West Coast Rockfish Management: Rebuilding Approaches and Progress

Since 2000, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) has initiated rebuilding plans for seven depleted rockfish stocks.  These plans have included severe reductions in fishing mortality for those seven species and have prompted a variety of additional management and science actions aimed at ensuring that harvest is effectively capped and depleted stocks are rebuilt expeditiously.  These actions have included the institution of closed areas and vessel monitoring, new restrictions on gear usage, implementation of a comprehensive observer program, new abundance surveys, and, recently, an Individual Quota program for the groundfish trawl fleet.

Over the past decade, more than 30 stock assessments have been conducted for rebuilding PFMC rockfish species.  These assessments document that considerable rebuilding progress has been made.  One rockfish stock has already recovered and some others are expected to be close, if not rebuilt, following this year’s assessments.  Beyond rebuilding already depleted stocks, NMFS and the PFMC are working closely to reduce the likelihood of future depletion.  These efforts include explicit accounting for scientific uncertainty in setting Allowable Biological Catches, categorizing species vulnerability, improving stock assessment prioritization, consideration of ecosystem signals, and the development and use of new assessment approaches for data-limited situations.