Portraying Complex Community Engagement and Dependency Patterns: Social Impact Assessment Indicators and Alaska Halibut PSC Limit Reductions

As a result of Gulf of Alaska Pacific halibut stocks experiencing ongoing declines in size at age, halibut protected species catch (PSC) limit reductions have been proposed for Gulf groundfish fisheries.  These reductions may adversely impact communities engaged in the groundfish fisheries, but benefit those engaged in commercial, sport charter, and subsistence halibut fisheries. These adverse and beneficial impacts would be differentially distributed spatially among Alaska communities (as well as within some individual communities) and temporally (with adverse impacts being more immediate and quantifiable and beneficial impacts being delayed and inherently more difficult to quantify).  These impacts will also likely be of different orders of magnitude at the operational if not community level.  This presentation examines the relationship between various social impact assessment indicators of engagement in and dependency upon the groundfish and halibut fisheries in a number of Alaskan communities. The presentation concludes with a discussion of how these relationships, as well as available non-confidential fisheries data, can be used to portray complex engagement and dependency patterns to better anticipate the nature, range, order of magnitude, and distribution of community impacts resulting from the proposed PSC reductions.