NOAA would let one boat take far more western halibut to get anyone fishing it

Alaska boats had landed 3.5 million pounds of halibut against a 19 million pound quota by early May, less than a fifth of it, at dock prices of $6 to $7 a pound. Out in the Aleutians and the Bering Sea the shortfall runs deep enough that the federal government suspended its own limit on how much one boat can take, six years ago, and now wants to replace it with something looser and permanent.

The rule in question keeps any single vessel from holding more than half a percent of Alaska's combined halibut catch limits. This year that works out to 69,540 pounds. It has been suspended across most of the Bering Sea and Aleutians since 2020 and is scheduled to come back in 2028.

NOAA Fisheries' proposal would cap a vessel at 5 percent of the annual commercial limit for Area 4 instead — the Aleutians, the Pribilofs and the Bering Sea. The agency says that would let vessels harvest more than the coastwide cap allows, and that the point is flexibility for the boats still working water "where fishery conditions continue to be challenging."

Community quota entities are nonprofits that let eligible communities hold halibut quota and lease it out to residents, a way into the fishery for people who cannot buy quota themselves. Adak's is the one authorized to hold shares in Area 4B, at the western end of the Aleutians. Under the proposal, halibut caught on that quota would not count against a boat's cap at all. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which endorsed the exemption last year, wrote that the sub-option exists "to further provide an incentive for vessels to fish that CQE quota."

Area 4E, the nearshore Bering Sea, is allocated entirely through the Community Development Quota program and is already exempt from vessel caps.

The council has an expanded discussion paper on community quota rules on the agenda for its Oct. 8 through 13 meeting in Anchorage. Written comment on that closes Oct. 2 at noon Alaska time.

Comments on the rule itself are due Oct. 5, through the federal e-rulemaking portal under docket NOAA-NMFS-2026-1025, or by mail to Gretchen Harrington, assistant regional administrator for sustainable fisheries at the NMFS Alaska Region in Juneau. Anonymous comments are accepted.