An advisory panel to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) on Wednesday recommended the council take the dramatic step of slashing the Alaska pollock quota in the most important harvesting area next year, but gave the industry welcome news on Pacific cod.
The advisory panel approved researchers' recommendations of a 1.1 million-metric-ton total allowable catch (TAC) for the Eastern Bering Sea Alaska pollock fishery in 2022, a 19 percent reduction from this year's quota.
However, the council earlier this week also approved a 2022 TAC of 141,117 metric tons for Gulf of Alaska (GOA) pollock, a nearly 25 percent increase from this year.
The recommendation is the last step before the council makes its final decision, which will cement the quota for companies operating in Alaska's federal waters -- one of the most important harvesting areas in world.
The advisory panel, which is made up of a broad contingent of stakeholders, including seafood company executives, observers, environmental groups and others, also recommended a higher quota for Eastern Bering Sea Pacific cod of 136,466 metric tons in 2022, nearly 23 percent higher than the Pacific cod TAC in 2021.
Though the Pacific cod stocks have been of concern in recent years, the council's Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluate (SAFE) report's advice (SAFE) report from November found spawning biomass for Pacific cod is predicted to increase to 260,000 metric tons in 2022. That prompted the group to increase its acceptable biological catch (ABC) recommendation after several years of decline.
The Eastern Bering Sea Pacific cod is not being subjected to overfishing, is not overfished, and is not approaching an overfished condition, the report said.
For the Aleutian Islands Pacific cod, the panel recommended a TAC of 13,796 metric tons for 2022, which is the same as the previous year's recommendations.
The panel also approved a GOA Pacific cod TAC of 24,111, a 39 percent increase from 2021.
For 2021, the council approved a TAC for Bering Sea Pacific cod of 111,380 metric tons, down over 21 percent from the 141,799 metric tons approved in 2020.
All signs point to cuts
The advisory panel's TAC recommendations now head to the full council. The council's decision, while still needing approval of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), is effectively final.
The ABC is typically significantly higher than the TAC that is ultimately approved by the NPFMC when it adopts its recommendations.
Last year, for example, the finalized TAC of 1.375 million metric tons was 18 percent below the SSC's ABC recommendation for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.
In 2020, the finalized TAC of 1.425 million metric tons was 30 percent lower than the ABC recommendation.
In mid-November, Russia’s Ministry of Agriculture set its TAC for the 2022 pollock season -- across all fishing zones in what's known as the Far East Fishing Basin -- at 1.927 million metric tons, down from last year, when the quota was set at 1.996 million metric tons.
Russian fisheries researchers warned in October the latest estimates of the size of the pollock biomass in the country's key harvesting region could lead to a sharp decline in the total allowable catch as early as 2024.
The news also comes on top of a complicated supply and demand picture.
As the Alaska pollock "B" season -- which started in early June -- came to a close last month, producers remained concerned not only about the size of the fish being caught, but about the ability to hire enough workers in next year's "A" season.
Ongoing tight labor market conditions leave processors struggling despite the industry overall catching up on producing valuable product forms, several executives in the US industry told IntraFish at the time.
