Management & Regulation

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — Sept. 25, 2014 — At the Groundfish Plan team meeting in Seattle this week, NOAA scientists announced that this years trawl and acoustic surveys showed the second highest pollock biomass ever recorded in the history of NOAA stock surveys.  The biomass was the highest since that seen in 1982, 33 years ago.

The Scientists from NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle conducted two surveys this summer that are regularly used in stock assessment: a bottom trawl survey and an acoustic survey.    The bottom-trawl survey index for pollock was the second highest biomass since this standard survey  began in 1982 and is 55-percent higher than the average. This survey appears to indicate more  than one strong year-class. The 2008 cohort, as seen last year with near record age 5 abundance  estimates, was a major component along with the 2006 and 2010 year classes. 

The acoustic-trawl survey found significant concentrations of mid-water pollock (fifth highest in  the time series since 1982 and 23-percent above the average). In particular, concentrations in the  southeast portion of the eastern Bering Sea were found that have been largely absent since 2004.  Also noteworthy was the large number of observations of 2 year-old pollock.

“This survey provides an important index of pre-recruit pollock,” said Jim Ianelli, NOAA’s chief pollock  stock assessment scientist at the AFSC. “If the 2012 year class continues to remain strong, conditions  bode well for the ecosystem and fishery in the near term.” Ianelli notes that conditions this summer were warmer than average, which may play a role in future recruitment and may affect concentrations and the distribution of pollock.

However, due to the conservative management strategy in place in the North Pacific, the big increase in biomass is not likely to lead to significant changes in the TAC or total allowable catch.  The reason is that the N. Pacific Council operates with a 2 million metric ton cap for groundfish fisheries.  This means that the total harvest of all species – pollock, cod, flatfish, and many minor species, must not exceed 2 million tons.

Because of the American Fisheries Act, the pollock fishery is allocated to co-ops where each company or vessel gets a specific share of the harvest.  In return, these vessels cannot fish in other fisheries, and vessels fishing cod or flatfish cannot fish for pollock.

In recent years this has meant negotiations around harvest limits between the various fleets, as total sustainable levels of harvest have been consistently above 2 million tons.   The Pollock fishery in the Bering sea has generally been around 1.3 million tons, or 70% of the total harvest.

This is reflected in this years catch statistics.  Through mid-September, the cumulative catch reports for all Bering Sea groundfish reported by NOAA, totalling around 1.5 million tons, is 74% pollock, 11% cod, and 10% flatifsh. 

In order for the pollock harvest to increase, fisheries on cod or flatfish would have to make room, and this is unlikely to happen as these fisheries are also healthy, and flatfish especially, is harvested at a level well below what it could sustainably support.

So in our view, this good news about the pollock fishery represents a continued vindication of the fisheries management strategies of Alaska and the North Pacific Council, and calls into question the judgement of those NGO's who have consistently claimed the pollock fishery was either unsustainable, or leading to depletion of forage fish for other fish species and marine mammals.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

ARLINGTON, Va. — September 24, 2014 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has scheduled the Data Workshop for the upcoming red drum benchmark stock assessment. The Workshop will be conducted October 14-17, 2014 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 5265 International Boulevard, North Charleston, South Carolina.

As the first step in the assessment process, the Data Workshop will gather and review all available data sets, including, but not limited to, data on growth, maturation, migration, genetics, stock enhancement, tagging, recruitment, natural mortality, and abundance/biomass. The assessment will evaluate the health of the Atlantic coast red drum population and inform management of the species. The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public (with the exception of discussion of confidential data).

The Assessment Workshop will be conducted in early 2015. The Review Workshop will be conducted through the SouthEast Data, Assessment and Review (SEDAR) process from August 25-27, 2015.  For more information on the red drum stock assessment process, please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at krootes-murdy@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

 

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — Sept. 24, 2014 — With the opening of the 2014-2015 Alaska crab season coming on Oct. 15th, there is a lot of interest in the upcoming announcement of crab quotas.

The quotas are set by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game.  But before they decide, there are several industry meetings, including the crab plan team of the N. Pacific council, which review the survey results and make recommendations about interpretations.  The crab plan team meetings took place Sept. 15-18 in Seattle.  However, ADF&G has final authority and how they interpret the data and their models is generally not known until they make an announcement.
 
This year, the survey results had some anomalies, which make it very difficult to get a read on quota increases or decreases.  Given the results, many industry observers expect there may be little, if any, change in all three species:  Opilo, Red King Crab,and Bairdi or Tanner Crab.
 
The first fact is that the raw data showed significant increases in mature biomass in all three species.  But there was also a spike in water tempertures during the survey of 2 degrees celsius. This causes a significant movement of crab, which prefer lower temperatures, and there is some indication that more crab may have moved into the survey area.  So the population increases may be discounted.
 
The other factors are the multi-year averaging and the number of mature femaies. 
 
For all three species, quotas are set in a precautionary manner using multi-year averaging, so that a spike in population results in one year does not automatically get translated into higher quota, but instead is averaged with other years.  So this will lessen the impact of any population increases in a single year on the quota.
 
Secondly, mature males are harvested, but species also have population thresholds for mature females.  In the case of Baridi, the survey showed a decline in the number of mature females, and an increase in the number of mature males.  This anomaly will have to be factored into the plan.
 
The bottom line is that there is a lot of conflicting information that will go into the ADF&G's crab models.
 
The raw survey results showed an increase in Bristol Bay Red King crab biomass of mature males greater than 120 mm from 33,891 tons to 47,688 tons, which is well above the five year average.  Mature Females also increased.
 
For Bairdi, the legal male biomass increased to 30,366 tons, but the mature female biomass decreased to 4807 tons, reversing a three year trend.
 
For snow crab, mature males increased from 58,381 tons to 105,442 tons, and also the level of recruits, immature males, increased 40% to over 140,000 tons. Mature females increased slightly, from 173,353 tons to 177098 tons.
 
So all the survey data shows a surge in crab populations, but it is unclear how much of this may be due to redistribution of the crab in response to temperature changes, and how much may be indicative of growth in total stocks.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

WASHINGTON — September 21, 2014 — How many fish in the sea? No one really knows, but which ones are counted and how often they're examined depends on where you live, a new study by Congress' watchdog concludes.

An analysis by the Government Accountability Office released Friday found wide variations in how frequently fish stock assessments are conducted, chiefly based on geography. Counts in Alaska, for example, far outnumber those in the Gulf of Mexico or in the Atlantic.

Fish counts are critical because they're used by regional councils to set recreational and commercial fishing rules in coastal waters. How they're conducted and what they report are at the center of an ongoing debate between a $100 billion maritime industry that wants to relax catch limits and environmental advocates who want to prevent overfishing.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Florida Republican Marco Rubio, asked the GAO last year to examine how fish are counted. They want to know how the federal National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, determines which stocks are healthy and which ones need protection.

Alabama Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, both Republicans, were among the senators that asked for the GAO report.

Critics of the agency say some limits are based on "flawed science" provided by the fisheries service.

The GAO report doesn't settle that argument. The watchdog agency is beginning a second phase to examine "collection of fisheries data" which might more directly address the science behind the counts.

Read the full story from the Montgomery Advertiser

 

September 17, 2014 — Read the full story from the Northeast Regional Planning Body:

In advance of the upcoming Northeast Regional Planning Body (RPB) meeting on November 13-14, the following public events will be held. These meetings will include updates on the regional ocean planning effort and a discussion of two topics the RPB will focus on at its November meeting: options under the Effective Decision Making goal and the Healthy Ocean and Coastal Ecosystems goal. See neoceanplanning.org for the Framework for Ocean Planning in the Northeast, which describes these goals and the options.

Please mark your calendars for the following meetings:

October 6, 2014 – Portsmouth, New Hampshire; 5:00PM – 7:30PM
NH Department of Environmental Services
222 International Dr., Suite 175, Room A
Portsmouth, NH

October 8, 2014 – Belfast, Maine; 1:00PM – 4:00PM
Hutchinson Center
80 Belmont Avenue
Belfast, ME

October 15, 2014 – Narragansett, Rhode Island; 5:00PM – 7:30PM
Coastal Institute
215 South Ferry Road, Hazards Room A and B
Narragansett, RI

October 20, 2014 – New Haven, Connecticut; 6:00PM – 9:00PM
Regional Water Authority
90 Sargent Drive, Welch Room M
New Haven, CT

October 27, 2014 – Boston, Massachusetts; 3:00PM – 5:00PM
100 Cambridge Street
100 Cambridge Street, Second Floor Conference Room C + D
Boston, MA

Additionally, a day-long regional forum will be held on October 21, 2014 at the University of New Hampshire, Holloway Commons, 75 Main Street, Durham, NH, in the Squamscott Room. The forum will focus on the topics leading into the November RPB meeting.

Materials for these meetings will be posted online here in advance.

September 18, 2014 — A number of regional fishing associations are joining forces to strengthen the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The Sitka-based Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association announced last week (9-9-14) that it’s reached an agreement with the Alaska Marine Conservation Council and several east-coast industry groups to form the Fishing Community Coalition.

The new organization wants to ensure that Congress makes protecting fish stocks a priority as it prepares to reauthorize the nation’s most important law governing the harvest of seafood in federal waters.

Draft language containing proposed changes to Magnuson-Stevens has been working its way through the US House of Representatives, but the political lines became clearer when Florida’s Republican Sen. Marco Rubio introduced his version of the bill on September 16.

Read the full text of Sen. Rubio’s Florida Fisheries Improvement Act.

The top priority for Rubio is giving the regional management councils more flexibility in setting timelines for rebuilding depleted fish stocks.

This is exactly what Linda Behnken, the director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, was hoping not to hear.

“There’s quite a pushback right now against the rebuilding timelines and the catch limits. You start rebuilding stocks, it means you have to catch less fish, generally, and that’s a painful process for fishermen.”

Read the full story from KTOO

 

September 15, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Earlier this year we made available a number of Geographic Information System (GIS) data sets and charts for various federally managed fish species.  We've added three new groups of files that contain management area information for the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, the Harbor Porpoise Take Reduction Plan and Atlantic Coastal Fisheries.

Click here to read some background on this project.

Click here to go directly to the GIS website.

September 12, 2014 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council recently met in Biloxi, MS to discuss a number of fishery issues, including recreational red snapper sector separation and accountability measures.

During the meeting, the Council reviewed recommendations made by its Red Snapper Advisory Panel. Council staff also presented public hearing and public comment summaries, along with a revised Reef Fish Amendment 40 – Sector Separation document for Council discussion.

The Reef Fish Amendment 40 divides the recreational red snapper sector into two distinct components – a private angling component and a for-hire component.

The Council, made up of state appointees and federal officials, had a lengthy discussion about sector separation, specifically Action 2 – Allocation of the Recreational Red Snapper Quota between the Components of the Recreational Sector.

The Council’s preferred alternative was originally Alternative 4, which would allocate the recreational red snapper quota based on average landings between 1996 and 2012. Federal for-hire and private angling allocations would be 47.1% and 52.9% respectively.

Read the full story at Gulf Seafood News

September 11, 2014 — Seafood industry organizations across California and even the US are crying foul over NGO Oceana’s attempt to fight seafood fraud in the state.

Senate Bill 1138, authored by California Senator Alex Padilla and sponsored by Oceana, has passed through the California legislature to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown.

If signed by Sept. 30, it would require all seafood sold in California — either via retail or restaurants — to be labelled by the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Seafood List’s common name list, which separates commonly known market names for fish into 1,827 terms.

So far, the California Fisheries & Seafood Institute, California Grocers Association, National Retail Federation are among a list of groups writing governor Brown to plead for a veto.

“Simply stated, SB1138 is unnecessary, unworkable, and will make seafood labeling more confusing, not less,” California Fisheries and Seafood Institute president Kevin Joyce writes in a letter to the governor dated Sept. 8. “The bill proposes to fix fraudulent thus unlawful labeling of seafood with a complicated scheme of labeling protocols that will require the entire seafood industry to label historic market names with names that will be more confusing for both the industry and the consumer.”

Yet the intent, argues senator Padilla, is to address “the growing problem of seafood mislabeling by making sure that seafood is labeled accurately.”

Yet multiple industry groups, including the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), argue that making seafood labelled “accurately” — in the bill’s definition, by its common name — will actually only make it more difficult to fight seafood mislabeling.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News