AMCC Heads Into December NPFMC Meeting With Key Concerns: Specs, Essential Fish Habitat, and the Risks of “Efficiency Without Foundation”

Posted on November 19, 2025

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council meets at the Egan Center in Anchorage this December 2-9, and AMCC will be there to advocate for precaution, transparency, and habitat-forward decision-making as the Council sets 2026–27 groundfish harvest specifications and revises its Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) work plan.

Specs: Management Without Adequate Data Is a Risk We Can’t Afford

This year’s specifications process comes with a troubling backdrop: limited survey coverage and growing uncertainty about ecosystem conditions across the Gulf and Bering Sea. Setting harvest levels without adequate, up-to-date survey information erodes the scientific foundation of sustainable management. AMCC will urge the Council to explicitly acknowledge data gaps, apply precautionary buffers, and avoid locking in multi-year decisions when the underlying science is incomplete.

EFH Work Plan: Cumulative Impacts Belong at the Center, Not Cut From the Edges

The Council is also revising its EFH work plan, which is an opportunity to improve how fisheries account for habitat impacts. AMCC is concerned about proposals to streamline the process by cutting the cumulative impacts analysis. Removing this lens obscures the real-world pressures that habitats face from trawling, climate change, coastal erosion, and shifting species distributions. Efficiency without foundation is not efficiency at all. It simply pushes consequences down the road and onto fishing communities, ecosystems, and decision-makers who will face larger problems later.

Our Bottom Line

AMCC will continue pushing for a specs process grounded in reliable science, an EFH strategy that strengthens—not weakens—protections, and a Council agenda that keeps habitat, communities, and long-term resilience at the forefront.