IPHC to set harvest levels, address charter management
Alaska anglers have gotten a crash course in halibut management over the past six months and now they have an opportunity to see it in action firsthand.
The International Pacific Halibut Commission will meet at the Anchorage Hilton Jan. 23 to Jan. 27 to set commercial harvest levels for 2012 and to consider the charter sector measures recommended in December by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
The council recommended continuing the two-fish daily bag limit with no size restriction for Central Gulf of Alaska anglers who mainly access the fishery from the Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound.
In Southeast, where the charter harvest exceeded the allocation by some 3.4 million pounds cumulatively from 2004 to 2010, the council recommended dropping the 37-inch maximum size limit for halibut in favor of a reverse slot limit.
The size limit was put in place by the IPHC in 2011 after it requested further guidance from the council to keep the charter sector within its allocation, but none was forthcoming other than the previous one-fish daily bag limit instituted in 2009.
Under the reverse slot limit recommended by the council in December, a halibut may be retained in Southeast if it is 45 inches or less, or longer than 68 inches. Charter operators pushed for the relief from the 37-inch rule after being held about to a harvest of about 390,000 pounds compared to their allocation of 788,000 pounds.
The average weight per fish declined sharply from 26 pounds in 2010 to 9.4 pounds in 2011.
Without the ability to offer a trophy opportunity under the size limit during 2011, charter operators in ports such as Gustavus and Petersburg saw major declines in angler effort and feared continued size restrictions would put them out of business.
Southeast was one of only two areas managed by the IPHC to see an increase in its recommended catch limit in 2012, triggering an increase in the charter allocation from 788,000 pounds to 931,000 pounds.
IPHC Executive Director Bruce Lehman said the body, made up of three commissioners each from the U.S. and Canada, would be “well disposed” toward council guidance regarding charter management in Southeast but would likely make some comments about discard mortality rate.
Discard mortality rate — the percentage of halibut that die after being caught but not retained —currently is not accounted for in charter allocation.
Now that Southeast charter anglers can retain fish up to 45 inches, and pursue a trophy opportunity of fish larger than 68 inches, there is a possibility for increased discard mortality through “high grading.” Under the 37-inch rule, anecdotal reports from charter operators was that there was very little high grading to catch larger fish.
If a 34-inch halibut were caught, there was little incentive to continue fishing to retain one a couple inches larger.
“The commission feels that discard mortality can’t be ignored, so the staff will probably make some comment on this to the commission when they consider this issue,” Lehman said.
Accounting for the potential of increased high grading is difficult because a reverse-slot limit has not been used before, Lehman said, so the commission staff will be interested in measuring angler behavior under the rule.
“One of the comments we’ll probably make on this is we understand the idea of wanting to do the reverse slot limit, but what are you going to do to collect data that’s going to allow us to evaluate this?” Lehman said. “Right now there isn’t any data collection process contemplated that will look at how high-grading — which is perfectly legal within the sport fish regulations — may or may not take place.
“There will be some discarding within and probably outside the slot limit, so what are you doing to inform our understanding of mortality there?”
If the commission chooses to incorporate discard mortality rate into the charter allocation — as it does in the commercial sector where high-grading also occurs — that could result in a higher estimated charter harvest and possible adjustments to the high and low ends of the slot limit to ensure the sector stays within its allocation.
The suggested total commercial harvest of 25.5 million pounds for Alaska waters from Southeast to the Bering Sea in 2012 is about 7 million pounds lower than 2011.
Preliminary catch limit recommendations, or CLR, are as follows for Alaska regulatory areas:
Southeast (2C) — 2.62 million pounds, an increase from 2.33 million pounds in 2011. The increase also triggers a step-up in the charter guideline harvest level, or GHL, to 931,000 pounds.
Central Gulf of Alaska (3A) — 11.92 million pounds, a 17 percent cut compared to 14.36 million pounds in 2011. The decline triggered a step-down in the charter GHL from 3.65 million pounds to 3.1 million pounds.
Western Gulf (3B) — 5 million pounds compared to 7.5 million pounds in 2011.
Bering Sea (Area 4) — 5.9 million pounds compared to 8.31 million in 2011, a 29 percent cut.
The format for IPHC meetings is different than North Pacific council or Alaska Board of Fisheries, with more closed-door administrative sessions.
The public has the opportunity to ask questions in an open floor with commissioners and staff at the 8 a.m. session Jan. 24.
“It’s essentially an open mic,” Lehman said. “In that sense it’s different than a council meeting. That is a pretty valuable part of our meeting, to give people an opportunity with staff and the commission itself.”
The joint IPHC, conference board and processor advisory group meeting Jan. 26 at 8:30 a.m. is when regulatory proposals and catch limit recommendations will be discussed.
Following a closed executive session, the IPHC will convene to announce harvest levels and regulatory recommendations Jan. 27 at 9 a.m.
The public Q&A, joint session and final action will all be available through webcast.
One hot topic for the public to address with IPHC staff and commissioners may be what’s been dubbed the “nightmare” scenario laid out in the interim meeting Nov. 30.
IPHC staff is struggling over problems with retrospective analysis of exploitable biomass that results in continued reductions in estimates that then cause the actual harvest rate to go well over the target rate. Staff said this could be addressed by either the lowering the estimate of exploitable biomass or the target harvest rate could be lowered to achieve the goal.
As background, staff noted that the original estimate of exploitable biomass for 2011 from which harvest limits were derived was 318 million pounds. That was subsequently revised down to 292 million pounds and further to 245 million pounds.
The alternative strategy would have limited the central Gulf of Alaska to 5.3 million pounds in 2012. In Southeast, the harvest would be restricted to 1 million pounds. The Southcentral charter sector would have a allocation of 2 million pounds, far less than the 3.1 million pounds for 2012, under the alternative harvest strategy.
Whether that strategy is in place in 2013 depends on the work of IPHC staff over the next year.
“It’s going to be dependent on our ability to go in and try to sort out the retrospective issue and the bias in re-estimation,” Lehman said. “We want to solve the problem rather than treat the symptom. The presentation was to point out to people that this is not a trivial issue. There is potential for major reductions if you’re trying to match up harvest rates.
“We have a lot of work to do on this to determine the extent of overharvest that’s occurring. We felt strongly enough that we need to highlight this as an issue the staff is considering over the next year.”
Andrew Jensen can be reached at andrew.jensen@alaskajournal.com.
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