June 24, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee made recommendations regarding bigeye tuna catch limits and allocation amounts for the U.S. Participating Territories for the fishing years 2020 to 2023 when it met last week in Honolulu.

For bigeye tuna, the SSC recommended no catch limit be set for longline-caught bigeye tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) convention area from 2020 to 2023 for any U.S. Pacific territory. It also recommended that each territory be allowed to allocate up to 2,000 metric tons (mt) to federally permitted Hawai’i longline vessels.

The SSC concluded its three-day meeting and will make these and other recommendations to the Council at its 178th meeting in Honolulu this week, June 25-27.

The Commission is an international fishery management organization that develops quotas and other management measures for tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. Under WCPFC, Small Island Developing States and Participating Territories (such as the three U.S. territories in the Pacific: American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) do not have longline-caught bigeye quotas. However, under an amendment to the Council’s Pelagic Fishery Ecosystem Plan, the National Marine Fisheries Service has the authority to specify annual catch and allocation limits for the U.S. Territories. In recent years, each U.S. territory had a 2,000 mt limit and authority to allocate up to 1,000 mt.

Prior to making its decision, the SSC reviewed stock projections through 2045, which showed that catch limit and allocation scenarios of up to 3,000 mt per Territory were not significant enough to cause the stock to go over any limit reference points adopted by the WCPFC.

Other outcomes of the SSC meeting included the following:

Hawaiʻi Kona Crab: Based on updated information from a 2018 benchmark stock assessment and other reports, the SSC set the acceptable biological catch (ABC) for the main Hawaiian Islands Kona crab commercial fishery at 30,802 pounds for 2020 to 2023. This decision accounted for the scientific uncertainties with an estimated risk of overfishing of 38 percent. The Council will utilize the ABC to specify the annual catch limit for the stock.

Shifting Distributions and Changing Productivity: A NMFS Office of Science and Technology representative reported on the major challenges and potential solutions in addressing both shifts in stock distributions as well as changing stock and ecosystem productivity. The presentation identified six steps to account for and respond to climate impacts on fisheries and recommended ways to account or prepare for distribution and productivity shifts. These recommendations are intended to serve as a guide for each region in the development of fishery management actions.

SSC member Ray Hilborn noted, “… where you close [fisheries] now is not where the species are going to be in 20 years.” He also pointed out that non-governmental organizations strongly push for permanently closed areas rather than considering adaptive spatial management.

Spatial Management: A working group of the SSC reported on its efforts to define benefits and limitations to spatial management actions relative to pertinent regional fishery issues and management objectives. The working group discussed the development of a workshop on “Spatial Management of Blue Water Ecosystems” with a broad spectrum of participants to be held in 2019 or 2020. The SSC recommended tht the Council endorse the workshop with the themes of 1) spatial management objectives and performance metrics; 2) alternative approaches to spatial management; 3) evaluation and monitoring; and 4) policy and outreach approaches to spatial management.

The Council will consider these and other SSC recommendations when it meets this week in Honolulu. Action items on the Council agenda include the U.S. Territory bigeye tuna catch and allocation limits; catch limits and options for specifying annual catch limits for main Hawaiian Islands Kona crab; managing loggerhead and leatherback sea turtle interactions in the Hawai’i-based shallow-set longline fishery; and a Hawai’i Archipelago Fishery Ecosystem Plan amendment to precious coral essential fish habitat. The Council will also have a presentation from Global Fishing Watch, an organization that uses technology to visualize, track and share data about global fishing activity.

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