News & Events: Groundfish

The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s (Pacific Council) Scientific and Statistical Committee’s (SSC) Economics and Groundfish Subcommittees will hold a meeting to review a new Quota Share Owners’ Cost Survey to inform decisions on the west coast limited entry trawl catch shares program and to do some initial planning on an upcoming review of the limited entry fixed gear sablefish program.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Pacific Council) will convene three Stock Assessment Review (STAR) Panels this year to review new stock assessments for Dover sole, spiny dogfish, lingcod, and vermilion and sunset rockfishes.  These STAR Panel meetings are open to the public, and will be held online. Dates and times of the STAR Panel meetings […]

Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) is soliciting proposals from a qualified person or group to facilitate a three-day webinar-based workshop scheduled for April 27-29, 2021 to solicit stakeholder recommendations for fishery objectives, performance metrics for assessing the attainment of fishery objectives, and alternative management strategies to be evaluated via a management strategy evaluation (MSE) of […]

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Pacific Council) and the National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest and Southwest Fisheries Science Centers will hold an online workshop to review data and analyses proposed to inform new assessments for lingcod and vermilion/sunset rockfishes scheduled to be conducted this year.  The workshop is open to the public.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Pacific Council) will convene a webinar meeting of its Groundfish Management Team (GMT) to discuss items on the Pacific Council’s April 2021 meeting agenda. This meeting is open to the public. The online meeting will be held Friday, March 26, 2021 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Salmon species The Council manages Chinook and coho salmon. In odd-numbered years, the Council may manage pink salmon near the Canadian border. Sockeye, chum, and steelhead are rarely caught in the Council’s ocean fisheries. Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) (“king” or “tyee”) are the largest and most highly prized of the Pacific salmon. Like all salmon, […]

At-sea monitoring of all fishing trips (100% monitoring) is required as part of the Council’s groundfish trawl catch share program in order to account for discards. Currently, this monitoring is conducted by human observers. From 2012 to 2018, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) studied the use of electronic monitoring (EM) to examine its potential […]

The Council has created two catch share programs in the limited entry nontribal commercial groundfish fishery: a fixed gear sablefish program implemented in 2002, and a trawl catch share program implemented in 2011.  This fact sheet focuses on the trawl catch share program. The trawl fishery makes up a large proportion of the groundfish fishery, […]

Exempted fishing permits (EFPs) allow for fishing activities that are exempt from the usual fishing regulations. They are a way for people and organizations involved in the fishery to experiment with new gears or techniques. The Council recommends EFPs to National Marine Fisheries Service, which is responsible for granting them. Examples of past projects supported […]

The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires annual catch limits and other management thresholds for all actively managed stocks and stock complexes. The terms and reference points used in the Pacific Council’s harvest management frameworks are described below.  Common acronyms MSY      Maximum sustainable yield. A long-term average yield usually estimated in a stock assessment. OY         Optimum yield. Long-term […]