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Speak Up: Gearing Up for the October NPFMC Meeting

Posted September 20, 2024


The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) is meeting September 30 - October 9, 2024 online and in person at the Egan Center in Anchorage. The draft agenda and schedule for pre-meeting review documents have been updated and written comments are due Friday, September 27 at 12:00 pm AKT.


AMCC will focus on several key topics, including proposed harvest specifications for the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries, the 2025 annual observer deployment plan, efforts to broaden the discussion on defining pelagic trawl gear and the report from the Climate Scenario Workshop held in Kodiak during the June Council meeting. These issues correspond to agenda items: (C3) Groundfish harvest specifications; (C4) Observer 2025 Annual Deployment Plan - Review; (C6) Pelagic Trawl Gear Definition - Initial Review and (D2) Climate funding. This blog post explains a bit more about each issue and why we consider them priorities. 


Agenda item (C3): BSAI and GOA Groundfish Harvest Specifications

Background:The total allowable catch (TAC) for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) and the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) for the following year’s harvest will be discussed at the meeting. The NPFMC will review groundfish plan team reports and stock assessment information to inform the proposed specifications, which will be finalized in December. 


What’s happening at this meeting:

At this meeting, the NPFMC will review the groundfish plan team reports for the BSAI and GOA groundfish specifications - commonly referred to as the TAC - for the upcoming two-year period (2024-2025). In addition, it will consider gear and target fishery apportionments of prohibited species catch (PSC) (aka bycatch) limits for halibut, red king crab, Tanner crab, opilio crab and herring.


What AMCC is advocating and why:

As we have done for years, AMCC will continue to encourage the NPFMC to discuss the broader ecosystem considerations when setting the catch limits for upcoming harvest amounts. The large marine ecosystems of the BSAI and the GOA are complex, interconnected systems which must be managed in a holistic manner. The ripple effect on the marine environment when millions of pounds of fish are extracted must be reviewed through an ecosystem based fisheries management approach which considers habitat, bycatch, prey availability, impacts on subsistence and other factors when setting a single species catch limit.


Agenda item (C4): Observer 2025 Annual Deployment Plan


Background:

Each October, the NPFMC reviews a proposed Observer Annual Deployment Plan (ADP) for next year’s fishing season. The draft 2025 ADP describes how the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) intends to assign at-sea and shoreside fishery observers and electronic monitoring (EM) to vessels and processing plants engaged in halibut and groundfish fishing operations in the North Pacific.


What’s happening at this meeting: 

Despite being a much smaller component of the overall monitoring, the ADP focuses on the partial coverage component of the program and outlines the science-driven method for deployment of observers and EM systems to support statistically reliable data collection. Specifically, the ADP describes the scientific deployment design and selection rate - the portion of trips that are sampled by observers and EM - for the partial coverage category. The NPFMC will review preliminary budget and cost assumptions and explore how much coverage the industry funded program can afford. This is an important opportunity to share input on coverage rates, particularly for high-volume fisheries like trawling.


What AMCC is advocating and why:

Since the inception of the restructured observer program, AMCC has encouraged the NPFMC to utilize the flexibility of the partial coverage program to consider the gear type and volume of the fish landed when designing the annual plan. We continue to support increased coverage rates on high volume trawl fisheries. While electronic coverage for the pollock fleet provides increased confidence in the bycatch encounters while prosecuting pollock, we remain concerned about the limited coverage on bottom trawl vessels. This is an important opportunity to share input on coverage rates, particularly for high volume fisheries like trawling.


Agenda item (C6):  Pelagic Trawl Gear Definition


Background:

The NPFMC made a decision last year that the initial discussion on the definition of pelagic (midwater) trawl gear would be limited to housecleaning issues. Measures under consideration include amending the pelagic trawl gear definition to exclude the codend from pelagic trawl gear limitations, removing outdated text related to an obsolete gear variation known as rope trawls, allowing flotation within bycatch excluder devices and allowing hardware attaching technology to the net as long as it does not appreciably change the intended performance of the trawl.


What’s happening at this meeting: 

The NPFMC has clearly stated that the purpose of this action is to address compliance concerns, align pelagic trawl gear regulations with current fishing practices, allow for the advancement of bycatch reduction devices and net monitoring capabilities (e.g. cameras or sensors) and remove unnecessary outdated text. This action is focused on compliance concerns and is separate from the NPFMC’s stated efforts to better understand the impacts of pelagic gear on the seafloor and to encourage gear innovations


What AMCC is advocating and why:

AMCC will continue to push the NPFMC to address the bigger issue with pelagic gear: to verify the amount of time “midwater” gear interacts with the seafloor. The marine environment is under stress, and we need to know that the gear is fishing as intended and understood by the public, off the bottom. Alaskans want this gear off the bottom with meaningful and enforceable accountability measures in state waters and the numerous conservation areas in the North Pacific that are closed to bottom trawling to protect habitat and reduce bycatch. 


Agenda item (D2):  Climate Funding


Background:

Climate change has already had large impacts on North Pacific fisheries and ecosystems, and these impacts are only expected to increase over time (IPCC Report 2022). With climate change already affecting federally managed fisheries in the North Pacific, the NPFMC has been pursuing various initiatives in the interest of preparing for climate-resilient fisheries management.


What’s happening at this meeting: 

The NPFMC will review two important reports, which are structured to help the public and the NPFMC understand next steps in advancing fisheries management in a changing marine environment. The Climate Science-SCS8 Discussion Paper provides a summary of ongoing NPFMC initiatives, as well as preliminary discussions by the Scientific Coordination Subcommittee of the Council Coordination Committee (SCS8) in August 2024, to advance NPFMC discussions about how to make fisheries more resilient. More specifically, the intent of this report is to facilitate the NPFMC prioritization of short- and long-term adjustments to the harvest specifications process to better adapt to climate risk.


In addition, the Climate Scenarios Workshop Report summarizes the workshop hosted by the NPFMC on June 5-6, 2024, in Kodiak and virtually. The purpose of the workshop was to generate ideas for short- and long-term management approaches and tools to improve climate resiliency of federally managed fisheries in the North Pacific. This report summarizes and compiles the range of ideas and discussions shared from over 200 decision makers, scientific and industry advisors, agency and NPFMC staff and members of the public who attended the workshop.


What AMCC is advocating and why:

AMCC continues to support actions that strive to manage fisheries in a precautionary manner in the face of climate change. We are encouraged to learn that the NPFMC recently received funding under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to develop and advance climate-related fisheries management planning and implementation efforts. Specifically, the NPFMC’s funded proposal includes an objective to develop and implement new tools for the harvest specifications process, to adapt to risk in the face of uncertainty due to climate-driven changes.


The Climate Scenario Workshop discussions and the ideas in the report provide a foundation for the NPFMC’s climate readiness planning, and serve as a starting point for further discussion. Further NPFMC discussion and public input on climate readiness planning will provide the opportunity for AMCC and others to share reactions, consider priorities and generate additional ideas. 


AMCC Fisheries Policy Director Theresa Peterson at the Climate Scenario Workshop in Kodiak,

photo courtesy of NPFMC

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