Wespac Committee Advances Bottomfish Rebuilding Plan
Members of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee have advanced a Guam bottomfish rebuilding plan, with a focus on balancing sustainable fishing opportunities with stock recovery goals.
The Council announced in Honolulu on Sept.13 the committee’s recommendation that sets the annual catch limit (ACL) of 34,500 pounds, allowing for fishing to continue while ensuring the stock is rebuilt by 2031.
The Scientific and Statistical Committee met in Honolulu during the second week of September.
The Guam bottomfish fishery was declared overfished in 2019, which mandated the council to rebuild the Guam bottomfish stock in accordance with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the primary law governing marine fisheries management in United States federal waters.
The Council had previously developed a rebuilding plan that set an ACL of 31,000 pounds, with in-season monitoring that would close the fishery, should that limit be exceeded. A stock assessment update presented in June found that while the Guam bottomfish fishery is not overfished, it has not met the rebuilding threshold.
“These fisheries are about catching food; we should fulfill the legal requirements while still maximizing catch,” committee member Ray Hilborn, a professor and researcher at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, said.
The committee didn’t recommend in-season monitoring because of delays for creel surveys and catch expansions. It did, however, recommend a post-season overage adjustment based on a three-year rolling average, preventing overfishing while avoiding premature fishery closures.
The committee also considered potential negative impacts of a federal fishing moratorium, saying that such action could drive fishers out of the industry permanently, and highlighted the importance of local management.
Additionally, it endorsed the results of a July 2024 Guam bottomfish data review panel, and recommended the data be used in the next benchmark stock assessment. This was the first ever review on the data that’s to go into the stock assessment, incorporating fishermen’s perspectives on the data.
In other action, the committee reviewed the results of a seabird bycatch mitigation study that indicated albatrosses were significantly more likely to interact with Hawaii shallow-set longline gear on paired tori (bird scaring) lines deployed partially during the day compared to night sets with blue-dyed bait.
The committee recommended the lightweight short-streamer tori line, as used in a seabird mitigation pilot study, not be included as an approved mitigation measure for the Hawaii shallow-set longline fishery.
The design was shown to be effective in the deep-set fishery and is now part of its suite of required measures. However, the shallow-set fishery operates in areas with windier conditions and higher seabird encounter rates, likely making the design less effective, the council said.
