the Wild Side, representing respectively the holders of the Canadian and US MSC certificates for Pacific Halibut have been accepted by Marcert (the Certifying Advisory Board, or CAB for the Russian fishery) as stakeholders, yet they were not advised that the draft public comment draft report (PCDR) was released.
“We were surprised therefore that we had to find out about the PCDR for Russian Halibut from an MSC notification rather than direct from the CAB. We note that our CAB requires a much higher level of disclosure to stakeholders of key stages in the MSC process than has been followed by Marcert. We therefore have a procedural issue as well as the substantive ones we have raised,” Sporer wrote.
According to the most recent report on management of the Russian halibut fishery, stock assessments are still not being done annually, or on any regulary basis. Much of the data on stock size and health is being determined through catch data. Six areas of improvement were targeted as of November 2017:
1. Improvement of data on all removals including bycatch.
2. Standardize methods used for stock assessments in different management areas.
3. Develop robust harvest control rules (HCR), establish biological reference points and create simulation models.
4. Establish clear internal rules of behavior for the fishermen while in the fishery.
5. Better understand and analize how IUU fishing occurs.
6. Improve transparency and public access to information about management, harvests, and monitoring.
This story was originally released by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
February 14, 2019 — After years of hearing concerns from fishermen about the prevalence of “chalky” Pacific halibut, the International Pacific Halibut Commission is planning to gather information for an investigation into it.
Chalky halibut are fish that, when cut open, have a stiff, chalk-textured flesh as opposed to the normal pale and tender flesh. Chalky meat is not dangerous to humans but is not desirable and thus costs the fishermen at the dock.
Dr. Josep Planas, who heads up biological research for the IPHC, noted plans to gather information about chalky halibut from stakeholders this year before moving forward with designing a study on it.
“What we plan is to initiate this project by collecting information from stakeholders on the incidence of chalky flesh and trying to understand the conditions that lead to its development,” he said. “We would love to get any information from any stakeholders on this topic.”
Chalky halibut is not a new phenomenon; fishermen and researchers have been seeing it for decades.
February 11, 2019 — Contrary to all expectations, commercial catches of Pacific halibut were increased for 2019 in all but one Alaska region.
The numbers were revealed Friday at the International Pacific Halibut Commission annual meeting in Victoria, British Columbia.
The reason was due to increased estimates of the overall halibut biomass based on expanded surveys last summer from Northern California to the Bering Sea, said Doug Bowen who operates Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer.
“There’s a couple of strong year classes from 2011 and 2012 that are just starting to show up in the commercial catches and I think the scientists are cautiously optimistic that we could see some better harvests as a result of those halibut entering the fishery,” he said in a phone call as he was leaving the meetings.
February 6, 2019 — The International Pacific Halibut Commission last week agreed on catch limits for the Pacific halibut fishery which runs from California to Alaska, according to KBBI.
In 2018, the IPHC, the public organization responsible for managing the U.S. and Canadian West Coast halibut fisheries, was unable to agree on quotas for the season, and as a result the quota remained the same as the 2017 season. Before last year, the last time the United States and Canada could not come to a quota agreement was nearly a century ago.
The main sticking point for the negotiations was the amount of halibut that Canada was allowed. Recently, Canada has taken about 20 percent of the catch. A U.S. proposal during the negotiations suggested that the number be closer to 12 percent this year, and a compromise was reached at 17.7 percent.
Read the full story at Seafood Source
May 22, 2018 — As prices and demand for Pacific halibut have fallen in Alaska, commercial fishermen say a new Canadian competitor is to blame. Since 2012, Canadian imports of fresh Atlantic halibut have grown roughly 60 percent.
Historically, Atlantic halibut has not competed with its close relative on the West Coast since New England and Canadian fishermen overfished stocks in the late 1880s. But as the catch continues to grow north of the border, fishermen in New England are working towards restarting a fishery in U.S. waters.
That could have a serious impact on Alaska’s halibut industry.
Atlantic halibut seems to have been on the tip of the commercial fishing industry’s tongue in Alaska as imports from Canada continue to carve out a significant slice of the New England fresh halibut market.
Prices on the docks in Alaska have fallen about $2 per pound, and there’s a surplus of halibut in the freezer from last year that isn’t selling.
Read the full story at Alaska Public Media
February 6, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The failure to reach agreement on catch limits for Pacific halibut last month had roots in a 2006 decision by the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) to shift from managing halibut area by area to a single coastwide assessment.
The change was triggered by data from tagging studies that showed significant migration between distinct geographical areas. There was evidence to support ‘resident’ populations, but new data showed complex migration patterns that had not been understood before.
So the scientists, who had used a closed-area assessment up to then, changed to a coastwide assessment to measure total biomass, then apportioned catch limits based on area surveys and geographical size.
It was a significant change in IPHC’s harvest policy and called for a stock assessment workshop and an independent evaluation from the Center for Independent Experts in June of 2006.
CIE’s Dr. Chris Francis, an independent evaluator and stock assessment expert, commented on the biggest snag he saw with the change.
“The problem for me (and for the IPHC, I believe) is that the coast-wide model requires some way of apportioning the estimated current biomass amongst the regulatory areas. It is important to distinguish between accepting the coast-wide model over the closed-area, and accepting the area-apportionment scheme,” Francis said.
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January 29, 2018 — As expected, catches of Pacific halibut will decrease for this year, and likely into the foreseeable future.
Following an increase in catches last year for the first time in several decades, the International Pacific Halibut Commission on Friday set a “suggested” coastwide catch for 2018 at 28.03 million pounds, a 10.7 percent reduction. Alaska’s share could be 20.52 million pounds, a drop of 2.1 million pounds from 2017.
The numbers could decline further, as for the first time in memory since the IPHC began its oversight of the stocks in 1923, the six commissioners were not able to agree on catch allocations for the eight halibut fishing regions.
Halibut catch limits are determined by summer surveys at more than 1,200 stations from Oregon to the Aleutians.
“There was agreement that the general halibut stock is in decline, but no consensus on what the catches should be. Due to this impasse, the commissioners made suggestions for 2018 for their own countries,” said Tom Gemmell, executive director of the Juneau-based Halibut Coalition.