JFM99 Quarterly Rpt. sidebar
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(Quarterly Report for Jan-Feb-March 1999)
STATUS
OF STOCKS AND MULTISPECIES ASSESSMENTS: Pacific Whiting Assessment
AFSC scientists, working in
collaboration with Canadian researchers at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DOF)
Pacific Biological Station, completed an assessment of the coastal Pacific whiting stock.
In summer 1998, NMFS and the DOF conducted a cooperative acoustic survey of Pacific
whiting. Because information from the survey was considered essential for evaluating
current stock status, the whiting assessment was delayed from the usual assessment cycle
so that survey results could be used. To coordinate scientific advice, the
1998-99 assessment was submitted to a joint Canada-U.S. technical review that satisfied
the requirements of both the U.S. Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) and the
Canadian Pacific Stock Assessment Review Committee (PSARC). The Review Group meeting
was held in White Rock, British Columbia, during 17-18 February 1999.
The assessment indicated that the
whiting stock is at moderate abundance. Stock biomass increased to a historical high
of 5.7 million metric tons (t) in 1987 due to exceptionally large 1980 and 1984 year
classes, then declined as these year classes passed through the population and were
replaced by more moderate year classes. Stock size has been stable over the past 4
years at 1.7-1.8 million t. The mature female biomass in 1998 is estimated to be 37%
of an unfished stock. Although 1998 stock size is near a historical low, it is close
to average stock size under current harvest policies. The exploitation rate was below 10%
prior to 1993, then increased to 17% during 1994-98. Total U.S. and Canadian catches
have exceeded the ABC (allowable biological catch) by an average of 12% since 1993 due to
disagreement on the allocation between U.S. and Canadian fisheries.
An evaluation of Pacific whiting
harvest policy led to the recommendation that the 40-10 option, the default harvest policy
of the PFMC, be considered for whiting. The 40-10 option results in similar harvest
rates as the hybrid F policy used previously for whiting, and may improve economic
performance of the fishery by dampening variability in harvests. An appendix to the
assessment described a meta-analysis of whiting stock-recruit relationships. Results
indicated that the genus Merluccius may be less resilient to fishing than other
gadoids. A Bayesian decision analysis produced estimates of FMSY (fishery maximum
sustainable yield) in the F40%-F45% range, depending on the degree of risk-aversion.
The 1999-2000 Pacific whiting OY
(optimum yield) of 290,000 t coastwide (232,000 t for the United States) was adopted by
the PFMC in March 1999. The OY was based on 1) an F40% SPR (spawning biomass per
recruit) proxy for FMSY, 2) a 40-10 adjustment because mature female biomass is slightly
below 40% of its unfished level, 3) the average of the OYs for 1999 and 2000, 4) and an
80% U.S. share of the total catch.
By Martin Dorn.
Stock Assessment
Video
James Ianelli assisted Dr. Ray
Hilborn of the University of Washington in teaching a week-long course on Bayesian Stock
Assessment Methods. The 17 participants included 8 scientists from the AFSC, 6 from
the NWFSC, and 3 graduate students from the University of Washington. The course
emphasized hands-on application of Bayesian methods and modern approaches to the
precautionary principle and risk aversion. The course was funded by the AFSC and the
NWFSC. Due to the demand for this type of information, a set of video tapes from the
course is being produced for distribution to interested parties.
Stock Assessment
Software
The REFM Division continues to
actively participate in developing and implementing software applications for analyses of
North Pacific fish stocks. This work is partly funded by NMFS Headquarters as part
of a national initiative to develop common software applications for fisheries stock
assessments and is in coordination with members of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center
(NEFSC) and the NWFSC. A key issue is to modernize software (C++ is at the core of the
numerical methods) and encourage the use of models that adequately deal with uncertainty.
These issues are critical to the success of conservation recommendations made to fishery
management councils. One aspect of the work is to develop a common base model with a
user-friendly interface that will be broadly applicable to many fisheries situations.
Other activities include adapting
software developed in Iceland for the multispecies situation in the Bering Sea. This
model allows for explicit details about fish growth through bio-energetic models in
addition to linkages between species and different areas. During this quarter, Dr.
Bjarte Bogstad visited the AFSC and gave a seminar to discuss the implementation. He
is a leader in applying multispecies models to Barents Sea fish and marine mammal
populations. This initiative requires different stratification schemes from the
generally used INPFC statistical areas and involves recompiling both survey and fishery
data along newly defined biological domains.
By James Ianelli.
U.S. Groundfish
Fisheries Observer Program
During the quarter, 200 observers
were trained, briefed, and equipped for deployment to fishing and processing vessels and
shoreside plants in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and Aleutian Islands region.
They sampled aboard 226 fishing and processing vessels and at 17 shoreside
processing plants. The observers were trained or briefed in various locations.
The AFSC Observer Program in Seattle briefed 67 observers who had prior experience.
The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Observer Training Center briefed 98
observers, and another 30 first-time observers were trained there. At the field
office in Dutch Harbor, two more observers were briefed; three were excused from briefing
because they had just completed a cruise successfully and were returning immediately to
the field. The first quarter 1999 observer workforce thus consisted of 15% new
observers and 85% experienced observers.
The Observer Program conducted a
total of 73 debriefings during the first quarter of 1999. One debriefing was held in
Kodiak, 4 in Dutch Harbor, 18 in Anchorage, and 50 in Seattle. No debriefings are
conducted at the UAA.
In 1999, implementation of the
expanded Community Development Quota (CDQ) program and the recent American Fisheries Act
(AFA) continued. The CDQ program was developed for the purpose of allocating fishery
resources to eligible western Alaska communities to provide the means for starting or
supporting regionally-based commercial fishery activities or related businesses. The CDQ
program was initiated in 1992 with walleye pollock and expanded to include fixed-gear
halibut and sablefish in 1995. In 1998, the program was further expanded to include
multiple species (MS) of groundfish and crab (MSCDQ). NMFS is responsible for
monitoring the groundfish (including pollock and sablefish) and halibut CDQs, and the
state of Alaska is responsible for monitoring crab CDQs.
The AFA, enacted by Congress in late
1998, made changes to the pollock fishery in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.
These changes included reallocation of fish between industry segments, provided for
the formation of fishing cooperatives, and increased observer coverage levels on some
components of the fleet. The offshore component of the fleet has organized a fishing
cooperative and is operating in a manner similar to CDQ. Vessels which participate in both
CDQ and AFA cooperatives have been allotted specific amounts of fish by their management
groups. Thus, individual vessels know their limits before they start fishing and can
adjust their fishing and processing practices to maximize the return from those fish.
The MSCDQ and AFA catch-accounting
for offshore processors is based entirely on data collected by observers and, unlike the
open access fisheries where observer data is used to manage a fleet-wide quota, industry
participants in the MSCDQ and AFA fisheries require individual accounting of fish
harvested in each haul or set. This change has required Observer Program staff to
develop special selection criteria and training requirements for observers, develop
new sampling strategies and regulations to enhance the observers working
environment, and develop changes for the programs data collection and data
management software systems.
By Bob Maier.
Socioeconomic
Assessments Program
During this quarter, Center
economists have been involved in activities supporting the Pacific and North Pacific
Fishery Management Councils (PFMC and NPFMC, respectively) and in other cooperative
efforts within the agency and beyond.
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Cost Recovery Program for the IFQ
and CDQ Plan - A Center economist assisted Alaska Regional Office staff in preparing the
analysis of the proposed IFQ cost recovery plan. Due to higher priorities for NMFS,
the IFQ cost recovery plan will not be implemented before the start of the 1999 IFQ
fishery.
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Reasonable and Prudent
Alternatives for the Alaska Pollock Fisheries - Economic analysis was prepared for the
proposed reasonable and prudent alternatives (RPA). The RPAs are intended to prevent
the BSAI and GOA pollock fisheries from jeopardizing Steller sea lion stocks and adversely
impacting their critical habitat. The NPFMC is scheduled to take final action on the
analysis in June.
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NPFMC Socioeconomic Data
Committee - Center economists continued to assist the committee in identifying the
following:
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The types of economic data to be
collected.
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Data collection methods.
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Measures of economic performance
that would assist the Council and NMFS in meeting their fishery conservation and
management responsibilities.
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Changes in recordkeeping and
reporting requirements that would assist in obtaining economic data.
The committee met in January and
prepared a report for the February Council meeting. The Council accepted the
committees recommendation to initiate an amendment that would require at-sea
processors to complete the Alaska Commercial Operators Annual Report (ACOAR). The
ACOAR is a reporting requirement for all seafood processors under state of Alaska
jurisdiction. It provides weight, price, and value data both for exvessel products
and for processed products. If approved, the amendment would require all processors
to provide this information annually. In addition, the Council recommended that the
committee work with the Alaska Fisheries Information Network (AKFIN) Steering Committee to
improve the ACOAR and other data collection programs.
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NPFMC Bycatch Reduction Programs
- A Center economist assisted NPFMC committees to further develop a halibut mortality
avoidance program (HMAP) and a vessel bycatch account program (VBAP). In February,
the Council asked HMAP proponents to submit detailed proposals for analysis. The Council
expects to receive at least one proposal in April. The Council asked NMFS and
industry to discuss monitoring and other implementation issues for a VBAP.
5. American Fisheries Act (AFA) -
Center economists assisted the Alaska Regional Office in addressing AFA implementation
issues and initiated efforts to assess the effects of the factory trawler cooperative that
occurred as the result of the AFA. The Council will make recommendations to address
different aspects of the AFA during the next 2 years.
6. Community Development Quota
(CDQ) Program - The Center has initiated a study of the Alaskan pollock and groundfish CDQ
programs to determine the amount and the form in which CDQ holdings provide value to CDQ
groups and their partners. The study will include a comparative analysis of
contractual arrangements that CDQ groups used to lease quotas. It will also examine
the way that CDQ partners utilize quota to complement their other fishing and processing
activities. The project is an integral part of the Centers efforts to augment
economic data on the groundfish fisheries, and it should also provide useful information
to policy makers designing future CDQ programs both in the United States and abroad.
7. PFMC Groundfish Management - A
Center economist:
Prepared materials for and
participated in the PFMCs Allocation Committee January meeting in Portland.
Served as the Groundfish
Management Team (GMT) representative to the stock assessment review meeting for Pacific
whiting, held in White Rock, British Columbia.
Participated in the GMT meeting in
Newport, Oregon.
Participated in a workshop
addressing appropriate harvest rates for West Coast groundfish stocks in Monterey,
California.
Served on a panel discussing
economic and social issues, as part of a larger forum on future management of West Coast
rockfish stocks in Monterey.
Created a new series of fish
ticket and annual summary data files for the period 1984-98 and provided them to an
economist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC).
Revised spreadsheet models of
limited-entry fishery participation used in evaluating inseason progress to reflect the
fisherys new structure adopted for 1999.
Provided the PFMC with an overview
of the 1998 limited-entry, fixed-gear fishery for sablefish.
Updated the model for projecting
the three-tiered fishery to include 1998 participation.
Developed an assessment of
management options for the 1999 three-tiered fishery.
Developed a series of tables
summarizing rockfish participation, with particular emphasis on bocaccio, which is in need
of a rebuilding plan and potentially significant fishery revision.
Conducted a comparison of rockfish
species poundages in PacFIN and in the CALCOM database maintained in California, and
identified a data error in the latter.
Provided information on active
vessels (with owner contacts) that have sufficient power/size to serve as platforms for
upcoming survey activities.
Met with members of the Northwest
Regions Fishery Permit Office staff to discuss ways of improving data quality and
usefulness.
Center economists have participated
in the following cooperative activities:
The ongoing development of
programs to collect and model economic data for the Pacific Coast and Alaska commercial
fisheries.
The efforts of the NMFS Excess
Capacity Working Group to develop a plan to address the problem of excess fishing
capacity.
The development of a NMFS budget
initiative to improve substantially the social science capabilities of the agency.
The development of
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA) reauthorization
proposals.
The review of the NMFS science
quality assurance proposal.
The development of standards for
sustainable fisheries.
Efforts to improve the guidelines
for regulatory flexibility analysis.
The first meeting of the
Western Regional Seafood Markets and Fisheries Management working group,
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the regions Land Grant
University Experiment Stations.
The work of the NMFS Pacific
Salmon Working Group.
The statistical analysis of
localized depletion of Atka mackerel in the Aleutian Islands management areas.
The development of maximum
likelihood procedures to value recreational halibut and salmon fishing in Alaska using
data from a rank-ordered stated preference survey.
The review of research proposals
and manuscripts.
The activities associated with the
Alaska groundfish fishery cost, earnings, and employment data collection program include
the following:
Center economists met with several
industry members (owners, managers, controllers, and association representatives) to
discuss the collection of economic data and review draft surveys.
Drafts of five industry sector
surveys were revised.
Progress to date, plans for future
work, and both theoretical and empirical issues were discussed at a workshop for the
projects advisory committee.
Efforts continued to develop
methods to verify the data that will be collected in the cost, earnings and employment
survey of participants in the Bering Sea-Aleutian Islands pollock fishery.
By Joe Terry.
Age and Growth
Program
Estimated releases of production
ages for January to March 1999 were 236 rex sole, 390 northern rock sole, 870 arrowtooth
flounder, 1,091 Pacific whiting, 791 Pacific ocean perch for a total of 3,378. Also
978 were tested, 785 were updated, and 37 were examined and determined to be unreadable.
The program has recently hired three new age-readers.
By Dan Kimura.
Resource Ecology
and Ecosystems Modeling Program: Activities and Research Results
Stomachs collected totaled 13 for
the eastern Bering Sea and 966 for the Gulf of Alaska. Fishery observers performed
no at-sea scans of fish stomach contents in the Bering Sea. Laboratory analysis was
performed on 1,101 stomachs from the Bering Sea, 541 from the Aleutian Islands area, and
720 from the Washington-Oregon-California coast areas. One observer returned with stomach
samples collected from the Bering Sea. Three classes of observers were trained for
stomach collection.
Ecosystem
Considerations in Fisheries Management: Linking Ecosystem Management Goals with Ecosystem
Research
The international symposium on
Ecosystem Effects of Fishing was held by the International Council for the Exploration of
the Sea (ICES) Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) during 6-19 March 1999 in
Montpellier, France (see Items section in this issue). The symposium provided an
opportunity to present a poster (soon to be made available on the AFSC web site)
describing the following proposal regarding linking ecosystem management goals and
ecosystem research. This year we will begin to implement a revision of the Ecosystem
Considerations document that provides information to the groundfish plan teams of the
NPFMC. The revision will expand and standardize some of the content of the
Ecosystems Consideration document to more clearly highlight the status of ecosystem-based
management efforts and the status and trends of various parts of the ecosystem.
These changes and additions would accomplish several goals:
Track ecosystem management efforts
and their efficacy.
Track changes in the ecosystem
that are not easily incorporated into single-species assessments.
Bring results from ecosystem
research efforts to the attention of stock assessment scientists and fishery managers.
Provide a stronger link between
ecosystem research and fishery management.
As fishery management organizations
incorporate more ecosystem-oriented thinking into management, there is a need for more
clearly defined ecosystem-oriented management goals, as well as the tools necessary for
managers to attain those goals. Parallel to this must be the expansion of the scientific
advice to management beyond traditional single-species stock assessment advice. A
broad spectrum of ecosystem research currently conducted by GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem
Dynamics) and GLOBEC-like groups includes habitat research, ongoing trophic interactions
work, and long-term monitoring of noncommercial species. Although the ultimate goal
is to have quantitative predictions from this research to guide management, these research
efforts already serve as indicators of ecosystem status and trends. The indicators
can provide an early warning system for managers, signaling human- or climate-induced
changes that may warrant management action. These indicators can also serve to track
the success of previous ecosystem-oriented management efforts. The NPFMC has started to
include some of this ecosystem research information in an ecosystem considerations
document that accompanies the traditional stock assessment reports. The expansion of
the document will include ecosystem status and trend information and will link management
actions with ecosystem observations.
The NPFMC has explicitly stated the
following ecosystem management goals:
Maintain biodiversity consistent
with natural evolutionary and ecological processes, including dynamic change and
variability.
Maintain and restore habitats
essential for fish and their prey.
Maintain system sustainability and
sustainable yields for human consumption and nonextractive uses.
Maintain the concept that humans
are components of the ecosystem.
The new ecosystems document will
contain two classes of ecosystem indicators: ecosystem management indicators and
ecosystem status indicators. The ecosystem management indicators will measure
performance towards meeting the stated ecosystem management goals. These indices
will have the advantages of providing early signals of direct human effects on ecosystem
components that might warrant management intervention and will provide evidence of the
efficacy of previous management actions, such as the efficacy of the Bering Sea bottom
trawl closures in areas of increasing diversity of benthic fauna. Ecosystem status
indicators will provide measures of ecosystem status and trends and serve the dual
purposes of 1) bringing the results of ecosystem research efforts to the attention of
stock assessment scientists and fishery managers, which will provide stronger links
between ecosystem research and fishery management, and 2) bringing together many diverse
research efforts into one document, which will spur new understanding of the connections
between ecosystem components and the possible role that climate, humans, or both may have
on the system.
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