At its April meeting in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, voted 10-1 on the final motion to add gear-specific (pot, hook-and-line, and jig) Pacific cod endorsements to Western and Central Gulf of Alaska fixed gear license limitation program, known as LLPs.

The council's action in essence was a case of use it or lose it.

The measure, still pending the approval of the federal Department of Commerce, would require vessels to hold a Pacific cod endorsement to participate in directed Pacific cod fisheries in the Western and Central Gulf of Alaska.

Some 600 license holders in the Central Gulf and about 150 license holders in the Western Gulf who did not fish for Pacific cod during the qualifying period are now no longer qualified for that fishery.

To get that endorsement, harvesters would have to meet catch thresholds for the qualifying period from 2002 through Dec. 8, 2008. Those thresholds include one landing for jig gear, 10 metric tons for vessels under 60 feet and 50 metric tons for vessels over 60 feet, and 50 metric tons for pot and hook-and-line catcher-processors.

Fisheries officials estimated that some 210 of 883 Central Gulf catcher vessel licenses and 93 of 264 catcher vessel Western Gulf licenses would qualify for a gear-specific Pacific cod endorsement under the selected catcher vessel thresholds.

An estimated 17 of 31 Western Gulf catcher processor licenses and 20 of 49 central Gulf catcher processor licenses will qualify for Pacific cod endorsement under the 50 metric ton threshold.

Licenses are eligible to qualify for more than one gear-specific endorsement, if they have qualified landings using more than one gear type.

Those holding the LLP licenses approved for the cod fishery would have the right to sell them.

The council had considered an option to extinguish access to the cod fishery when the license is transferred, if such access was based solely on 2007 and 2008 harvests, but was concerned about how it would affect the value of the license.

Hook-and-line catcher processors were exempted from the minimum catch thresholds if they voluntarily stood down from the Gulf Pacific cod fishery to avoid incidental halibut harvests in 2006, 2007 or 2008, but their participation in the fishery using hook-and-line gear would be somewhat limited.

The council's action also allows for 21 communities to participate in a community quota entity program in Gulf management areas, including West Yakutat. These communities qualified for the program because they have fewer than 1,500 residents, lack direct road access, have direct access to salt water and have historic participation in the halibut and sablefish fisheries.

Pacific cod, the oldest groundfish fishery off Alaska, is currently in the midst of an assessment process by Marine Stewardship Council for certification as a sustainable fishery, said Jim Humphries, MSC's fisheries director for the Americas.

Humphries, who is based in Seattle, said that a number of retailers have made a commitment to purchase MSC certified seafood, to support sustainable fisheries.

The initial Pacific cod fishery in Alaska peaked from 1916 to 1920 and steadily declined until 1950. Pacific cod supported large foreign fisheries in the Bering Sea during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s, foreign fishing fleets also focused on sablefish and Pacific cod in the Gulf.

By the early 1980s, a U.S. domestic trawl fishery and joint venture fisheries were operating in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, with the domestic fishery playing an increasingly dominant role over time. By 1991, the Pacific cod fishery was a completely domestic fishery, council staff said.

Pacific cod harvesters today are facing serious financial issues brought on by the global economy, including the collapse of credit sources in Iceland, which has traditionally played a major role in the global distribution of cod.

While Pacific cod in federal and state waters in Alaska remains a multi-million dollar fishery, the value to harvesters is expected to be down significantly in 2009 from 2008, observers in different facets of the industry said. Primary products from the cod fishery include the headed and gutted product, fillets and, to a lesser extent, salted, whole fish and roe.

Last year's harvests brought the peak cod prices ever, and Pacific cod has been increasingly accepted as a good substitute for Atlantic cod, said Chris McDowell, of the McDowell Group, a Juneau-based market research and consulting firm.

Still, with financing increasingly hard to get, prices have been down because there is a high volume of domestic inventory, ASMI officials said. And Glenn Reed, executive director of the Pacific Seafood Marketing Association, said the marketplace for Pacific cod remains dramatically lower than last year.