Bering Sea halibut boats would get a catch cap double the rest of Alaska

Since 2020 there has been no limit on how much halibut a single boat can take in the Bering Sea and Aleutians. Federal regulators want to replace that with a permanent cap, set at nearly twice what applies everywhere else in Alaska.

Under the proposal, a vessel in the northern areas could take about 132,900 pounds, based on this year's catch limits. The statewide cap works out to 69,540. Most of the difference between them would not count against the statewide total at all, so a boat could fill up in the north and still fish the Gulf and Southeast.

The reason regulators are willing to allow it is that the northern halibut fishery is small and getting smaller. Catch limits there have fallen sharply since the quota system began, boats have left, and the agency says the area "has been underexploited in recent years." The suspension of the cap in 2020 was meant to help what remained of the fleet stay viable, and it has been extended four times.

There is a second lever in the proposal. Halibut caught in the Aleutians from quota owned by a community rather than an individual would not count against the northern cap at all, a change the North Pacific Fishery Management Council recommended to push boats toward community-held quota that is going unfished.

The agency's own analysis names the risk. It found no sign that larger vessels took disproportionate advantage while the cap was suspended, but wrote that a permanently higher cap would let individual vessels take a greater share of the northern quota, and that crews could "consolidate their own fishing efforts to harvest their full halibut across fewer vessels." Limits on how much quota one person can own or transfer are unchanged.

About 87 boats have fished those waters in recent years. Nearly all are small operations. Nothing in the rule changes how much halibut may be caught overall, only how much of it one boat can land.

Public comment closes Oct. 5. Without a new rule, the old cap returns after the 2027 season.