The North Pacific Fishery Management Council reached a decision Friday on management measures for 2008 and beyond to keep the halibut charter fleet in Area 2C, Southeast Alaska, within their allocation. Consideration for action in 3A, which includes Kodiak, is coming up in the fall.

In the first part of a two-part motion, the council voted unanimously to supplement the existing 2007 National Marine Fisheries Service harvest control measures by limiting the charter halibut catch in 2C to two fish a day, with one being no longer than 32 inches. They also imposed a four fish annual limit on people fishing from charter vessels.

The previous limit was two halibut per day, any size, with no annual limit.

For the last three years, the charter harvest in 2C has been over their guideline harvest level (GHL) by an ever-increasing amount, 22 percent, 36 percent and more than 40 percent in 2006, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association Linda Behnken said.

The council imposed stricter regulations on Area 2C because of the increasing charter harvest. Area 3A harvest was 9 percent over the GHL.

“There is a huge difference in the magnitude of the overage and that’s why they started with 2C,” Behnken said.

There are also substantial differences in the two fisheries. Charter clientele in Southeast is approximately 95 percent nonresident, while in Kodiak nearly 50 percent of clientele are residents, she said.

“The council is going to be looking at increased harvest controls in the charter fishery in 3A, but recognizing the situation is somewhat different. It’s a different clientele with differing impacts. All of that will be taken into consideration by the council as they move ahead with harvest control measures,” Behnken said.

Charter boat owner and operator Chris Fiala said Kodiak charter boat operators are looking for a local area management plan for Kodiak because Kodiak is different than other places, such as Homer.

“One size fits all doesn’t work for Alaska,” Fiala said.

“The charter fleet here really wants to be separated from Homer. (Area) 2C is quite different from 3A. I don’t think the restrictions they have there will be applied here because we don’t have anywhere near the problem they have as far as overharvesting their GHL,” he said.

“They’ve also got tremendous demand on that resource because of the tour boats. They’ve got a huge demand for fishing and we don’t have that here in Kodiak,” he said.

Fiala believes the Kodiak charter capacity is underdeveloped and the pending moratorium has almost precluded any growth in the industry.

“We could get people coming here from 2C, that’s our fear right now,” Fiala said. “We’re hoping that doesn’t happen.”

National Marine Fisheries Service imposed a measure that went into place last week restricting charter clients in 2C to a bag limit of two fish per day. The measure is not expected to bring harvests under the GHL.

They expect the measure to reduce charter harvest by 22 percent, but harvests were 42 percent over the GHL.

“The council recognized in order to manage the fleet to their GHL allocation they needed to do more, so they added to the existing suite of measures and to what NMFS imposed this annual limit,” Behnken said.

The four fish annual limit in 2C still has to be approved by the secretary of Commerce before it becomes law. If approved, it is slated to be in place by 2008.

“It will retain the existing measures of nonretention of halibut by charter and skipper crew while paying clients are on board and limit the number of lines to the number of paying clients on board. Those two pieces have been in place in the Southeast for the last two years,” Behnken said.

All these measures are estimated to bring harvests to, or at least near, the GHL for 2008.

When the GHL for halibut was established, it was established with an index to a baseline of total halibut abundance of the 1999 to 2000 levels. If total abundance of halibut in 2C dropped by 15 percent, then the GHL would drop by 15 percent.

The total abundance has been dropping in Southeast, but the GHL has not dropped. The 2C commercial quota dropped this year by 20 percent, but the GHL did not drop at all because the total abundance has not dropped yet by 15 percent, Behnken said.

“Our quota just went down more than the total abundance. It’s possible by 2008 the total abundance will have dropped to trigger that reduction in the GHL,” she said.

The council also voted 6 to 5, if the total abundance drops sufficiently to trigger the GHL reduction, there would be a daily one-fish bag limit put in place for charter clients in 2C instead of one fish having to be less then 32 inches, or an annual limit.

The skipper and crew limits would stay in place, as would the line limit. Although both were put into place in 2006, the halibut charter sector went over the GHL by 42 percent anyway, Behnken said.

“The International Halibut Commission has said that it’s unlikely in their assessment right now that the reduction in total biomass will trigger the GHL reduction, but it’s close and they won’t know where exactly the biomass is until they complete their summer stock assessments and analyze the data in the fall and they provide that information to the public in January,” she said.

“Every trend in the halibut charter fleet is a growth trend, the number of clients per boat, the number of halibut being taken and the number of boats in the fishery. All of it is just going steadily up at a recent annual rate of 11 percent,” she said.

The council concludes their meeting in Sitka today.

Mirror writer Deanna Cooper may be reached via e-mail at dcooper@kodiakdailymirror.com.