On the final day of its 100th annual meeting in Anchorage on Friday, Jan. 26, the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) again lowered the harvest quota for the 2024 commercial fishing season, with a decrease of 4.57% from a year earlier.
While some of the 221 members of the public – attending either in person or remotely – urged a bigger cut, the six-member commission adopted the total constant exploitation yield (TCEY) as follows:
Area 2B (British Columbia) 6.47 million pounds, down 4.57%
Area 2A (Washington, Oregon, California) 1.65 million pounds, status quo
Area 3A (Central Gulf of Alaska) 11.36 million pounds, down 5.96%
Area 3B (Western Gulf of Alaska) 3.45 million pounds, down 5.99%
Area 4 was subdivided into 5 areas, 4A through 4E, in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.
Area 4A (Eastern Aleutians) 1.61 million pounds, down 6.94%
Area 4B (central/western Aleutians) 1.25 million pounds, down 8.09%
Area 4CDE (Bering Sea) 3.70 million pounds, down 3.90%
In other action, the IPHC recommended that the fishing period begin at 6 a.m. local time on March 15 and run through 11:59 p.m. local time on Dec. 7, 2024. In years past the IPHC fisheries had opened and closed at noon of the designated start and end days of the commercial fishery.
Additional meeting information documents, presentations, recordings and the final report from the meeting are online at the PIHC website: https://www.iphc.int/meetings/100th-session-of-the-iphc-annual-meeting-am100/.
