NPFMC sets Sept. 8-11 hybrid groundfish plan team meeting

Council schedules regular scientific and management review session

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council's Groundfish Plan Teams are scheduled to meet Sept. 8-11, 2026, in a hybrid public meeting, according to the council's meetings listing. The session brings together the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) team and the Gulf of Alaska team for scientific and management review, not a decision-making council vote.

A 2022 Federal Register notice explaining the purpose of these meetings says the teams take up management issues such as ecosystem updates, surveys, essential fish habitat, stock assessment work and proposed harvest specifications. In-person attendance has historically been at a Seattle-based Alaska Fisheries Science Center location, while the online component runs through the NPFMC meetings portal at meetings.npfmc.org. Council materials note the Groundfish Plan Teams generally meet twice a year, in September and November.

The teams' work sits ahead of the catch limits that govern pollock, Pacific cod and rockfish across the BSAI and the Gulf of Alaska. As background, the two Groundfish Plan Teams each approved proposed 2026-2027 groundfish specifications at concurrent meetings held Sept. 17-18, 2025. The BSAI team also discussed accountability measures for blackspotted and rougheye rockfish.

Plan-team recommendations do not set legal catch limits; they feed the council's specification-setting process, which NOAA Fisheries finalizes. NOAA Fisheries said in its action notice that the 2026 numbers "supersede those previously set in the final 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications."