A stock assessment and fishery evaluation (SAFE) report by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council indicates that a drop in the Eastern Bering Sea pollock total allowable catch (TAC) could be imminent.
The report, released in advance of a meeting by the NPFMC this month, indicates that the acceptable biological catch could be reduced by 515,000 metric tons (MT) – decreasing from 1.626 million MT in 2021 to 1.111 million MT in 2022 – a drop of over 30 percent. Historically, the fishery’s TAC has been set lower than the acceptable biological catch.
For 2021, the TAC was 1.375 million MT, of which 1.373 million MT had been caught as of 6 November.
If the NPFMC follows the historical trend and sets the TAC below the proposed acceptable catch, it would mean a minimum drop in TAC in 2022 of at least 264,000 MT compared to 2021.
Proposed and final specifications for the harvest are adopted annually for a two-year period. The final 2022 and 2023 harvest specifications will be set during final rulemaking in February or March 2022.
“This process allows the council to use the most current survey and fishery data in stock assessment models for setting quotas for the next two years, while having no gap in harvest specifications,” the SAFE report said.
A recent bottom-trawl survey in the Bering Sea found declining numbers of multiple species of fish – including pollock – the Nome Nugget reported. The changes in species density, Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director of Resource Assessment Lyle Britt said during a presentation on the findings, could be related to changes in water temperature in the area. According to Britt, colder water in the area may have kept species of fish out of certain parts of the Northern Bering Sea.
“In the colder years, when that cold pool extended down, much of this sub-Arctic population was not wanting to cross that barrier,” Britt said. “When it broke down, fish moved across the shelf and started showing up in large numbers in the Northern Bering Sea, except for this year.”
Pollock is annually the highest-volume species caught in the U.S. This year’s pollock B season, which ran from 10 June to 31 October, experienced strong volumes, but small fish sizes – which resulted in a shortage of supply for the fillet market.
Photo courtesy of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers
