NOAA moves to renew paperwork for a Bering Sea trawl fleet down to 14 active vessels

The National Marine Fisheries Service is asking the White House budget office to renew, without changes, the permit and quota paperwork for the Amendment 80 fleet, the Bering Sea factory trawlers that fish for sole, cod and other groundfish.

The fleet the paperwork covers has been shrinking. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council's September groundfish plan team report noted "continued reductions in the number of active Amendment 80 vessels." At an Oct. 6 meeting of the council's Scientific and Statistical Committee, a member summarizing that report described the fleet's participation as falling "from 20 down to 14, which is quite substantial."

The paperwork itself is small. The notice counts seven respondents and 14 hours of work a year in total, for the forms companies and cooperatives use to apply for quota and permits, transfer quota, replace vessels and appeal denials.

The council recommended Amendment 80 in 2006. It divides several non-pollock trawl fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands among fishing sectors and lets factory trawlers outside the pollock fleet form cooperatives that share out their quota.

The fleet catches more halibut as bycatch than any other in the Bering Sea, Alaska News reported Aug. 1. Since 2024, its halibut bycatch cap has been tied to halibut abundance, so the limit drops when halibut are scarce. In a separate paperwork renewal this summer, NOAA proposed dropping the fleet's standalone halibut bycatch report and folding it into a single annual bycatch report.