Aleutian 'other rockfish' limit runs out for 10th straight year

Groundfish boats fishing the Aleutian Islands have been barred from selling "other rockfish" since noon Alaska time on Sept. 21, under a closure running through Dec. 31. The National Marine Fisheries Service shut down the category because the 2026 catch limit of 415 metric tons "will soon be or has been reached," per the agency's temporary rule. It is the 10th straight year the Aleutian limit has run out before winter.

Trawlers must generally treat "other rockfish" as prohibited, sorting and returning it "to the sea immediately, with a minimum of injury, regardless of its condition." Trawlers under camera-based electronic monitoring must instead keep all prohibited catch for an observer to sample. Hook-and-line, pot and jig catcher vessels are exempt from the discard rule: they must retain and land all rockfish, and can normally sell up to 15 percent of their other landed catch as rockfish, but that allowance drops to zero once a species is prohibited. The fish may not be sold, bartered or traded except as fish meal, though crews may eat it or give it away. The category covers all Sebastes and Sebastolobus rockfish, the rockfish and thornyhead groups, except five managed separately: dark rockfish, Pacific ocean perch, northern rockfish, blackspotted and rougheye rockfish, and shortraker rockfish.

Federal Register closure notices for Aleutian "other rockfish" run every year back to 2017, each through December. Last year's 415-ton limit closed Sept. 26; the year's catch reached 523 metric tons, well past the ceiling, by the agency's year-end catch accounting. The hook-and-line, pot and jig exception dates to 2020, when the rule requiring those boats to keep all rockfish took effect.

The 2026 limit cannot go higher under the current framework: the harvest specifications adopted in March, which set annual limits for each groundfish stock, put the Aleutian catch limit equal to its acceptable biological catch, the scientific ceiling on harvest, both at 415 tons. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council recommends those limits.

The 2026 limit was set without a new stock assessment; comments noted there was no 2025 report because "due to the 2025 government shutdown, there was no viable path to produce updated SAFEs," the annual stock assessment reports. In the agency's summaries, one comment called the 2024 assessment "stale and outdated"; another said the council's Scientific and Statistical Committee, its science panel, "identified no scientific basis for reducing 2026 ABC or TAC limits below previously specified levels." The agency received five comment letters, summarized as 15 comments, none mentioning rockfish, and made no changes.

The closure took effect without a public comment period because the latest catch data arrived Sept. 18. Shannon Bettridge, acting director of the agency's Office of Sustainable Fisheries, signed the rule, published Sept. 22.

It is the fourth Aleutian rockfish action in 25 days, following Pacific ocean perch closures to the trawl limited access sector, a trawl group with its own perch allocation, in the Central Aleutian district (Aug. 27) and Western district (Sept. 4), and a prohibition on retaining blackspotted and rougheye rockfish in both districts (Sept. 9); last year both perch closures came Oct. 31.

The rule does not say how much "other rockfish" had been caught by Sept. 18, which gear or sector caught it, or whether boats were targeting it. The account here comes entirely from federal documents; no fishermen, processors or Aleutian communities such as Adak and Atka are quoted.

The 2027 limit will come through the next Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands harvest specifications; whether a new stock assessment will be ready is not stated. The rule is Federal Register document 2026-19390.