Ian Stewart Archives - Saving Seafood

Commission boosts fishing limits for halibut

February 4, 2022 — A joint U.S. and Canadian commission that regulates halibut voted last week to boost this year’s fishing limits for the valuable bottomfish.

The International Pacific Halibut Commission held its annual meeting virtually from Jan. 24-28. It sets the overall combined annual limits for commercial, sport and subsistence fisheries stretching from Alaska to California.

The commission approved this year’s total coast-wide limit at 41.22 million pounds, more than a 5% increase from last year.

Commission scientist Ian Stewart reported on some more encouraging signs from halibut surveys and fishing.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Radio

Pacific halibut stock increases after four years of decline

December 7, 2021 — The Pacific halibut stock appears to be on an upswing that could result in increased catches for most regions in 2022.

At the interim meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission last week, scientists gave an overview of the summer setline survey that targets nearly 2,000 stations over three months. The Pacific resource is modeled as a single stock extending from northern California to the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea, including all inside waters of the Strait of Georgia and the Salish Sea.

The survey results showed that coast-wide combined numbers per setline increased by 17% from 2020 to 2021, reversing declines over the past four years. The coast-wide weights of legal size halibut (over 32 inches) also increased by 4%.

“We’re seeing some new trends this year,” said Ian Stewart, lead scientist for the IPHC, which has managed the fishery for the U.S. and Canada since 1923. “The first is we saw some improving trends from our survey that correspond to a shift both in the fish and in the fishery to younger fish.”

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

DNA tests show commercial halibut catch 90% female, influencing catch limits being set this week

February 6, 2020 — For the first time in its 96 year history, the International Pacific Halibut Commission will be setting catch limits for halibut this week with the knowledge that the commercial fleet’s catch has been around 90 percent female, a notably higher proportion than previously thought.

“The Commission has long known that the directed commercial Pacific halibut fishery catches mostly female, but we’ve had indications over time that perhaps the fishery is able to capture even more females than we see on a set line survey relative to males,” said Ian Stewart, a quantitative scientist for IPHC.

Stewart works to develop the stock assessment for Pacific halibut, which IPHC commissioners use to set catch limits for the U.S. and Canada. Knowing what percentage of the catch is female is an important factor that could influence how the stock is managed and thus, what restrictions and limitations are put on fishermen. New data from the IPHC shows that the sex ratio of the commercial catch ranged from 81 percent female in some regions of the Gulf of Alaska to 97 percent female in some regions in the Bering Sea.

“For conservation purposes we track female spawning biomass. And in order to understand that we need to know not only how many females are out there, but how many we’re catching in a given year,” Stewart said.

Biologists with IPHC use setline surveys fishing the same gear in the same places with the same bait year after year to estimate trends in the population and collection biological information including size, age and sex.

Read the full story at KTUU

Pacific halibut scientist warns of lower yields over next three years

November 27, 2019 — Expect lower halibut catches on the Pacific Coast of North America in 2020 and beyond, based on the presentation given Monday at the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) meeting, in Seattle, Washington, by lead scientist Ian Stewart.

Based on a report by Alaska Fish Radio, Stewart — who was summarizing the outlook for commercial halibut fisheries from Northern California, in the US, and British Columbia, Canada, to the Bering Sea of Alaska — said:

“In short, the model survey trends as you’ve seen from the previous presentations are down both in numbers and weight per unit of effort. And what we’ve seen from the commercial fishery’s CPUE (catch per unit of effort) is we have mixed trends, however relatively flat at the coast-wide levels with some brighter spots and some not so good spots across the coast.”

Stewart said the central Gulf of Alaska (Area 3A) showed the biggest decreases in all measures based, but added that the spawning biomass of the coastwide Pacific halibut stock decreased from 2018 to 2019, as previously predicted.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News