October Council Recap: Bycatch, Harvests, and Herring on the Agenda

Posted on October 29, 2025

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council met in Anchorage this October to tackle a heavy agenda on bycatch, harvest limits, and accountability in Alaska’s federal fisheries. AMCC submitted two key comment letters — one on Maximum Retainable Amounts (MRAs) and another on Groundfish Harvest Specifications — urging the Council to strengthen precautionary management and tie catch decisions to real-world ecological and community impacts. Our MRA comment called for more straightforward implementation, reduced discards, and alignment between retention rules and bycatch risk. Our harvest specs comment emphasized the need for transparency, ecosystem-level analysis, and precautionary limits that reflect cumulative bycatch and climate pressures rather than static historic averages.

While the Council adopted some technical updates to MRA implementation and initiated new accountability measures for rockfish, most groundfish harvest levels for 2026 remain unchanged. However, one notable action stood out: the Council voted to initiate analysis of herring PSC limits in the Bering Sea, acknowledging concerns that current constraints may inadvertently push fishing effort into areas with higher salmon bycatch. AMCC cautions against increasing pressure on one species to avoid the bycatch of another. Alaska’s trawl fisheries must be managed under a whole-ecosystem approach. 

As climate change accelerates and ecosystem signals grow harder to ignore, AMCC continues to press for management frameworks that see bycatch not as a secondary metric but as a measure of loss — to ecosystems, fisheries, and the people who depend on them. We’ll stay engaged as the Council’s herring PSC analysis and chum salmon bycatch Draft EIS move forward, ensuring Alaska’s fisheries are managed with precaution, accountability, and respect for coastal communities.

Read AMCC’s full comments on MRAs and Groundfish Harvest Specifications, and view the full Council newsletter here.

Photo Courtesy of ASMI