In Alaska waters, the quota recommendations are as follows: 2C (Southeast), 10.63 million pounds, down 2.8 percent from 2005; 3A (Central Gulf of Alaska), 25.2 million, down 1.1 percent; 3B, 10.86 million, down 17.5 percent, 4A (eastern Aleutians), 3.35 million, down 2.7 percent; 4B, 1.67 million, down 26.2 percent; 4CDE, 3.55 million, down 11.1 percent.
Outside of Alaska, Area 2B (British Columbia), has a recommended quota of 13.22 million pounds, which includes the sport and commercial catch, and would be down less than 1 percent from 2005. Area 2A, covering the West Coast, is expected to go up slightly from 1.35 million pounds to 1.38 million pounds, which includes sport, tribal and commercial catches.
The overall quota recommendation is 69.86 million pounds, down 5.4 percent from the 2005 quota of 73.82 million pounds. Alaska’s portion would be 55.26 million pounds, compared to 59.24 million pounds in 2005. It would be the smallest Alaska quota since 2000, when the quota was 53.07 million pounds. The 10-year average for the Alaska halibut quota is 54.81 million pounds.
Senior IPHC biologist Gregg Williams said that the drop in Area 3B and further west is due to a conservative approach, a lack of data and a lack of juveniles.
“We don’t have the kind of answers for the western area that we do for the other areas,” Williams said. “We’re seeing a lack of recruitment in some of those areas, and we’ve also seen some of our key indicators, like catch per unit of effort in the commercial fisheries and in our own surveys falling quite dramatically over the last five years or better.”
However, Williams has seen signs that the downturn will be temporary.
“One thing we have seen just in the past year in 3B is what seems to be a strong catch of fish just under legal size,” he said. “It’s still a bit early to tell, we’ll have a better picture after next year’s survey, but at this point it looks like a possibility out there. It shows some promise.”
Even if the upcoming year class proves out, though, it will take awhile to see it reflected in the quota, according to Williams.
“Even if that year class does prove to be a recruit class, it still takes a couple of years for that year class to enter the fishery in a strong way,” Williams noted. “They have to grow big enough and start putting on some pounds to be a pretty good chunk of the biomass. It will take a couple years to bounce it back up.”
Area 3B has had an irregular history quota-wise. In 1996, the quota was 3.7 million pounds. The next year, as a result of a new model used by the IPHC, it leaped 144 percent to 9 million pounds, to the immense satisfaction of IFQ holders, who receive a percentage of the quota. Williams explained the jump:
“We noticed some deficiencies because of a change in growth rates in fish, some of the technical aspects of the model weren’t capturing what was happening in the population of the stocks. So we revised it to change some of the parameters of the model, which gave us a better handle on what was happening. It was a technical adjustment in the model that caused that jump up in the quota,” he said.
At that same time, Area 3A, which includes waters around Homer, Seward and Kodiak, only saw a 25 percent increase. Area 3A comprises the bulk of the halibut quota and has remained fairly steady with a 10-year average of 21 million pounds. Williams doesn’t expect that to change much.
“(Area) 3A has always been sort of the central core area of the resource,” he explained, “and it’s the one we have the most data on, and it seems to be the most stable. So we’re not, at this point at least, expecting any large changes in 3A, or 2C for that matter.”
Williams expounded on the reason for the stability of halibut in general. “The dynamics of a resource like herring or crab, where you have very few year classes being fished on at once, one big year class can really spike things up dramatically,” he said. “In our case, with halibut, you’ve got so many year classes comprising the fish stocks that any one big year class doesn’t have that pronounced of an effect. And any drop-off in a year class doesn’t drive everything down really quick, either. It’s much more of a gradual kind of cycle.”
The IPHC uses different exploitation rates for different areas. In Areas 2A, 2B, 2C and 3A, the rate is 22.5 percent of the biomass. Areas 3B and 4A will see a cautious 20 percent exploitation rate; and areas of greatest concern, Areas 4B and 4CDE, will use a 15 percent exploitation rate. Williams explained how that has changed over the years.
“We’ve been using 22.5 percent for the last few years in 3A,” he said. “If you go way back, in the 1980s, you’ll see a 35 percent exploitation rate. But stock dynamics change, the ocean environment changes a lot, and we’ve had changes in growth rates and a whole host of things over time. We’ve got to change with it.”
The IPHC staff will present the recommendations to IPHC commissioners at the 2006 annual meeting, which takes place at the Bellevue Westin Hotel, 600 Bellevue Way NE, in Bellevue, Wash., from Jan. 17-20. Anyone wishing to comment on the catch limit proposals can write to: IPHC, P.O. Box 95009, Seattle, WA., 98145, or fax to (206) 632-2983. Comments must be postmarked no later than Dec. 31.
Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She also has designed and built gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and sablefish and gillnets salmon in upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist.
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