Withdrawn Catch Share Plan for Alaska's Charter Halibut Sector

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council began developing a management plan for the charter halibut fishery in 1993, coincident with its adoption of the Commercial Halibut Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) Program. The Council identified that an unlimited expansion of charter halibut harvests was occurring at the expense of other users. The Council recommended two actions in 1997. Recording and reporting requirements for the halibut charter fishery were implemented by the State of Alaska in 1998. Several versions of a guideline harvest level (GHLs) program were submitted to NMFS before the final program was adopted in 2000 and finally implemented in 2003. The intent was to maintain a stable charter season of historic length, using area-specific measures that would reduce the harvest in a subsequent year. Between design and implementation, charter halibut harvests increased such that they have exceeded the GHLs in Southeast Alaska every year due to the inefficiency of post-season restrictions.

Coincident with its adoption of the GHL Program, the Council initiated development of an IFQ program for the charter halibut fishery. In April 2001 the Council recommended that the charter sector be to incorporated into the existing commercial halibut IFQ program. A motion to reconsider its preferred alternative failed 6:5 in October 2001. In February 2002, the State of Alaska recommended that its charter halibut database not be used for management decisions. After additional analysis and review of two State reports on the logbook data in October 2002 and January 2003, the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee advised that it would be reasonable for the Council to use the logbook data. The rulemaking package was finalized and submitted to the Secretary in 2005. NMFS Headquarters contacted the Council regarding the 5-year delay between action and submission, which resulted in a motion to rescind its recommendation for a Charter Halibut IFQ Program in December 2005. The Charter IFQ Program has been replaced by a Limited Entry Permit Program beginning in 2011 and a Catch Sharing Plan for the commercial and charter halibut sectors, which was adopted in 2008 and is pending Secretarial review. It would set an initial percentage allocation for each sector, set a schedule of subsequent restrictions if the charter sector exceeds its allocation, and a compensated reallocation program whereby charter permit holders may annually lease commercial IFQs to release their anglers from those additional restrictions.