NPFMC 279 Day 4 - June 7, 2026

Good morning, everyone. So we have completed our staff presentations and AP report on Agenda C5. We're ready to begin public testimony. It looks like we have 34 people signed up. As a reminder to the public, individuals and companies will have 3 minutes, organizations and associations 6 minutes.

You'll see a timer on the screen, screen, and so when your time is up, I'll ask you for a concluding statement. And before we begin, I want to acknowledge how important of agenda item this is and how important it is to have meaningful dialogue back and forth with the public. We unfortunately have a very tight agenda in front of us, and we can't meet past Tuesday, and we have a lot of issues to cover after this one. So to make the best use of time, I would just ask council members to keep their questions focused on, you know, critical information needs for informing decision moving forward, and hopefully, you know, we'll be able to just maintain a productive discussion and ensuring that we have meaningful dialogue with the public. So thank you all very much.

So that'll take us to our first testifier, Duncan Fields, followed by Alexis Kwatschka.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the Council. My name is Duncan Fields, and I representing the CQEs in Old Harbor and Usinky, Cape Barnabas Inc., and Usinky Community Holding Inc. It's a little daunting task to come before the council first thing in the morning, first testifier. So I was thinking, how can I get the council's attention? And I was thinking that maybe not all of you know the unique character of the Kodiak Tanner crab fishery, which is it's a daylight-only fishery.

And you ask, why is there a single crab fishery in Alaska that's a daylight-only fishery? That goes back to 1998. We were working with the Board of Fish to reopen the Tanner crab fishery after it had been closed for a while. And we needed 4 votes on the Board of Fish, 4 out of 7. You have to count to 6 here on the council.

And I didn't have a 4th voter, the people I was working with. And one board fish member was very concerned about Tanner crab coming up in the winter when it was very cold, and under stress, Tanner crab will drop their legs. And so the term we were using was hockey pucks on deck, and you didn't want the Tanner crab fishery to have hockey pucks on deck, you know, dead loss from the Tanner crab. And so after mulling it over and talking with some of the people that I was working with, we suggested a daylight-only fishery. And eventually the Board of Fish members said he could probably support a daylight-only fishery.

And so that's how the Tanner crab fishery in Kodiak became as it is today, unique in terms of the fishing regulations. Now that I have your attention, let's talk about the motion at hand.

I'm asking that the council bifurcate Alternative 3 from the current EIR and move forward and identify the preferred alternative at this meeting by selecting the custom area for year-round closure to non-pelagic trawl.

I feel some urgency on this issue to move forward. I think the numbers that we need to look at are the population numbers, estimated population numbers, in the custom area, about 10.7 million crab. And the amount of crab that are taken annually by bycatch, some— somewhere between 1 and 2 million crab in the last few years, an average of 6 million crab over the last 14 years. But let's focus on the last few years, the 1.2, 1.5, 2 million crab annually, 15, 20% of the known biomass in the common area every year as crab mortality or crab bycatch. Those are significant numbers.

Kicking this down the road a year or 2 years or 3 years, or not having addressed it in the last 20 years, has had an impact on the crab in this area. That's why I feel the urgency to move forward.

So we have kind of 4 decision junctures. Should we move the analysis forward? Should we bifurcate Alternative 2 in the analysis? Should we look at more closed areas or more configuration of a closed area? And then how do we evaluate a closure once it's actually implemented?

I appreciate the SSC's, um, recommendations to the council. That's our brain trust, we have to listen to them. I think they misplaced their emphasis not on the council's actually stated problem or stated goal, which was to minimize the interaction between the trawl fishery and Tanner crab, or to reduce Tanner crab PSC. The SSC looked at biometric structures and a number of other issues, whether or not this action would be viewed as impacting the overall population in town of Crabtree Island. And I've read that SSC report several times, so I think the SSC was misplaced, and consequently I think the recommendation not to move this forward was misplaced.

I'll not belabor that point, but moving on to then— well, let me just say one more thing about the SSC motion. I think A lot of time and energy could be misplaced if the council continues to try to predict or model where the non-pelagic troll fleet will move should an area be closed or the customary be closed. We have to be practical or, or use our own experience. Many of us have been involved in mobile fisheries, where an area closed, time and area closure or something, you pick up your gear and you move. We're talking about only 10% of the flatfish, arrowtooth flounder, and so on for the non-pelagic trawl fishery in the custom area.

It's not a difficult equation to understand that that fishery will move to one of the adjacent areas where you already have substantial non-pelagic trawl fishing. The assessment about impacts on processors in a shoulder season, all those kinds of assessments assume that somehow those fish are going to be lost. Again, I disagree with the SSC that we need to spend much more time in the analysis relative to predicting behavior that's likely to be influenced by a whole host of variables. Time of the month, tides, winds, the other kinds of things that fishermen take into account when you're deciding where and when to go fish. So let's talk about bifurcating the package.

I strongly recommend that the council bifurcate the discussion of current closed areas from a motion that you have that's titled and identified Tanner Crab Protection Areas. You're expanding way beyond the scope of what the Council intended to do. And this is not the environment for the Council to begin looking at increased or enhanced trawl opportunity areas.

I think in another context, it's like walking through a forest and seeing that you don't necessarily have any spotted owls. And so then you open up the regulations to go in and clear-cut. That's not how we want to manage these fisheries. We want to do it surgically. I understand the concern that you have static closures.

I'm frustrated with static closures. I think we can do better, but the way to do better—. Mr. Fields, I apologize, your timer has expired. So if you have a concluding statement, and then we'll see if there are any questions for you. Thanks.

That was gentle, Madam Chair. Thank you. I, I would just say, when you're looking at new areas, bring in the ADF&G biologist to draw the areas. Fishermen come with inherent bias. Help me preserve what I want.

The focus of this action is on saving crab. If I believe the customary is a compromise, move forward with that. But if you're going to bring other areas forward between now and the council's motion, reference CADFMG biologist on where we'll save the crab. Thank you for those final comments, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr. Fields.

We'll see if there are any questions. Yes, Miss Gohan. Thank you, Madam Chair, and apologies, I'm sick. And thank you, Mr. Fields, for your testimony. Um, This council, you're well aware that we lean on our SSC heavily for their advice, and they've recommended that this— some more data be compiled for this, and we go to another initial review.

So I'm, I'm curious if you can elaborate why you think this is the time to pick a PPA on non-pelagic trawl, given that more information is going to be coming forward in the next round.

I think it's—. Thank you for the question. It's a multi-level complex question, limited time, and I'll, I'll answer it briefly. I think the focus needs to be on what the council's goal has stated: minimize interaction with the trawl gear, reduce PSC. I think the current analysis has the information to provide the council with an ability to make a preliminary preferred decision.

The SSC had a number of other recommendations. I think as you parse those out, Some are within the staff's capacity in a timely manner to provide the council. Others are not.

It's my view that you never have all the information you need to make the difficult decisions as a council member, but the question is, will additional information actually change the decision you're going to make. And in this context, Madam Chair, I think a number of the SSC's recommendations, well— well, meaningful in terms of additional information, not— may not be substantial in terms of the decision you make as a Council. I trust that answered your question.

Thank you for your testimony. Appreciate it.

So Alexis Kwachka is up next, followed by Teresa Peterson.

They say I have a big voice, so I have to push that thing away from me. I'm gonna do, uh, I never read off of this. I usually go, but since I'm representing 130 permits, I need to kind of get it together. Madam Chair, members of the council, for the record, my name is Alexis Kwatschke. I'm representing KCAC, 130 permits, or last dues count.

KCAC does not support the recommendations of the SSC or the AP motion. We did not collaborate or add anything to the discussion. We support moving forward with crab closures of the custom box year-round to trawl. If the council's intent is to focus on Tanner crab and Tanner crab protection, the custom Custom box strikes a compromised position and needs to remain in any analysis moving forward. Post-it stamp closures or cutting the custom box into pieces to try to accommodate one gear over another will not include adequate grounds to cover the crab in all their life cycles.

The heat maps clearly define use of the custom box throughout the year. The custom box or any box must maintain connections to state waters for continuity for the crab in the bays to move to offshore waters. Caluda Bay has pelagic Only UGAP Bay shows no trawl footprint that we can see. Both bays maintain the highest crab per kilometer towed during surveys. We appreciate the great concern the trawl fleet has about predators eating the crab.

I find it ironic by their own admission that they suggest they can literally trawl continuously and fill their boats because of the backfilling of these predators. Fish are mobile, just like trawlers. Crab are fairly static in their preferred habitat defined by the heat maps. Do we really think we can move an— we can remove enough to make any difference. Do we manage any fishery like this?

Casey— Casey AC was born in the community of Kodiak that's seen incredible change. Sea otter hunting, whaling, herring, codfish, POP, shrimp, crab, jay feed, pollock, groundfish— almost all have crashed in some way. Through each of these, Kodiak has maintained and grown. None of these are exclusive, and each bore on the back of the other. So we are where we are through the process of where we've gotten to.

Um, KCAC does not support, uh, Alternative 3 moving forward in the motion. It's a very complicated ask. We support doing something with this, but it's a standalone item. It has to be done right. If you're going to go in and look at other areas, you have to have your criteria and what you're trying to determine.

I heard one testifier say they wanted to go down and look at the south end King Crab closure It is the last remaining spot we have any meaningful king crab on the island. So do that, that's fine, I'll support it, I'll work on funding so you can get what you want out of it. But I think you cut it out of this right now and let's talk about what we're talking about, it's crab protection. State waters, crab fishermen, KCAC members, and coastal communities bear the entire conservation load to even have this fishery. Unsure where the federal fisheries have contributed One thing, we are PSC.

The blessing and the curse of being outside the GOA FMP, the silo of crab data from the federal survey would be leading this discussion. It's sitting in a silo. Uh, caps would be in place. There's so much more you could do if you, if you know, and you could analyze that data. It's there if you want to do it, but that's going to require a lot of staff time to do that.

But what we have is an incredible, articulate, state-managed team that does its absolute best to manage the Tanner crab fishery in Kodiak, always being creative and open, transparent and open to discuss the crab fishery with anyone. They have built an outstanding relationship of trust from Tanner crab fishermen. KCAC and its members value that over this process. Tanner crab are much more than a regulatory discard or PSC and should be treated as such regardless of their FMP status. If you want to talk about 10 or 12 non-pelagic boats that make X percent on their average income or make Y percent of their average income and their displacement, that's fine.

But nowhere in the paper does it state that the catch will be foregone. I'm talking about 85 to 130 vessels that are 100% reliant on this area to have a fishery. Without a fishery, we have no income, and many alternate, alternate to fisheries other than cod, which seems to be the gold standard currency for trawl fisheries. If the council wishes to discuss reallocation of cod, KCAC is all on board. Protecting crab for me in this box has been 22-year journey.

KCAC, 14-year journey. We are skeptical of what will come from this now. Through the SSC and the AP motion, this action seems to have shifted to a Christmas tree list of all the failures of doing nothing for Tanner crab for the last 22 years.

When this was brought to your attention. Uh, we were talking about Tanner crab protections and all their lifestyles. We take the displacing of businesses off the fishing ground seriously, but that is not the discussion. The discussion is Tanner crab. Again, the cost— custom box is a compromise.

We started much bigger boxes and here we are, and, and we were part of that. Only including non-pelagic trawl is a compromise, and without year-round closures that will that will be analyzed for comparison of a positive or negative impacts moving, you know, I mean, that, that's critical. How— what are we going to do, you know? Are we going to look at this thing in 3 years and say, ah, did nothing? No, we need to have a, a thought-out plan that falls in Alternative 3, and I am perfectly happy to have that move into whatever we do for a closure in the Gulf.

Uh, concluding, I again moving Alternative 3 in this action that, that we would support to be analyzed, but we feel it distracts from what the goal is of this action, which is Tanner Crowd Protection.

Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr. Kwatschka. Do you have any questions? Yes, Miss Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Kwatschka, for your testimony. Um, early in your testimony, you spoke about the need for any box must maintain connectivity.

I'm guessing you're referring to the AP motion there that had several additional boxes. Can you speak more to that?

Yeah, I, you know, a great frustration in this process, Curt Cochran, we talked about geofencing, I don't know, 15 years ago, and I look and so what we're stuck with is this regulatory structure of straight lines, which NIMS enforcement seems to think is the only way they can enforce a fishery, and at the API said, you know, we could do a lot with bathymetric curves and defining where the crab habitat is, the biologists know that, So when you draw a straight line and, and it goes to a bay, there's going to be all kinds of habitat in there that every gear group is going to want to have. But what the reason I say you have to draw that to the state waters is because the state waters is theoretically this preservation box that, that we don't have bottom contact on, and those crab do whatever they do in the bays, and there is some sort of migration that goes out. Now in the course of that migration, they're going to have rock, sand, mud, whatever you want to put together, and they navigate that, that structure. Now, one fisherman say, well, I never catch any crab in that, but I can tell you from spending my entire life fishing in this area, I have caught crab in every structure that there is on the bottom. So, so there may not be crab there all the time, but they utilize all of that benthic habitat to get from inshore to offshore.

And, and so working with the confines that we have, I just think that it's imperative that we draw those lines to state water so we have some continuity of those crab to do whatever they do in that without being disturbed.

Thank you. Mr. Quatka, there's obviously been a lot of discussion on this issue about the importance of this, this area and the, the amount of abundance during high levels of abundance of Tanner crab.

A lot of, you know, conversation over the last few years about indicators and measures of success when we develop these spatial closures. And relative to Alternative 3, I think we're, you know, the purpose of that was really to, you know, have a look back. But as we're looking at an initial closure here, do you have any, you know, any feedback as far as indicators of success if we do move forward with this and 5 years, how will we know that we've achieved the objectives of the Tanner fisherman moving forward?

Well, I appreciate the question. I am not a biologist, I'm not a PhD, I kill these things for a living, and I just think that when we look at what the directed fishery's done as far as conservation, we supported everything that the biologists in, in the area have, have suggested. Uh, the idea was to taper down our exploitation rate on males as we were seeing them decline out of the fishery so we could push enough males to mate with the out-of-sync cycle of females that were coming into the fishery. Very creative management. I think that's a great idea.

I, I think that people much smarter than myself can come up with a matrix of success or failure of what this box looked like. My concern is that we get into too old postage stamps to try to accommodate everybody. I don't think that's fishery management, and we don't have anything to analyze because we may get into a seasonality issue where we can and we can't, we might and we might not, so we won't know what we did. And it's just critical that We set the criteria, which I think really falls into alternative 3, and then we apply that into what we do with this static closure. And that's why I think you need to separate those two.

And, and the SSC can work on what we're going to evaluate as a success. I can help in that process. The fishermen will help in that process, and the area managers should be really collaborative in working that process because I am not a biologist. Thank you for that and for the reminder of the changes to the harvest policy. Thank you guys very much.

Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Kimball. Thank you. Mine is quick. I just missed in the very first part of your testimony, Mr. Kwatschke, on your PPA suggestion. Was it a year-long closure for non-pelagic trawl?

I said trawl. All trawl. I, I, um, I appreciate the conversation of looking at the footprints of trawl. I think that it would be misrepresentative of me to say that the people I represent think that trawl doesn't have an impact. Looking at the politics of this, I think a box and a closure would be a success so long as we can evaluate the efficacy of that box.

I personally, uh, wonder about that interaction, but if you look at the amount of PFC coming from it, I, I'm okay with if you want to exclude that. But I, I think since we're discussing things and no, I don't know where this motion is going to go or what you guys are going to do, uh, keep discussing it. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

Teresa Peterson is up next, followed by Kurt Cochran.

Good morning, Council. Theresa Peterson. I'm a Kodiak-based commercial fisherman, and my family fishes Tanner crab. Um, first off, the council should bifurcate Alternative 3 from a crab protections discussion. It's confusing the issue, confusing the public, and quite honestly, It feels disingenuous and non-transparent to have an alternative to open or modify closed areas around Kodiak Island embedded in a crab protection measure.

It's been 40 years. Anyone could have brought up a review at staff tasking and asked for a discussion paper at any time. The review process should stand on its own merits. I don't think it's appropriate to try to hitch, hitch it to this wagon. It doesn't feel right.

In terms of Alternative 2, the areas defined— the area defined in the custom area is not really speculative or poorly understood. It's reflective of good faith efforts to reduce the area. We're giving up areas we want to see protected in the spirit of compromise. Decades of survey data consistently identify the gully systems connected to the bays as some of the most persistent and biologically important Tanner crab concentration— concentrations in the region. The objective is defined to minimize groundfish fishery interactions with Tanner crab in high-density areas.

This habitat supports mature reproductive crab mating and molting aggregations, females carrying egg clutches, and juvenile settlement zones that are essential to the future stock. As it stands, federally managed groundfish fisheries are allowed to bottom trawl year-round, which they do, directly on top of densely populated Tanner crab areas. Protecting this area is consistent with National Standard 9 to minimize bycatch to the extent practicable, and the guidance that states any proposed conservation and management measure that does not give priority to avoiding the capture of bycatch species must be supported by analysis. The council has the authority, the mandate, and the tools to protect this population through targeted year-round closures to non-pelagic trawl. I fully support a review process of the new closure.

I think looking at 5 to 7 years makes sense. The science is clear, the habitat is known, and the risks are increasing. Right now, a fraction of the flat scenario toothtack is harvested. As prices of pecan and arrowtooth go up, which they are, so will the effort right on top of the crab. The paper notes concerns about trawl displacement, and it's important to look at, but should not stop this from moving forward.

It's time to act. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions. Yes, Miss Gowan and Miss Kimball.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Miss Peterson, for your testimony. In your testimony, you mentioned that the gully areas consistently biologically important for Tanner crab, but then you also tied in the importance of the habitat for various life stages of crab. And when I look at our SSC recommendations under this, they asked for clarification on whether this action is just about unobserved mortality and mortality of crab, or if it's also about structure and function of habitat. So I'm wondering if you can speak to— do you think that's an important piece to bring into this? Yes, through the chair.

Thank you, Ms. Gowan. Yes, I think that's an incredibly important piece of this discussion. These crab— the crab are complex. I feel like there's a lot we don't know about their life's history and vulnerabilities to fishing interactions, but the crab are intricately tied to this region in that benthic habitat, and we know from You know, we have site tagging studies, but I think we learn more through the annual survey that the juvenile crab, you know, they're born in the bays. They've, as they grow, they're seeking new area.

They migrate out into these gullies where you're finding the crab that are reproducing for the future. And there is something about this habitat that is so critical to these crab, and I don't think we fully understand it. Nor may we ever in our lifetimes, but we know this habitat is important to them. And it's difficult to understand what the impacts may be in this region from the Fishing Effects Model, NEFH. My sense is it's not really designed to look at small regions like this.

And so I think it's important to understand as much as we can about the value of habitat to a species like crab that depends on the seafloor. They're not fish. They're connected to that seafloor.

Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. Now I have two questions. I thought some of the— some of your testimony and others too was about the, like, the urgency of this action. And so are you asking us to now bring in habitat and a habitat analysis in order to ensure that we're covering that part?

Our purpose and need is very specifically about trying to manage and reduce interactions with crab, reduce crab PSE in this area. So I need to understand what you're asking is really broadening this analysis. Thank you, Ms. Kimball. You know, I'm not, I'm not asking to broaden it to the level that we tie in habitat in a sense that— it really adds more time to this discussion. I just think it's important to recognize the value of this habitat to this area and acknowledge it, you know, acknowledge that we have these crab here during low abundance, high abundance, that there is something about this area.

It's unique, and the unique bathymetric value, the connection of the valley with these gullies, does warrant consideration of the value of habitat. And so that's, that's the point I'm trying to make there.

Thank you. My second question was about the request to bifurcate Alternative 3, and, and the council's purpose and need is really clear that we were also going to consider a process to look at the effectiveness of these other closures that have been in place since the 1980s. And so is that request to bifurcate really about the confusion, even though we, we have that explicitly in our purpose and need, or is it concern that the lack of analysis or the lack of a clear process to do that will really slow down action on Alternative 2? Uh, thank you. I think it's a little bit of both.

And so, um, I understand helping to inform a review process for this closure in looking back and looking and looking at the, the lack of a review process for these enclosures that were established in '86 and '89. What I'm struggling with is I'm finding I don't know if with this there's going to be an option that says, okay, we're closing this area considering, so let's go ahead and do a trade-off. Let's go ahead and open this area over in Alitak, or open this area in, in Marmot. I see value in taking the information that's been provided in this initial review, moving it over to a separate discussion to consider how and if those areas should be modified, but do that on its own track. Utilize that information that was brought forward to help inform a review process for this new closure.

But the tying them together, I find, is quite troubling, actually. When I saw them listed up and broken out as elements, it kind of made me sick to my stomach a little bit. I'm like, oh my goodness, how did this— how did we get here with this? It's that I see value in it, but it goes on its own train. Okay, thank you very much for your testimony.

Thank you. So Kurt Cochran is up next, followed by Dave Kubiak.

You put some slack to the— okay, thank you. Madam Chair, members of the council, I'm Kirk Cochran. For the record, I don't remind you, we've been here before doing this. This isn't the first time, and back then there was no scientific evidence that trawl has any impact, and the paper just still today doesn't. I do not want this bifurcated.

It needs to stay as it is, and I can talk about that later, but I got a whole testimony here about all You know, elevated sweeps, all the things that you've heard against what they're— but I, I think it's time to switch. So I, I brought some maps. This is the closure that's already there for you guys to look at. Um, it's a Barnabas Type 1, and then it's already still in effect, and it can be changed or whatever, but just shows you over the landscape of what's there. Can we go next slide, please?

And it will show you what you guys are calling Type 3 Barnabas that's never been opened, and how that goes into sandbox and a lot of areas we're talking about.

Because of the way it's— I don't think I get into details. Anyway, it could probably never ever be closed because it's tied to bot survey instead of trawl nowadays. So, next one, please. So in the last meeting, we listened to a lot of people, and this is kind of what we know, uh, or what I feel as a fisherman. And, you know, listen to Teresa talk about how crabs move and different things.

Set down on what's really, really important to us. We trawl all over this, it's all important to us. But for Tanner crabs and the protection of Tanner crabs, this yellow area kind of shows what I probably believe that in my heart that could be closed and Leave the sandbox open so we can trawl, we can pot cod, we can longline, we can fish Tanner crabs in it and everything, but gives all the area around it protection. Next one, please.

It's just the same thing, but it has a circle. Different ways to manage discrete areas. I can move it? No, it's okay. Oh.

It's just a different way to get around that. Alexis talked about the geofencing. See, I'm gonna use that one. Next one, please. Trying to go fast.

This is overlay of a couple presentations you're gonna hear today and how they kind of interact and one's moving into the sandbox, but I really think that's important. Next one.

And then we're gonna run into alternative 3 opening. So I believe that Chiricoff should be open. Next one.

Alitak, that red line on the bottom, I think should be moved and be opened. I don't believe the rest of that box should be open, as much as I would love to, but there's some king crab and there's scallop beds, there's other things in that area, but that bottom part doesn't. Next one.

Marmot. I believe that that line should be open also and moved over that red line on 152 even, um, and have access back into that. All that being said, if you look at your heat map that you guys are talking about, everybody talks about, it's pretty good indication. And you look at the sandbox there is not much interaction for us. That is over 13 years.

And you take that blue, what was that, 1 to 17 crabs in a kilometer, so 0.6 of a mile, over half a mile towed with survey gear designed to catch them. We use control gear above it that's not designed to catch them. There is, we are not having the impact. And I see you're giving me the look, so I'm running out of time. But anyway, thank you for the opportunity just to talk I just wanted to show you guys what we're really talking about instead of just everybody talking and what, you know, what's going to affect all of us.

And do not split it. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'm glad my facial expressions are starting to work. It's much easier than cutting people off. Let me see if there are any questions for you.

Yes, Miss Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony. And I would like to ask a question about this last slide here that you have. Thank you for your input.

And can you just— I know you had to go fast. What is your thinking for suggesting the red line? Why is that? Why do you think that would be the appropriate place to modify the current closure? Because I think if you try to go more than that— I mean, in all reality, I think the science says you could do the whole thing.

But if you do more than that, you're stepping into, you know, a rattlesnake's nest, a hornet's bees, or whatever, you know, whatever. You have some native villages there, and we've heard testimony, uh, they don't like trawling out in front of their where there's different things. You have that community there. There's a lot of jig boats that will be fishing in this area. There's spot boats that'll be fishing in the area for gear conflict.

There's just a lot of things that go on as a heavily used area, and we've been out of it for so many years. But when that box went in, we lost a good part of production and closed, um, areas close to town that we used to trawl for rock sole and for arrowtooth and all these other things. This action, I don't care what people want to say about it, is the first time you guys— we're not rationalized, we should be rationalized, and that's why I don't want things split because a lot of promises that haven't happened— but outside of a rationalized fishery, this is the first time you guys actually have the ability to do something, both sides, open up area and close area and do some science and see what their true impacts are. You can go, let us fish in this, and with the trawl, with the crab survey with the trawl and with observers and some different things, you can see what our impact is, an area that has not been fished for a long time. If some crabs come back into that, if we close some stuff down by Barnabas or in the sandbox area, same thing.

You can actually take some time and look at this area that's been trawled with crabs for a long period of time and see what the impact— see if the crabs actually just start dropping off, see if they actually produce. But you have an opportunity to take both sides of this coin and actually look at it and get some meaningful data that we all just guess and wonder about right now. So I— that is really important, I think, to, to do.

Thank you very much. Yes, Miss Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Cochran, for the testimony. And I, I especially appreciate that you brought maps. It's helpful for me to see the visuals.

Um, the map that's on the screen, and you noted an area in Al-Ataq that you proposing to be open. If those areas were opened, um, would that provide opportunity for any displacement if the custom box was closed?

It will provide opportunity for some displacement, yes. It will never provide what that area down there provides. There's a reason why everything's there. That sandbox area is our cleanest fishing, you know, whether it's salmon or whether it's halibut or whether it's crab. So that's why you'll have lots of We've spent a lot of time there.

When you take the CP out of it, it's more meaningful to us than what you are saying at 10%. Uh, we go there because of heavy northeast or northwest cold, wet in the winter, and that gives us protection. We can set up there by the island, we can tow out, turn around, come back and pick up in the shelter of the island. So nothing's going to totally replace that, but these other places would help us have access and do some grounds that we got lost and not have an impact on crabs, and we could see what, what's happening in there. So it's— I won't say it's a trade-off, but it's a good, it's a good step in the right direction.

Okay, thank you for your testimony. Thank you, and good luck. Thank you. Dave Kubiak is next, followed by Natasha Marie Hayden.

Good morning, Madam Chair.

Uh, I couldn't hear, I had to use my headphones. I'm Dave Kubiak. I've resided and fished in Kodiak for over 60 years. The argument that trawling benefits Tanner crab by removing predators has been made. But the logic is backwards.

Bottom trawling doesn't selectively remove Tanner crab predators. Trawl gear indiscriminately sweeps up whatever's on the seafloor, including Tanner crab themselves, juveniles, gravid females, and benthic invertebrates that make up the ecosystem supporting the crabs. You would be destroying the habitat in the name of protecting what lives in it. Tanner crab are the bycatch. Tanner crab are frequently caught as much— as caught as bycatch in bottom trawl fisheries targeting groundfish like flats, pollock, and cod.

So the industry arguing it should trawl crab habitat to help crab is asking to be given access to grounds where gear will incidentally kill the very animals they claim to be protecting. The argument is transparently self-serving. Habitat destruction is the opposite of conservation. Tanner crab depend on complex benthic habitat— soft sediment, sponges, structure on the seafloor where they shelter, molt, and reproduce. Trawl gear physically destroys the structure.

A crab that survives predation has no suitable habitat for molting or mating, doesn't survive for long anyway. Removing predators while wrecking habitat is a net loss for the populations of fish as well. Predator-prey systems are self-regulating. Cod, halibut, and other groundfish that prey on Tanner crab are themselves part of a balanced system. When the crab populations are high, predators do well.

When the crab populations are low, predators naturally shift to other prey. Artificially disrupting that balance through trawling is an unpredictable cascading effect, exactly the lesson Alaska learned from its 20th century bounty programs where predator reduction repeatedly backfired. Science doesn't support it. There's no credible peer-reviewed evidence that bottom trawling adjacent to or within crab habitat produces net population benefits for Tanner crab. The burden of proof should fall entirely on those making the claim, and it has not been met.

Anecdotal trawling— trawler reasoning is not management framework, is not a management framework. Who benefits? The only party that clearly benefits from allowing trawling on Tanner Bottom is the trawling industry, which gains access to productive fishing areas. Framing commercial access as ecological stewardship is a well-worn industry tactic, similar to how salmon fishermen once argued that bounties on Dolly Varden and bald eagles were protecting their catch, claims that later proved scientifically hollow.

Hmm. In short, the argument conflates commercial interest with conservation benefit, ignores the direct harm trawling causes to crab and their habitat, and has no scientific basis to stand on. Please support protections for Custom Area, Custom Box, by restricting trawlers there. In addition, any loosening of trawl restrictions is defeating Tanner crab and other species protection. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions.

Seeing none, thank you so much. Thank you. Um, Natasha Marie Hayden is next, followed by Jamie O'Connor.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Council. First, I would like to thank the Chinook, Cowlitz, and the Klickitat nations and acknowledge that this meeting is taking place on their homelands. I'd also like to draw attention to the picture on the screen. It shows me successfully harvesting Tanner crab with my family a few years ago in Marmot Bay.

My name is Natasha Hayden. I'm here on behalf of the Kodiak Island Tribal Coalition. We represent all 10 tribes of the Kodiak Archipelago, and we respectfully urge the council to move the draft RIRA regarding the Gulf of Alaska Tanner crab protection measures forward for final action and identified a preferred alternative establishing year-round trawl closures within the custom area. We strongly support the analysis conclusion that a review of existing crab protection trawl closure areas should not be incorporated into the current Tanner crab protection area. If you recommend a separate review process of 4 Gulf of Alaska protection areas, the Marmot Bay trawl closures, must remain excluded from that discussion.

Kodiak Tribes carry an ancient and enduring responsibility to care for the marine waters and living resources surrounding Kodiak Island. For thousands of years, our people have depended upon and safeguarded these ecosystems through stewardship practices grounded in respect, balance, and sustainability. Our relationship to these waters predates statehood, federal management systems, and the council itself by countless generations. While the Council has managed these fisheries, fisheries for roughly 50 years, Alaska Native people have lived with and cared for these resources since time immemorial. From our perspective, conservation is not simply a management objective.

It is a cultural obligation passed down through our ancestors and carried forward for future generations. It is therefore deeply troubling that nearly 18 years has passed since this issue was first raised in 2008., and only now is the council approaching final action to protect one of the last known concentrations of Tanner crab near Kodiak Island. The analysis clearly demonstrates the need for meaningful Tanner crab protections while also outlining the potential impacts of the trawl fleet. However, from the perspective of Kodiak Tribes, it cannot fully capture the true ecological and cultural value of protecting these crab populations. The impact to crab stocks are difficult to quantify because an unknown number of crab die after trawl encounters without being retained or counted, and because observer coverage for the non-pelagic trawl fleet remains inconsistent.

In addition, our coalition does not want boundary refinements to become another reason for delay. We believe the time for action is now. We urge the Council to remove Alternative 3 from the current RI-REA as it fundamentally shifts the focus of this action away from protecting Tanner crab. Such an approach would require substantial additional analysis, expanded criteria development, and an entire— entirely separate RIREA process. Given the council's limited staff capacity and the already lengthy delay in implementing protections, maintaining Alternative 3 within the current package threatens to postpone meaningful Tanner crab conservation even further.

The Kodiak Island Tribal Coalition strongly insists that the Marmot Bay closure area remain excluded from any reconsideration process, as the analysis notes The history and purpose of the Marmot Bay closure area differs significantly from the other crab protection areas under discussion. The Marmot Bay closure was implemented more recently and directly affects the tribal communities of Usinky and Port Lyons. For our communities, the Marmot Bay trawl closure has never been solely about Tanner crab. It is also about protecting halibut subsistence resources, marine habitat, and broader ecosystems our communities rely upon for food security, cultural practices, and intergenerational knowledge transfer. Existing survey data from Marmot Bay is limited to only a small number of trawl stations, while local and traditional knowledge indicate that Tanner crab populations likely extend well beyond those surveyed areas.

Reopening Marmot Bay trawl closure area is unacceptable to Kodiak's tribes, Kodiak rural communities, and Kodiak Alaska Native peoples. In summary, the Kodiak Island Tribal Coalition— excuse me— Supports moving the current RIREA forward to final action with the preferred alternative that establishes a year-round trawl closure within the custom area. We further support removing the Marmot Bay trawl closure area from any council reconsideration and separating any broader discussion of existing trawl closure areas from the current Tanner crab protection measures package. I also want to point out that the discussion at the AP was characterized as being inclusive of all stakeholders of this issue. That does not accurately reflect what happened.

Our tribes and communities submitted detailed comments and recommendations, and we were not involved in the development of the AP motion. We are disappointed that it was presented as being inclusive when it wasn't. I'd like to thank the council for the opportunity to speak on this critically important issue, and I am happy to take any questions. Thank you very much for your testimony, Ms. Hayden. See if there are any questions.

Yes, Ms. Gorn. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ms. Hayden, for your testimony. Um, you mentioned in there that, uh, the value— the ecological and cultural value of these areas, and you also then later talked about that these— quote— for the tribes, these closures are more than just about crab. They're also about habitat and ecosystem protections. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit more.

I know this council, we're working more to include the cultural values for tribes. I wonder if you can speak a little bit more to that. Yes, thank you, Ms. Gowan, through the chair. Thank you for the question. One of some of the things that I think about, I want to draw attention back to the photo of, of me with the Tanner crab.

I was on a subsistence harvesting wintertime trip with my family when we engaged in this activity. Um, I had both of my teenage sons on the boat with my husband and I, and they're currently, um, thriving, navigating high school, college, uh, young adulthood, what that's like. And every year— and my daughter, I just— my daughter is also here with me at this time, and we're, we're able to return to these these activities, activities, subsistence activities as a family. I'm going to get a little emotional.

And what it has done for us in a community that is struggling with addiction, with social issues, And I'm thankful at this time, um, all three of my children are— have survived to this point, to adulthood and near adulthood, without becoming victim to that. And I really believe that our being able to continue to engage in these activities has a huge role in that. And so, it is— when we talk about culture, we talk about, you know, using the hydraulics on the boat to pull a crab pot, modern technology, really nice platforms that I'm very thankful that we are able to have access to, but we're engaging in these practices that have existed in our region for thousands of years. And I was struck by hearing comments that I was the only person that some of the AP members had ever heard say that they had caught Tanner crab in Marmot Bay, when it's commonplace for us to be able to go and drop a pot and pull up some crab and have a crab boil on deck of the boat and have our family there and our neighbors and our community members. And um, is something that will connect us to this place and will continue to keep us connected for generations to come.

So thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Appreciate it.

So Jamie O'Connor is next, followed by Jake Everett.

Wake up my computer here and myself. Good morning, everybody. Jamie O'Connor, Intertidal Consulting, speaking on behalf of Ocean Conservancy. OCE supports the approach proposed by Kodiak community members who depend on the regional Tanner crab fishery and the fisheries supported by these productive habitats. We support selecting a preliminary preferred alternative of Alternative 2, Element 1, Option 2, the custom box, Element 2, Option 1, for a year-round closure, and Element 3 with the addition of a new Option 3 including all trawl types.

Moving forward with the closure area honors our responsibility under National Standard 9 to reduce bycatch to the extent practicable. And Standard 8 to support sustained participation by fishing communities. We oppose the inclusion of Alternative 3 and are concerned by the reference to the modification or removal of existing closure areas around Kodiak. I would like to amplify the examples shared by the Native Village of Uuzinki and Kodiak Island Tribal Coalition. Local knowledge indicates that the existing closures have yielded ecosystem benefits beyond crab protections.

Local residents have seen increases in abundance of subsistence marine resources, including marine mammals, groundfish species, and crab. Additionally, the SSC noted in their meeting minutes that fixed closures can be an appropriate conservation tool even in a highly dynamic environment. At this stage, there is sufficient information before the council to understand the alternatives evaluate trade-offs, and make an informed policy choice. The analysis identifies affected fisheries, describes the closure options, assesses operational and economic impacts, and presents the best available information on Tanner crab distribution and conservation benefit. The record before the council is adequate to advance this action.

Thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you very much for your testimony. Hey, thank you. Thanks.

Jake Everett is up next, followed by Lauren Hines.

Okay, Jake's not online, so we will circle back to Jake at the end.

Lauren Hines, followed by Riley Spence.

Good morning, Chair and members of the Council. For the record, my name is Lauren Hines, and I'm representing the organization Oceana. Oceana supports moving into final action on this item. The data before the Council is sufficient to act, and further analysis is unlikely to fill the remaining data gaps. So, um, on— I have attached a map that Oceana created on the first slide here.

This is the existing Tanner crab species distribution on the east side of Kodiak Island overlaid with the federal crab conservation areas. Barnabas Gulley and Chiniak Gulley, documented in survey data since the '60s, are among the most productive Tanner crab areas in the Kodiak District.

The custom closure area proposed under Alternative 2 captures an estimated 21% of the survey— surveyed East Side Kodiak District Tanner crab population from 2012 to 2025. This is where the crab are, this is where the breeding stock lives, and this is where the stock is also trending down.

This map here shows the same crab distribution overlaid with the parent trawl fishing footprint from AIS vessel tracking data. From 2015 to 2023. Bottom and pelagic trawl gear operating off the east side of Kodiak Island is fishing directly over the highest documented concentrations of Tanner crab in the region, spanning both proposed closure options. The directed crab fishery is closed for the— closed for 2026 because its population cannot sustain harvest. Yet the flatfish trawl fleet has no equivalent protection and continues to operate year-round in the same habitat.

With peak effort in April, the exact window of peak molting and mating vulnerability. Oceana supports a year-round closure to all bottom trawl gear to protect crab in the custom box. A seasonal closure is insufficient. The flatfish fleet operates 11 months out of the year, so year-round is the only approach that addresses the full window of biological vulnerability. We also urge the Council to address all trawl gear, not just bottom trawl.

This map shows apparent trawl activity inside the existing Marmot Bay closure, which has been closed to bottom trawl since 2014. That activity is likely pelagic trawling operating under the Pollock exemption, fishing directly over the highest remaining abundance hotspot areas for Tanner crab within that closure. And at this meeting, it's become abundantly clear that this gear is operating on the seafloor with unknown impact to unobserved mortality of crab. Plagic trawl should not be permitted in areas closed to bottom trawling for conservation purposes until it can be proven through verified monitoring that the gear is not contacting the seafloor, and the analysis should include an option for applying the closure to all trawl gear. Lastly, um, we strongly oppose Alternative 3 and the inclusion of it with this agenda item.

The question of whether to add new protections for a declining Tanner crab population should not be entangled with the question of whether to remove existing protection.

On the existing closures, the record's clear. The council's own analysis documents that the Aleutak closure contains the last remaining productive portion of the Kodiak red king crab stock. It should not be modified. When the Marmot Bay closure was established in 2014, NMFS responded directly to the argument that closures should be— the argument that closures should be reopened because stocks have not recovered. NIMP stated, and I'm quoting directly, the purpose of this action is not to improve Tanner crab stock abundance, but to further protect Tanner crab stocks from adverse effects of Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries.

That response disposes the argument now being advanced under Alternative 3. This closure was not created to rebuild a stock. It was created to reduce trawl mortality on crab. One specific crab stock's recovery is not a legal or scientific basis for removing protections, and the Council's own analysis acknowledges that quantifying the population-level impacts of removing these closures is not analytically possible. The record supports final action on a closure to protect Tanner crab in the Gulf of Alaska, and it does not support removing existing protections.

Thank you.

I think, are there any questions?

See, yes, Miss Kimball. Thank you for your testimony, Miss Hines. I— and you just happen to be the one that I want to ask this because I'm not sure how to, um, keep going through testimony without asking. I— your suggestion is that we do not follow our SSC recommendations to do another initial review? Is that your suggestion?

Thank you, Ms. Kimball. Through the Chair, I think what, what the point here is, is that we, we have this data, we have this beautiful map of where these Tanner crab are, and we know that this fishery is fishing directly on top of them. And even though there may be unanswered questions right now, we still believe that with the data that we have in front of us, that a closure area is warranted.

Okay, thank you for your testimony. Riley Spence is up next, followed by Matt Rode, um, and there will be no questions during this testimony. Riley isn't online. Okay, so we'll circle back to Riley.

Matt Rode, followed by Paul McCabe. There'll be no questions on this after this testimony. Are you with us, Matt?

Yep. Hi, my name is Matt Rhode. I'm the captain of the fishing vessel Dawn out of Kodiak. The Dawn is a 96-foot family-owned local Kodiak trawler. We operate year-round fishing pollock, flatfish, rockfish, and tender salmon.

We also hold a Tanner crab permit. My family of 4, along with my crew's families and the rest of the Kodiak trawl fleet, depend on this area. Pelagic and non-pelagic trawl have been fishing this area, Yuwana Crab Closure, in for decades. This area makes up roughly 50% of our annual income. It's cleaner and faster fishing that keeps the fish plants running steady year-round.

The pollock, cod, and flatfish we fish in this area feed on the crab larvae and juvenile crab. We've seen firsthand arrowtooth and cod puking up baby larvae. Our fishery keeps these fish from decimating the crab biomass.

Um, decades-long closures to other crab areas in the past have proven not to help rebuild the stock. The Crab Alliance claimed they've been trying to close this area for 20-plus years. That 20-plus years, trawls have been fishing here and crab stocks have stayed steady or they've gotten better. It's been proven that closure areas around Kodiak to trawl don't bring back the biomass. That being said, we don't need to destroy one fishery for the unknown outcome of another.

Thank you for your time and listening to the why I don't support the crab closure area. Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr. Roddy.

So our next testifier will be Paul McCabe followed by Mike Halegso.

Is Paul in the room or on— is he online? Hey, you got me? Yes, good morning. Hi, my name is Paul McCabe. I am the captain of fishing vessel Nicole, Kodiak-based trawler.

I am also a Tanner crab permit holder. I've been Fishing these grounds for 17 years and 10 of those years as a captain. Today there is more fish on these grounds than when I started 15 years ago. I have 3 boys who will be relying on these grounds. This spot produces our most clean and fastest fishing.

There's a lot more going on in these areas than just Tanner crab.

These grounds are very important to us. We catch catch all the predators that are living on crab larvae. I'll guarantee if you shut this down to trawlers, there will be no crab in 5 years from now. There's proof that these closure areas do not work. So I ask you to please take into consideration what this will do to my family and many others.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there any questions?

Yes, Miss Kimball. Thank you for your testimony. I, I just was unsure of what you meant by that there was evidence that fixed closures don't work. Um, we, we definitely have a document that shows in some cases, like when species are not moving that much, they could be very helpful. So I, I'm just wondering, uh, where your perspective is on that.

Well, there's areas around Kodiak that needs to be shut down and There's no crab in there at all now, and we're not trolling in there.

Thank you. Thank you.

So our next testifier is Mike Helix, followed by Robbie Harrington. Is Mike online?

Can you unmute yourself, Mike?

Can you press star 6, Mike?

Oh, he's on his cell phone.

Okay, we will circle back to you, Mike, and try to connect with you.

Robbie Harrington followed by Chandler Johnson.

Robbie's online. Yeah, good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, good morning. Good morning.

My name is Robert Harrington. I operate a trawler out of Kodiak. I've been fishing trawl for about 17 years there in and around the island and lived there permanently for the past 12, been running a boat for the past 12.

Uh, I'm opposed to these crab boxes, crab closures. I think it'd have a negative impact on the crab stock itself because of the predation. Um, it is the only area where everyone fishes where it also has the most biomass of it, crab and seems like the shallow water and deep water complex flatfish that we both, that we fish on. So I might, I'd hate to see another closed box around the island. It doesn't seem like there's any crab in the closed boxes already as it is once they've been enacted for a long time.

And they're really hard to get reversed obviously since those other ones are in place. So I mean another box around Kodiak, for another 40 years where you guys are going to kick us out and other fisheries out, I think it's going to have a— not the effect that people are looking for. And I've heard people talk about how our fishery doesn't bring in the same amount of revenue and everything like that, but what it does do is it keeps the town busy, usually in the slow months as well. You know, we're usually flatfishing when we're not pollock fishing or rockfishing, and so it's times in between that spring processor's time, making it where we could actually have like a local workforce be here instead of being another coastal community that has to fly other people in town just to do a little bit of work, visa workers or what have you.

I'm just supposed to— all crab closures around the sandbox area. Whether it be a Type 1 or a Type 2 or even a Type 3 for that matter. We don't need to be putting another box around the map of Kodiak. So thank you, appreciate it. Thank you very much.

See if there are any questions. Yes, Miss Cohen has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Harrington, for your testimony. And, and I heard you mention, you know, not adding any additional closures. But we've seen through this analysis that this is a unique habitat area where there are very productive Tanner crab grounds.

If there were a closure in this area but it was paired with opening up other areas, would that offset your concerns about adding other closures? Yeah, thank you for the question. You know, I, I think it'd be a great idea to you know, do a few surveys and open up those areas because, you know, once again, I think that our fleet does a good job of predation, so I'd actually like to think that if we did get into those other areas, those crab would actually come back. You know, you guys put the boxes there for a reason to protect the crab. It just seems like we're not in there and the crab aren't in there either, so As far as temporary closures go, like I said, my honest opinion is not to have any closures in there.

That being said, I'm jumping off course a little bit. I know it'd be difficult, but I'd be for, you know, 100% observer coverage in there before I would like to think that putting a temporary closure in place.

Yeah, I, I'm just not for the closures, uh, be it if we did have one, a temporary one would be the ideal one for us, but I think the timing that it does that is a lot of times when it's in the off-season of, you know, all of our other fisheries, so I don't know if that answers your question.

Thank you, and Miss Baker has a question as well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony, and I have kind of a related question. You mentioned, for most of the existing closures, the certainly the Type 1 and 2 closures, non-pelagic trawl is not— cannot operate in there. I want to ask about the Type 3 closure areas, which have never been triggered.

And so for your operation, do you fish in those areas? Do you use those areas? The Type 3, thank you for the question by the way, the Type 3, I'd have to look on a map. I've seen them, I haven't followed them too well. I have some charts that have them on there.

I have fished in those areas, although the areas that I'm usually fishing would be the, what we call the sandbox area, which is pretty critical to our spots. There's about 5 or 6 main toes that the trawlers have been there for about 50 years that we keep going back to.

So I know other Type 3 closures, and I can— I'm sorry, I'm down in Oregon at the moment in a hotel, so I can't be looking at a map. So, and I have toad there, I just can't pinpoint them how I could with the— like I could with the sandbox. So that answers your question. Yes, thank you.

We appreciate your testimony. Thank you.

Our next testifier is Chandler Johnson, followed by Michelle Stratton. Okay, we'll circle back to Chandler.

Go to Michelle Stratton, followed by Rebecca Skinner.

Good morning, can you hear me? Yes, good morning.

Good morning, Chair and members of the council. For the record, my name is Michelle Stratton, Executive Director of the Alaska Marine Community Coalition. AMCC is a fisherman-founded organization working to advance sustainable fisheries, healthy marine ecosystems, and thriving, thriving fisheries and subsistence communities across Alaska. AMCC supports council action to strengthen Tanner crab protections around Kodiak Island. Tanner crab are an important part of the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem local fisheries, and coastal communities.

AMCC requests that the council move forward with Alternative 2, Element 1, Option 2, Element 2, Option 1, and Element 3, Option 2. Non-pelagic trawl gear has a mobile bottom contact footprint that creates a direct risk to Tanner crab and benthic habitat in known crab concentration areas. At the same time, AMCC urges the council to assess gear impacts based on gear performance. Pelagic trawl gear should continue to be evaluated where it contacts the sea floor. The management question should be whether gear is contacting bottom, how often, where, for how long, and with what consequence for Tanner crab, crab habitat, and unobserved mortality.

AMCC also strongly supports adding a formal review trigger to Alternative 2 after 5 to 10 years of implementation. It should be a conservation evaluation based on clear criteria. The review should evaluate Tanner crab abundance and distribution, PSD inside and outside the closure, unobserved mortality, habitat impacts, pelagic trawl gear bottom contact, pot gear effort, displaced effort, and whether dynamic tools are needed to complement the static closures. Static closures and dynamic tools should therefore be viewed as complementary. Static closures protect known high-value crab and habitat areas.

Dynamic tools can help managers respond when effort shifts or when crab distribution, bycatch risk, ocean conditions change. One should not be used as a substitute for the other. AMCC strongly urges the council to bifurcate Alternative 3, the review of existing Kodiak crab closures, from action on Alternative 2 to ensure that any review of existing closures is conducted through a clear, objective, and conservation-based process that is appropriate for the closures being evaluated. Alternative 2 and Alternative 3 are analytically distinct. Alternative 2 presents a defined management action, a proposed Tanner crab protection area with identified boundaries closure durations, and gear options.

The council can evaluate the conservation benefits, fishery impacts, displacement concerns, and management trade-offs associated with that action. Alternative 3 is different. It requires a review of existing closures adopted at different times under different conditions and for objectives that may not be identical. These closures should not be treated as interchangeable management units for modification without first identifying what each closure was designed to protect and what conditions existed when it was implemented. Because these are complex and closure-specific questions, AMCC recommends that if the council chooses to move forward with a review of existing closures, it should first develop a strong framework, potentially through a working group or similar process.

Such a process could help identify the right objectives, metrics, data sources, and decision standards for evaluating existing closures. It could also create a framework useful not only for Kodiak Crab closures, but also for similar future reviews which the council evaluates whether long-standing conservation tools remain effective, require adjustment, or require additional complementary measures. Bifurcation would allow the council to act now where the record supports action while preserving a transparent and credible process for any future review of existing closures. It would also avoid conflating two different management questions: whether the council should establish a new protection for known high-density Tanner crab areas and whether long-standing crab closures each with its own history, purpose, and conservation context should be reconsidered under a separate and clearly defined review framework. In closing, AMCC urges the Council to act now where the record is ready.

Alternative 2 provides a defined opportunity to protect high-density crab area around Kodiak. That action should move forward paired with a formal review framework that evaluates whether the closure is working and whether additional gear-specific or dynamic tools are needed., but the review of existing closures should be separate. The Council should protect Tanner crab first, review carefully, and ensure that any future changes maintain or improve conservation. Thank you. This looks like we have a question for you, Mr. Ricci.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony, Michelle. I'm looking through the letter here, and I see that AMCC provided in public comment And I see the ask for displacement analysis, but then I also see gear-specific bottom contact analysis on observed mortality and habitat impacts. And I'm wondering if you're— if those last 3 things are things that fit into the displacement analysis that you're asking for, or if that's something separate. I guess I'm just— I'm confused, and I'm wondering if you could provide a little more information on what thinking there.

Yeah, can I clarify? You're talking about, uh, what I think should be looked at in a framework for evaluating closures.

Um, you can read that too, Mr. Ritchie. She wanted to clarify whether or not what you were talking about should be looked at in a framework for evaluating closures. She was clarifying your question.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I— oh, I— that just the clarification was good enough. I think that bringing together a group of stakeholders to figure out the right metrics and displacement and what should be actually put into the framework is the right step because it is critical to have stakeholder input on what these metrics are.

Communities should be involved. All types of gear fishermen, and so I think that, I think commenting before getting input on what metrics should be involved is premature, but I do think that that's an important conversation and it's something that will go much further than this action or these two actions potentially.

Thank you, and Ms. Gowan has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ms. Stratton, for the testimony. Um, I have a—. It's more of a clarification. I heard you say in your testimony that you select a preliminary preferred alternative under Alternative 2 of non-pelagic trawl, but then I heard you talking about concern over bottom contact by pelagic trawl.

So can you clarify whether you're, you're select— you're supporting a PPA of just non-pelagic trawl or non-pelagic trawl and pelagic? Yeah, definitely to move if action is ready. I think it's very clear that non-plagic trawl is under both alternatives. That seems like a compromise that is willing to move forward. With that, I also think the Council should keep in mind and continue, continue looking at bottom contact of pelagic trawl, and if that makes sense to pull in, I think that makes sense, but I think it's just important to always looking at the bottom contact footprints and how that affects canner crabs.

Okay, thank you very much for your testimony. Thank you. So Rebecca Skinner is up next, followed by Patty O'Donnell.

Good morning. Sounds like Jamie and I might have acquired the same cold once we got here, so I have my water if my throat gets hoarse. Um, I'm Rebecca Skinner. I'm testifying on behalf of Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association. Alaska Whitefish Trawlers is a Kodiak-based association We primarily rely on trawl, but we also have members that do Tanner fish, halibut longline, and then tender salmon in the summer.

I do want to say for the record that this action is a big deal for our members that rely on flatfish fishing. Not all trawlers in the Gulf do flatfish fishing, but the ones that do, this particular area in question is very important and it will have a significant impact. We also acknowledge that the Tanner fishery is important and both are needed in Kodiak. We do agree that a second initial review is needed and that the current initial review did not fully capture the impacts on the, the trawl fleet, the trawl boats, and the trawl fisheries. And in the SSE discussion, there, there were questions around the the benefit, or perhaps being able to demonstrate a benefit of this action.

So I think both of those could be teased out a little more. I spent a lot of time in the last few months looking at Fish and Game Tanner survey data and looking at their survey grid, which has smaller boxes than the stat area level. I was trying to understand if there was a geographic compromise that was possible. So could— was there a place that could allow trawl fishing while also protecting the concentrations of Tanner crab? And what I concluded is that the Tanner crab and the trawl fishing occur exactly in the same place.

There's overlap in geography. There's also overlap in timing in that what I would consider to be the most vulnerable, consistently vulnerable stages, that April-May time period, is also when the flatfish fishing usually occurs. That's when the processing plants can actually take that fish. And so geographic and temporal over, I guess, compromise seems, seems somewhat unlikely. I just also wanted to note that this area in question is clearly very productive for Tanner crab but also for flatfish.

So it's just, it's a very productive area for fish and for fishing activity.

I would also note that this area has been consistently trawled and still resulted in the biggest Tanner fishery in history in the last few years. So it is hard to understand the negative impact that trawl is having on the Tanner population and the Tanner fishery. And that from a trawl perspective, nuance in this case is super important. The actual area that the trawlers need access to is fairly small and, well, compared to what we consider the big areas that are going to be closed. And I'll just say I recognize that the data, and the SSC talked about it, that the data doesn't work well when you get down to these small areas.

So even from an AWTA perspective, the areas that are being looked at for closure seem enormous. From an SSC and scientific and data perspective, they kept saying how small these areas were. So it shows that it just depends on your perspective when you're looking at things. And then I also wanted to note that in the council's motion, it did say minimize impact on groundfish. This morning, listening testimony, there was lots of comments about the point of this action is to protect Tanner crab, but there was also a recognition that the groundfish fisheries should be protected a little bit as well, and the impact on them should be minimized.

The SSC discussion and the AP motion captured all of the, the data and data deficiencies that I had noted in my letter. So I'm looking at time, I guess I'll just bullet point them. Extending the years, so going back to 2005 or 2006, it helps get a better picture of the Tanner interannual variability and also what was happening with the groundfish fisheries, address the CP issue in the sense that that catch data needs to be taken out because when you include it, it understates the CV reliance on this area. I would like to see an expanded discussion on raised sweeps and use of pelagic doors with bottom gear. Raised sweeps are mentioned, but they're not described, I had an SSC member ask me, well, what is a race sweep?

What does it look like? How does it work? And so that pointed out to me that the paper doesn't really explain, I think, what they are, how do they work, what the benefits are, and that they did reduce bottom contact by 90%. And then bottom doors are no longer used. They haven't been used for over a decade, and that's a big deal if you're looking at impact on the bottom, and that was not mentioned in the paper at all.

Predation on Tanner, it is mentioned there's an inverse relationship between the Tanner population and the cod population because cod are a known predator of Tanner. I think that could be fleshed out a little better. And then better context to explain the tools that are being used a little bit out of context. So there's use of fishing effects and EFH in relation to Tanner. This isn't something that is normally applied to Tanner because Tanner are managed by the the state.

So I think that just needs to be— there needs to be more context provided around there. And then the bottom contact tables, my— the letter that I submitted talks about Table 5-44. I now have a better understanding of how the bottom contact calculation works. My concern is that when people look at that table, they think that the, you know, 5,000 kilometers squared actually means the, the size of the bottom impacted, which is not what that means. Um, and then the shoulder season needs a much bigger discussion.

And then, um, we did submit a proposed two different alternatives for closure areas. Um, the— they are correctly captured in the AP motion. Um, in my letter I had one of the, the bottom coordinates wrong, but the AP motion corrects that. And I'll just say that those were developed through extensive discussion with members of AWT that both do trawl and Tanner crab. So they were really looking at how can we identify an area that will protect the areas where they have seen a lot of Tanner crab, but also allow for the continuation of the trawl fisheries that they also rely on.

And with that, I'll take any questions. Thank you very much for your testimony. Yes, Ms. Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chair, and sorry that we're sharing a cold, Ms. Skinner. And I really appreciate that you're providing items that you'd like to see, additional items for the analysis.

Thank you for bringing that forward. You mentioned separating out catcher processor from catcher vessel to make it more clear the reliance by the catcher vessels on the area. And in the staff presentation, we saw that it was shallow water flatfish that really relies on that area. Given your representation, I'm wondering if you can speak a bit to if there are other areas that can be fished for those shallow water flatfish, or if it's predominantly in this area that's being considered. Okay, I'm also having a heck of a time hearing today, but I think you were asking about where else you can fish for the shallow water flatfish.

Patty O'Donnell will be coming up after me, and as a fisherman, he will have a much better answer to that, but my understanding from from the conversations I've had with the fishermen and, and also in the paper, that the, the area that falls within the current proposed closures is the most productive area for shallow water flats. And what that means is the, the CPUE tends to be much higher there, so they're spending less time towing. And that becomes really important because if you displace them to other areas where there are shallow water flatfish, because there are, you you know, shallow water flatfish occur in lots of different places, but if they're not in the larger aggregations, you're going to have to spend a lot more time towing, doing multiple passes. So on an operational side, it's obviously more expensive with fuel, but you're, you're most likely also going to have more bycatch because your net is just in the water more time. And that was one thing that SSC really spend a lot of time talking about was trying to get some sense, trying to capture if the trawlers are moved out of this particular area, where are they likely to go?

And you saw in my letter, we were not consulted at all, so we'd be happy to talk to the analysts about where those activities might occur. You know, the SSE talked about the scenarios and having bookends, I think that makes sense. My interpretation of that was it provides a bit of formality to what will probably otherwise be a qualitative— because you're going to be basing this on discussions with industry. But I do think that needs to happen because the fishermen who are out there fishing are going to have really useful information input about, um, about what they're going to do. And I also forgot to say, I don't— we don't support bifurcating this issue, and we do want to evaluate existing closures.

I forgot those 2 bullets. Thank you. Thank you again for your testimony. Oh, sorry, Miss Kimball. Sorry, I'm trying to be brief.

Um, thank you for your testimony. I just wanted to hear the significance of the area, um, provided in the AP motion that's called AWT Option 2.

I got some general feedback from the AP discussion when the AP report was provided, but it seems like you might have been the one proposing that, that area. If there's any more detail on why it's drawn the way it's drawn. Yep, thank you. Um, so the, the, the 2 closure, um, AWT Option 1 and Option 2 were the result of numerous meetings. So first we started with the group of not just AWTA members, primarily AWTA members, but trawlers who also tanner fish.

So, and I started with that group because it seemed manageable, because when you get the two sides, the tanner fishermen and the trawl fishermen, into a conversation it very quickly can become very polarized. But this group, I figured, had an interest in tanners and an interest in trawl, and it seemed like a good group to start with, and they would care about both. So we started with, with that group, and it did help hone down the area. What we figured out pretty quickly is that trying to compare pictures— so whether you're talking about these diagrams of coordinates or these maps— it's really difficult to figure out where things are. And because with the fishing, we're talking about a very specific area, you know, 100 meters can make a difference if you're gonna catch fish or not.

So we started using time zero, and time zero is what the fishermen actually use. We had it going live so the fishermen, the person running the time zero could add lines, color code for the bathymetry. And the result is on AWT Option 2, you see there's that kind of— it's, it kind of curves over. We're trying to follow the Fathom curve, and we specifically didn't say follow the Fathom curve because enforcement doesn't like that. But I did look at the enforcement precepts, and you're allowed to use straight lines and also circles with a radius.

So I use straight lines connecting them together, but the shape and the position of those those dots and lines is very important, and it's intended to preserve that primary shallow water flat fishing area. And to me, that does go a long way toward addressing the purpose and need, which is you want to protect the Tanner crab area, but you want to minimize the impact on the groundfish fishery. And I guess I, I know I kind of said this, but I just want to emphasize the importance of having input from the fishermen on these things and also using tools that fishermen and just drawing straight lines and showing, you know, pictures either up on a slide or on a piece of paper, it's, it's not really effective if you're trying to— if you want to really hone in on finding solutions that can work the best for everyone, they are gonna have to be surgical and very precise. You may as well use the tools that fishermen use. So that's— and I realize that's not really suited to the council process, but it was very, very useful in our discussions to use that time zero and have the back and forth in the dialogue.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Patty O'Donnell is up next, followed by Heather Mann.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the Council. For the record, Patrick O'Donnell. I own the 85-foot Caravel out of Kodiak, been trawling there for 36 years. I've submitted a letter under this agenda item. I'd just like to point out first before I get started, Figure 2-1 on page 30 and Figure 7.1 on page 186, the maps of Kodiak with all the haulouts and closed areas, they're missing two 10-mile haulouts that are directly above the sandbox and in fact impact the north part of the sandbox zone.

I did talk to staff yesterday and, and, and they are gonna put them in the next iteration. So I don't support closing more areas around Kodiak. We've closed the Tier 1 since the '80s, as you heard, and we've seen no improvements in all this time. And I think they need to be reevaluated and then try and figure out why they're not working. But if you do go down the road of closing something, I recommend a seasonal closure and not a year-round closure.

And the other thing I'd like to say, you know, it's no coincidence we had the warm blob in the teens there. And between 2015 survey and '17 survey, we found out that there was an 81% reduction in the biomass of cod, which went into effect in 2018. And you talk about predation, and it was previously said that 80% of the cod diet is tanner crab and juvenile tanner crab. So it's no coincidence that you had these two things happen at the same time, which led to the biggest tanner crab fishery in, in 40 years. And you also heard that, you know, it's a heavily trolled area and a very productive area and serves the purpose for, for, for all fishermen.

We've heard about the term hard-on-the-bottom trawling, and, and that's antiquated in, in my opinion. We're, we're now using, uh, modified sweeps. Gear is very different and has changed and, and forever evolved over time, continues to do so. We're using elevated sweeps, we're using pelagic doors that are 2 to 3 fathoms off the bottom and, and never, never contact the bottom. My concern with this also is that we're going to move out of a high CPUE area and end up in an area with low CPUE, longer towing time, higher bycatch rates, exceeding MRAs because of the lower CPUE.

Marmot's been closed, the west side of Kodiak's been closed, there's been no benefit. There's absolutely in, in table, uh, 517 on page 151. There's no sign of Tanner crab in Carlock, and I think that's been closed for, for 26 years. Pelagic trawl, you've heard me often say it's not an ocean floor, that the Gulf is very different from the Bering Sea. You, you put it on the bottom around Kodiak and you're going to destroy a $100,000 net, and that just does not happen.

So, uh, anyhow, I'm almost out of time, so The 10— oh yeah, one more thing. The 10% revenue, that is important. We fish different species. We fish flatfish, rockfish, cod, pollock, and whatever we can do, sablefish in the rockfish program. It all adds up at the end of the year.

That's the way every fisherman runs a business. So 10% is very important. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr. O'Donnell. Yes, Ms. Gowan.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. O'Donnell, for your testimony. And I appreciate you noting that pelagic trawls fish very differently around Kodiak than in the Bering Sea. That's helpful. But I'm wondering if you can speak a bit to the question I asked of Ms. Skinner on the reliance on shallow water flatfish in this area where the gully is, and if there are other areas that you can fish for those shallow water flatfish. Yeah, through the Chair, thank you, Ms. Gordon.

There are other areas you can fish for flatfish, but you know, you're talking about, uh, CPUE here of about £20,000 to £30,000 an hour. And, and you go to other places, you're talking about £3,000 to £5,000 an hour. So £20,000 to £30,000 an hour versus £5,000 an hour, you're going to tow 6 hours to get in a different area what you get in 1 hour in this particular area. That's why it's so important. You spend more time on the bottom, uh, you're gonna have a higher, uh, PSE rate of halibut and encounters with crab and other, other species.

So, uh, and, and then of course you're towing longer depending on, you know, your MRA species we end up exceeding. And, and with this particular area at, at that particular time of the year. The cod already spawned out in April and they're not there, so we don't have to worry about exceeding that 20% MRA in the springtime.

Yeah, any other questions? Thank you for your testimony. Heather Mann is up next, followed by Chelsea Riddell.

Good morning, Madam Chair, council members. For the record, my name is Heather Mann. I'm the executive director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. We have 32 trawl vessels that participate in fisheries on the West Coast and in Alaska. More than half are involved in Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries.

I think upfront, I want to just remind folks that if the Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries were rationalized, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. So we continue to have less tools than we need to be successful, and the Council continues to take actions that don't necessarily benefit the trawl industry. Cumulatively, these, these actions continue to hurt the trawl, and frankly, the processing sectors in the Gulf. We support the AP motion for a second initial review and expanded analysis. I know tanner crab is very important to Kodiak.

I also believe it's important upfront to point out that while this is a protection action, let's be clear, the proponents want to protect tanner crab so they can harvest them. It's not a full-on conservation measure.

We do not support bifurcating this action. Bifurcation results in Alternative 3, in my opinion, basically disappearing. And to be frank, I don't think we would be supporting any further action unless we included the reopenings. There is no evidence to show that trawl fisheries are impacting Tanner crab population. So considering the reopenings is entirely appropriate, and it should be included in the action.

Also, there's no guarantee that these areas would be reopened because this is just for analysis to see what the impacts would be. And I would also point to the fact that the AP motion includes taking a seasonal closure in Barnabas and making that year-round, so it's not all just about reopenings. So I want to talk a little bit more about the empirical evidence that doesn't exist. The analysis specifically concludes, quote, The relative impacts of PSE removals do not appear to be significant at the population level, end quote. You heard earlier in testimony that 1.2 million crabs are taken as bycatch in this area each year.

Uh, Table 5-25 on page 152, which includes all gear—. Non-pelagic, pelagic, and pot—. And breaks the stat areas out, uh, and shows the rest of the Gulf of Alaska for all gears combined and the average is 178,964. So I'm not sure where that 1.2 million's coming from. This council operates, uh, obviously under the MSA and the national standards where the best available science is used to inform management decisions, not emotion, not rhetoric, and not anti-trawl stances.

The conservation concern is not well defined, especially considering prolific Tanner crab population in areas where significant trawling has has been taking place. There is no conservation benefit to Tanner crab described. It is all speculation, but there are clear impacts to harvesters, processors, and communities. It's a little frustrating to listen to folks who aren't involved in our fisheries say that the impacts are, are small, insignificant, and they'll figure it out. There is evidence the trawl gear has a significant positive impact on predator removal.

That could be arrowtooth, skate, specific cod. They all eat juvenile crab. I am interested, I was interested to learn about the conservation measures the directed Tanner fishery takes, a 20-pot limit, no night fishing, et cetera, but they also have zero observer coverage, zero monitoring. I'm not sure that because it's a short fishery that it doesn't need to be monitored. I also believe they can fish multiple times a day with their pots.

So anecdotal information suggests that they are handling and discarding quite a bit of the population. They pull pots every day, and the bait attracts all crab. So whether that's juveniles, females, so they are collecting those, harvesting those fish, crabs, and then returning them to the water. So they're handling and discarding quite a bit of crab. I didn't realize that during the winter, it's warm during the day and there are no hockey pucks.

The crab legs only freeze off at night, but we can't be sure since there is no monitoring. The custom area is touted as a compromise, and it was informed by state biologists, I believe, but I know by Tanner crab fishermen, but not by groundfish trawl fishermen, the ones who will be directly impacted by these closures and the ones who have extensive knowledge of these areas. We need to include a proposed area that is informed by trawl fishermen. The SSC comments are important, and this analysis is clearly not ready for final review. As Rebecca and Patty noted, the analysis fails to adequately address the existing conservation measures already implemented by the trawl industry.

These are to reduce crab impacts. There is little meaningful discussion of the modified elevated sweep requirements already mandated for non-pelagic trawl. The analysis references the existence of the modified sweeps, but it does not evaluate their effectiveness, quantify any reductions in crab interactions resulting from their or analyze whether those measures that are already achieving the conservation objectives, um, that are already achieving those objectives contemplated under this action. So finally, I'd encourage the council to adopt the AP motion, which was, uh, collaboratively, uh, created. It was informed by all industry participants and which ultimately passed the AP unanimously.

And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for your testimony. Are there any questions? Okay. Yes, Miss Kimball.

Thank you, Miss Mann, for your testimony. My question's on the, on the AP motion, but of course I'm just asking you to speak for yourself on the AP motion under Alternative 3. Um, and it, it's, it includes looking at every protection area pretty much, um, which I know the council had initially thought about. Out. Is there, from your group's perspective, a priority there, given that I think the analysis supports in some ways that some of these are not— are meaningless, and others, it— they're really important, maybe not for Tanner crab but for other crab?

So are— is your testimony that all of these should be looked at, or is there some sort of priority if we wanted to narrow that down?

Through the chair, Miss Kimball, thank you for the, for the question. From my perspective, I think they should all be analyzed. Maybe you'll hear in public comment from, from some of my harvesters that might have a priority. I do not, and I'm saying that because we were pretty careful, like I said, in looking at the, the idea to keep Barnabas from a seasonal and increase that to full-time. That came from MTC members, and so they were trying to make that balance.

So I don't feel confident in picking out one of those as a priority, but I would encourage you to ask individual fishermen.

Thank you for your testimony.

Chelsea Riddell is up next, followed by Kevin Abina.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the council.

For the record, my name is Chelsea Riddell, and I'm the fisheries policy manager speaking on behalf of Pacific Seafood. We are a family-owned and operated business that began in 1941, and we proudly operate processing plants in Kodiak, Seward, and Wrangell. As you know, this agenda item is extremely important to everyone in Kodiak, and Pacific Seafood supports both our tanner crab and— equally in this issue. Not only as a company, but as a part of the Kodiak community, we truly need all fisheries to be healthy. We appreciate the extensive work that the analysts have done so far, but since the SSE has requested revisions and a second initial review, my intent today is to share some additional information to help the council make an informed decision.

First, when discussing the scope of the action or impacts to processing, only the current Kodiak groundfish processors should be referenced. Referenced, not the historical average. They tell an important story of consolidation, but it is just that—consolidation. Once lost, it's extremely difficult for processing capacity to return to a community. Actions that impact access to resource of any species for catcher vessels directly impact shoreside processors, and those impacts will only be felt on the—those of us that remain, not the ones that are already gone.

We believe processors should be directly included with it within the narrative of vessel and community level impacts for crab and each groundfish gear in Chapter 4, not separately. This will help show the importance of groundfish harvest to shoulder seasons like flatfish for our year-round operations in Kodiak. If we don't operate year-round, it's extremely challenging to keep resident employees who need to provide for their families. Tables— number 2— tables within the analysis should be updated without CP catch in any manner to accurately show shore side reliance on these potential closure areas. This is most evident in the denominator of calculations in Table 3-11.

I've provided an updated 3-11 attached to my testimony. CP harvest in the Central Gulf is significant, but not in the areas, um, that they, they don't rely on the grounds in the analysis. Um, you'll note that removal of CPs from the data doubles non-pelagic CVs reliance on the closure areas that are currently being analyzed from 10 10 to 20% for both a stat area and custom closure. It may also help to differentiate Catcher Vessels Open Access Cod and Rockfish Program Sablefish as well, which is not included in my attachment. Lastly, pollock harvest in the trawling category must be included in the pelagic harvest heat maps on page 51 and Figure 3.

It will provide necessary context for the BCs and fishery when the majority of the attack and must harvest is in Area 630 when CPUE tends to be slower. Higher abundance of incidental rockfish and Chinook PSE complicate fall harvest. Access to clean fish is essential, and one PSE species shouldn't be traded for another. In closing, I want to reiterate support for both crab and groundfish harvesters as well as the community. Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I can take any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions? Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you, Ms. Riddell, for your testimony. And I'm looking at your attachment Table 3-11, but I didn't understand what you said about not including cod or sablefish, or that those should be pulled out.

I— what was your comment there? Yes, thank you, Ms. Kimball, for the question, um, through the chair. So I didn't have an ability to look at those separately from the publicly available data, but that Table 3-11, which I also was wasn't able to update the value like is in the analysis, but assume that that would be updated as well. When you're thinking about what's in the denominator, and then if you're truly trying to look at the reliance on potential closure areas, we're— this is managing a gear type, but the importance of shoulder seasons to Kodiak and their reliance of, for example, shallow flat which really the analysis even shows is hard to find in other areas, can be skewed because the Catcher Vessel Open Access Cod Harvest and Rockfish Program Sablefish, especially when you're looking in terms of value, are then also included in the denominator. And there is some cod harvest in these closure areas, but there's also a lot of other places to get cod.

And then sablefish is not being harvested harvested within these potential closure areas. So if you're really trying to grasp the importance of having, you know, multiple species group options for shoulder seasons like April, it's just, it's hard when it's just a broad generalized non-pelagic gear. And I understand there's a lot of data complications and it might not be possible, but it's just an important nuance to understand.

Okay, thank you for your testimony. Kevin Abina is up next, followed by Ron Kavanaugh.

Is Kevin on line? Okay.

Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, good morning. Good morning, uh, Chair Drobnyka and council members. My name is Kevin Abina, Kodiak crabber, longliner, and tenderman, testifying today with the Gulf Groundfish Fishermen Association. I'm a Kodiak resident with my wife and 2 young daughters.

2Nd generation fisherman and board member of the Kodiak Crab Association Cooperative. I am in support of Alternative 2, a year-round closure of the custom area for non-pelagic trawl, pelagic trawl, and pot cod. However, I would like to see pot cod removed. First off, I'm strongly opposed to the AP motion. It is seemingly directed— it is seemingly directing this agenda item away from Tanner crab protection and toward a make bottom trawl great again agenda item.

The simple fact that the motion for Tanner protections was sponsored by a trawl lobbyist and passed unopposed pretty much sums up the lack of equity and consideration being given to the fixed gear fleets by the AP. The general lack of representation for fixed gear fishermen in the AP might be something our state members of the council should give a little thought. Concerning Alternative 3, the review of existing Gulf of Alaska crab closures, this item as I see it is a standalone motion and not a coattail item to a new Gulf Gulf of Alaska Tanner crab closure area. Existing closures were evaluated over year-long efforts, debates, discussions by this council. To tag a potential review or reopening of them onto this current council item that has been in progression since June of 2023 is frankly a condemnation to the work that was put into their initial approval.

Moving forward, a new closure to non-project trawl should have a review process for efficacy. I'll be the first to say reopen the area if in 5 years no crab exists due to heavy predation from the lack of hard bottom trawls removing predators. This was the trawl lobby claim in the AP. Mind you, the Aleutak area closures that the trawl lobby would love to have reopened to non-pelagic trawl have a healthy crab population— red and blue king crab, Tanner crab, and Dungeness crab— that somehow continue to exist with predators. These comments about closure areas and no crab are nonsensical.

I can name 10 to 15 state water bays on Kodiak right now that are closed to non-pelagic trawl that you could set a Tanner crab pot tomorrow and catch Crab. Concerning a new closure review process, one cannot exist until this Council fully understands the positive or negative effects of pelagic trawl seafloor interaction in current non-pelagic trawl closure areas. What are we reviewing and what measures will identify the success or failure if we don't understand the full impact of pelagic gear interaction? The answer is nothing. We are reviewing nothing of meaning if the potential for animal and habitat damage is still occurring in a current or new closure area by mobile bottom contact gear.

Here. I'd like the council to jot down the term sandbox. Next to it, put pelagic gear. You'd think if it was a hard bottom area, untouchable to pelagic gear, the trawl fleet would call it the rock box. Examining a potential year-round non-pelagic gear closure in the custom area is not putting any harvesters out of business.

It is simply directing the non-pelagic fleet to conduct their target fisheries— to not conduct their target fisheries on top of the largest Tanner biomass in the Gulf of Alaska. On page 56 of the RIR, Table 3-13 illustrates that very few Kodiak vessels drive more than 10% of their revenue from 525702, indicating low vessel-level dependence and correspondingly limited economic vulnerability for the community. To be clear, on the time series depicted on page 56, quote, 1.8 vessels per year earn 10 to 20% of their total revenue in Stat Area 525702. Also, it's worth noting from pages 94 and 95 of the RIR, just 10.7% of pelagic trawl harvest from 2012 to 2025 came from the Custom Area. The RIR clearly states in the pics on page 59 in Figure 3.2 that non-pelagic trawl harvest can be accomplished in many areas around Kodiak outside of the Custom Area defined.

Next to this, on page 58, the RIR states, quote, in years where Central Gulf of Alaska vessels targeted flatfish at a higher rate, when flatfish fetched higher prices, overall Central Gulf of Alaska shallow water flatfish catch volumes were more equally distributed across productive flatfish fishing grounds outside of Area 525-702. If you all recall, this Tanner crab conversation, conservation conversation, re-arose after a large unobserved catch of crab off Kodiak's east side 3 to 4 years ago. The crab were underreported and the vessel was ultimately fined. A crewman had to show a video to NIMS for this story to be told. As I mentioned above, above Figure 3.2 shows the non-pelagic trawl harvest around Kodiak's east side, but only for observed hauls.

In the targeted arrowtooth and flatfish fishery fisheries, Gulf of Alaska observer coverage is at or below 15%. Since we are likely moving toward another initial review, I believe the council needs to understand this area from the perspective of the other 85% of targeted flats trips. For an appropriate review, the council needs to see the composition of harvest in observed versus unobserved non-pelagic trips in both harvest volume, composition, and revenue by trip. The council needs to know the direction they are headed is being driven by the targeted flats and arrowtooth fisheries and not the MRA species involved. In conclusion, these bottom trawl fisheries have declined over time and have been proven throughout the IRIR to be executable in many other areas around Kodiak.

From 2012 to 2025, the custom closure area comprised 11.3% of the Central Gulf of Alaska non-pelagic trawl catch volume and averaged 2.6 million annually. I believe the council has enough information in the RIR to move this agenda item forward from initial review to final action. If that does not happen, I would ask the council to seek more information on the following: 1, non-pelagic trawl trip species harvest data comparison on observed versus unobserved trips. This is a unique opportunity to evaluate largely unobserved non-pelagic trawl harvest and its potential impact on Tanner crab. 2, A revised Table 3-15 showing non-pelagic trawl targeted arrowtooth flounder and/or shallow water flatfish with coinciding MRA species harvest volume, ex-vessel value, and wholesale value individually.

Concerning an adjustment of closure area, allow the Kodiak Alaska Department of Fish and Game to define the best area and closure timing to best protect Gulf of Alaska Tanner crab. That is what this conversation started out as. Thank you guys for your time.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there any questions? Yes, Miss Kimball, then Miss Cohen. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Bena, and I'm having a little trouble hearing people online today, but you had specific suggestions on Table 315 that I think you thought were important to both your perspective and maybe the SSC comments. Can you repeat that?

Yeah, absolutely. As I recall from the paper, they were, there were gross numbers on arrowtooth, on Pacific cod, and other species. I think, I think it would be neat to have those broke down further to be able to see the individual species with their MRA species. So what was the value from arrowtooth versus what was the target on, or what was the value on arrowtooth versus the value of the cod on a particular trip, basically to see what percentage of this, what percentage of these trips is coming from MRA species as opposed to the targeted species. With that, I think it would be interesting to see that same comparison for the, you know, 15% of the observed trips versus the 85% of unobserved trips.

So just, I think, a greater breakdown helping direct the Council to what's really driving this fishery, I guess.

Thank you. Thank you, and looks like Ms. Gowan's question was answered, so appreciate your time, Mr. Thank you. Ron Kavanaugh is up next, followed by Corey Lesher.

Is Ron online?

Hello, Council, Ron Kavanaugh, can you hear me? Yes, good morning. Good morning, I'm Ron Kavanaugh, fished out of Kodiak for over 50 years. Sounds like a long time when you say it out loud, Our family's involved in multiple boats, multiple fisheries from Kodiak to Adak. And first I'd like to start out and throw my testimony out the window because anyway, a 1-minute conversation is not collaboration.

While it's appreciated, that is grossly overrepresentation of what true true collaboration is. While we do appreciate that draft box being inputted, uh, that was a gross misrepresentation of what true cooperation back and forth is. That being said, let's move forward. Uh, all these boxes that have been put in, whatever, 40 years ago, they could have been dressed 20 years ago. Main difference is only one of these boxes, the Alitak box, was put in when there was actually some crab left to protect.

These other boxes were put in different reasons, but the crab were already gone for whatever reason. Um, so to address those, that should not be addressed in this, uh, motion that's moving forward. That was never the intent. It is clouding the the water and taking away from what the true intent is. The true intent is we've got some crab, Tanner crab, largest population in the Gulf of Alaska.

We know where they're at. They've been there, they come and go. For whatever reason, they're not spilling over. They're not spilling over to the north or just to the south. Why is that?

I'm not sure, but we do know they're there. They move in and out of those bays and they deserve protected while they're there and not just be continually whittled down until there's nothing left. We have lots of protections in, in place on the state water side to protect these crab from harvest. We spend more time not harvesting them than we do harvesting them while The trawl fleet is still allowed unchecked bycatch on these Tanner crab during times of low abundance. So there's a lot of emotions going on, obviously, and I'm not trying to put anybody out of work.

We need everybody, but this is also the long last large stronghold of these Tanner crab Gulf of Alaska. So you have some tough decisions to make today, and I'd like to see this move forward and not keep getting muddied up with more studies and removing closures that really don't have anything to do with this protection area. I'm going to cut it off. Thank you for your time, and appreciate it. Thank you for your testimony.

Ms. Kimball, then Ms. Gowan. Thank you, Mr. Kavanagh. I just missed what fisheries you participate in or are invested in. We've participated in right now mostly salmon, gray cod, channer crab once in a while when it's open, Dungeness crab, And we've participated in the halibut and black cod fisheries prior to IFQs.

Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Gone. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Kavanaugh, for the testimony. You highlighted the importance of the Scully area, but you also brought in what I hadn't heard before this round, where some of these areas around Kodiak that have been closed previously were done after the crab— king crab populations in those areas had been below certain thresholds.

So essentially not low, so low that it was difficult for the stock to bounce back. So my question for you is, do you see value in this trade-off of looking at this action to protect tanners and maybe opening up some of these king crab areas that have, where king crab haven't bounced back? I, that's definitely a discussion to be had, but at another time, at another level, because as was brought forward with this Mormon Bay closure, I heard the comment that that was the first time they had heard that there had been subsistence Tanner crab taken in that area. Well, maybe we're not asking the question. There's the Village The village of Port Lyons, the village of Yazankee, people from Kodiak have all harvested Tanner crab in that marlin area.

So that's definitely a discussion to be had and what the intent is of these closures. Because like I said, there's, you know, the idea that they're going to bring back king crab to that area, that's not going to happen. But what is that closure's intent and what is going on there? There. And the one in Alataq, that should never be reopened.

There's king crab, there's brown crab, there's Tanner crab, there's Dungeness crab. Everything moves in and out of that bay. So I mean, all of these closures have separate, I don't know if you want to call it agendas, but their protections are all separate. They can't be all tied together and say we're going to trade this for that. Not, it's going to take a lot of looking at and a lot of input from the people that would be affected by that.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Thank you. Corey Lesher is up next, followed by Hannah Heimbach.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the council. For the record, I'm Corey Lesher with Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. ABSC is a trade association representing the majority of independent crab harvesters who commercially fish for king, snow, and Tanner crab with pot gear in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab rationalization program. Program. Our vessels primarily fish in the BSAI rationalized crab fisheries.

However, there are times when our member vessels will tender for or participate in the state-managed Kodiak Tanner crab fishery in a given year when the fishery is open. Um, I appreciate the level of detail that was provided in the document and the presentation that was received yesterday. The common goal here Being, um, the incentive to find adequate and measurable protections for Tanner crab, keeping the stock at healthy levels to continue supporting a fishery while also allowing groundfish harvest to continue. It's especially important to protect crab during their molting cycle, as well as including metrics that can inform success or measure the efficacy of any protections provided. I would urge the council to consider further exploration into Tanner crab protections with the appropriate, appropriate performance metrics to monitor protected areas with some sort of threshold established to show whether we're reaching an abundance goal of some sort.

This would certainly take time, and as we know, this Tanner crab abundance is detected in pulses, as Mr. Moller pointed out yesterday during the AP report. Support. In closing, Madam Chair, the Kodiak Tanner crab resource is important to fishermen, their families, and the community of Kodiak and surrounding areas. We encourage the council to move forward with action to establish measurable protections for the goa Tanner crab and habitat, while also balancing the needs of other fisheries in the area. I believe it's up to all fishermen to shoulder the burden of conservation.

We're confident there can be a healthy balance that allows harvest of groundfish species while also protecting and maintaining healthy populations of Tanner crab. That concludes my testimony. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Mr. Lesher, could you provide a little more, if you have it, a little more context for, um, when your members decide to fish in the Gulf? Is it, um, what is opportunistic based on what factors? Thanks. Thank you for the question, Madam Chair. Um, a prime example I think is, is in recent years when we saw, um, a higher abundance of, of the Tanner crab in the Kodiak area, and there was a, a healthy fishery that was opened, and that, um, coincided with, um, multiple crab fishery closures in the Bering Sea or, or depressed crab fisheries in the Bering Sea, and we had a number of vessels that opted to fish the Kodiak Tanner crab in that instance.

And I'm sure there are more examples, but that's the first one that comes to my mind. Okay, thank you for that, Shane. Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. So based on that, so there are no restrictions on a larger Bering Sea crab vessel coming into the Gulf and fishing the Gulf Tanner crab fishery?

Through the chair, Miss Kimball, thank you for the question. I believe they're operating within sideboard limits when doing that. Beyond that, I guess I don't fully understand what the permitting process is and how residents with Kodiak fishing vessels versus Bering Sea vessels make those business decisions. So that's— I guess that's over my head.

There. Okay, thank you for your testimony.

Hannah Heimbach is up next, followed by Corey Denning.

Hey, good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, good morning.

Uh, Chair and members of the Council, for the record, my name is Hannah Heimbach, testifying this morning on behalf of the North Pacific Fisheries Association. I'm a fisherman board member for NPFA, which is a a multi-year group based out of Homer. Our members are fishing families that participate in federal and state fisheries across the state. We have at least 5 or 6 members that participate in the Kodiak Tanner crab fishery and others who have in the past. NPFA has consistently supported action to protect areas of Tanner crab aggregation and habitat, particularly at critical life stages, and the custom box the council has been considering under Alternative 2 is part of an area well established as important to Tanner crab.

We support the council moving forward with a PPA under Alternative 2, and regarding the specific options and elements, I'll align my comments with those from the local Kodiak crab fleet you've already heard from. We do not support Alternative 3 moving forward in this action and suggest that if the council wants to expand upon that discussion, you do so under a new agenda item. There is an inherent contradiction in taking another step toward final action with two alternatives that have fundamentally opposite intentions. Intense, one that considers implementing specific regional crab protections that stakeholders have long asked for, and another that considers removing existing protections in place in other areas. The Council absolutely needs mechanisms to review the efficacy of any management measure, including existing closures, but layering those reviews into a new independent action rather than initiating a review based on their previously established objectives isn't constructive for either issue.

It could artificially push us to measure the tradeoffs of one closure versus another rather than considering them as independent independent management tools for distinct Tanner crab aggregations, which they are. Each closure serves different purposes with different management intent in their design, and those unique factors should guide their review. The custom closure area being considered in this action is well established as important and is already a considerable compromise from previous iterations. Moving it forward shouldn't be contingent on the potential repeal of other areas. If the council does move forward with those considerations, I'd note that the elements and options offered under the AP's Alternative 3 are likely an incomplete— or incomplete lens for review.

They're primarily focused on whether and how much of a closure to repeal spatially or temporally. There's very limited direction to consider expanded closure time or area and no direction to review those closures based on the original intent of their management objectives. This is particularly important when reviewing whether the management mechanisms that govern the closure functioned as intended and with what outcomes. The closure areas have also, also have beneficial impacts that reach far beyond Tanner Crab, and a review of their efficacy should include include those other habitat species and fishery considerations. For example, I run a setnet operation in Aleutak Bay where I live 3 to 4 months of the year.

I completely agree with the testifier just a few speakers ago that mentioned the abundance of multiple crab species in that area, which indicates the importance of those spaces and the efficacy of closures. The way that this agenda item could contribute to future analysis of other closure areas is by including a meaningful and iterative review with the implementation of the custom box closure. If the regulation that implemented other closure areas lack an appropriate review mechanism, this action could provide a model design, but those reviews should be conducted independent of this action and in consideration of their respective unique objectives. Lastly, the, the AP recommendation also suggested that when considering impacts to processors, you only consider those processors still open, not those that have closed. And on one hand, I absolutely understand that that recommendation in terms of just, you know, focusing the assessment, and I think that recommendation aligns at least in part to testimony we consistently hear around how essential groundfish fisheries are to supporting processors, which they are.

But we have also seen truly extraordinary consolidation of processing capacity in recent years statewide and certainly in Kodiak. So when we're thinking about whether or not a 10% effort displacement on a flatfish fleet will impact processors meaningfully, I think we do need to consider that in the full context of the processing sector which is clearly under significant pressure that reaches far beyond these finite management decisions. So I strongly support considering impacts to processors, of course, but the context of that ongoing consolidation really, I think, does impact the assessment. Thank you very much for considering my comments and happy to answer questions. Thank you for your testimony.

I'm not seeing any questions. Thank you. Thank you. And then Corey Dunning is up next. After Corey, we will take a short mid, mid-morning break.

Okay, so the next 3 testifiers are not online, so that would be Corey, Nate Rose, and Robert Langdon.

All of— okay, none of them are on. Okay, so we'll go to Cherise Floyd.

Or Sharice Floyd.

Okay. Okay. Would— can you raise your hand if you're online?

Nate Rose. We'll take Nate Rose up next.

Okay. Hi, good morning. Good morning, Council members. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Yeah, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Nate Rose. Um, going a little off script here, I feel like listening to the conversations this morning and tuning in, I think there's some historical context and also some small boat fleet perspective that needs to be addressed.

My name is Nate Rose. My wife and I and my two kids live in Kodiak, Alaska year-round. We own a 57-foot fiberglass boat, the June Sea. I participate in the Tanner crab fishery when in January when it's open and then directly roll into state water pot cod fishery. This year dabbled in the longline cod fishery and then transfer into halibut longlining around the island and straight into salmon season and then back to halibut in the fall.

I think it's really important to, to give some context to the importance of this Tanner crab fishery to my personal business plan. I bought my permit to fish Kodiak Tanners in 2019. That year I harvested 7,000 pounds. Can you still hear me? Yes, we can still hear you.

Thanks. Yeah, 7,000 pounds in 2019 represented about 4% of my gross income for the year. 2020, There wasn't any crab inside the base. They were all outside, out the sandbox and offshore where the larger boats had access to them, and I didn't do very well. I caught 1,800 pounds, so negligible as far as my bottom line for the year.

2021, The season was closed. 2022, We caught 15,000 pounds, roughly averaged 12%, or what it, what it equated to was 12% of my, my, my gross earnings for the entire year. That's all fisheries combined. 2023, I caught 70,000 pounds. That's 45% of my gross revenue for the entire year.

2024, I caught 20,000 pounds, and that equates to 18% of my gross income for the entire year. 2025, Season's closed. So in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years, the fishery has been closed twice, and it's a, it's a very difficult business model to follow, to, to rely on that. And so we're at— my point is Please consider this alter of the closures within Alternative 2. Alternative 3 is an option we definitely should be looking at, but not as, as a precursor to taking action on Alternative 2.

I, I 100% hear the, my local fishermen, my friends, my neighbors saying they're going to be displaced into a different area with higher Bycatch issues and everything else. Let's review that. Let's start the process of reviewing that. But let's not preclude action on Alternative 2 and a closure in the area where these crab live right now. We need to address at Marmot Flats.

We need to look at Aleutak at a later date, but not to preclude this action. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions.

Seeing none, thank you for joining us. Thank you. So we'll take our mid-morning break, come back at 10:35 promptly, please, and we'll begin, uh, with calling Robert Langdon. Thank you.

So we're resuming our public testimony on C5. So see if Robert Langdon is online, followed by Sharice Floyd.

Robert, can you unmute yourself?

Can you unmute yourself, Robert? Star 6.

We're still not hearing you.

Okay, we can see you online, so, um, we'll try to communicate with you over email or, yeah, or text, and we'll circle back. So, Sharice Floyd.

Okay, Sharice isn't online. Keith Cochran followed by Gus Dugan.

This is Keith. You got me? Yes. Good morning. Good morning.

All right, Madam Chair, members of the council, My name is Keith Cochran. I'm part owner and operator of the fishing vessel Bay Islander, a trawler and Kodiak that depends heavily on flatfish trawl fisheries. I'd like to express my opposition to further trawl closures. The current analysis indicates that existing Tanner protection areas have not led to a substantial increase in crab biomass, suggesting that these closures are ineffective. I believe the proposed additional closures are driven more by sentiment by sound science or logical data.

The analysis also greatly underestimates the importance of flatfish fisheries to local vessels and processors. While the report suggests vessels could switch to pelagic gear, many of the, of the alternative fisheries are rationalized and inaccessible to all participants. Flatfish fishing remains one of the few opportunities for new entrants. Additionally, in years with low salmon projections canneries rely more heavily on the trawl fisheries to maintain operations and keep the workforce employed. I also request that the council examine catcher vessel data independently from the catcher processor data.

The CVs are more significantly impacted by closures because proximity to Kodiak is essential for maintaining the quality of species like arrowtooth, which must be processed within 24 hours. Unlike CPs, Our fleet cannot simply move further offshore without sacrificing product quality. Historically, we have trawled these areas for decades, including the years leading up to the most productive tanner crab seasons Kodiak has seen in recent years. The data does not support the claim that trawling is negatively impacting crab recruitment. I'd also like to mention that I support the AP motion regarding deploying pelagic gear with non-pelagic gear on forward even on non-EM trips.

This is a small detail that makes a huge impact on the efficiencies for our pollock harvest operations. So when we consider the historical fishing patterns, the lack of success with current protection areas, and the economic value this fishery brings to Kodiak, there is no clear rationale for further closures. I ask that you carefully consider all stakeholders and allow us to continue utilizing these very productive fishing grounds. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you very much for your testimony.

I'll see if there are any questions. Yes, Ms. Gowan. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Cochran, for the testimony. Can you elaborate on the having both pelagic and non-pelagic trawl gear on board? That's the first I've heard of it during public testimony today.

Yeah, through the Chair, Ms. Gowan, so Kodiak is unique in that the trawl fisheries, there's usually multiple seasons going on at months. So like this past A season during the pelagic pollock fishery, we also had a catch share agreement to target peacod also with bottom gear, and the plants also wanted some flats at the same time. So we run around with both pelagic and non-pelagic gear on the boat to target different things at different times during the same season. You might make one trip for pollock, one trip for cod, maybe go do a flatfish trip. It's all depending on weather and what the plant wants.

What they get backed up with, different things like that. But when we have non-polluting gear on the boat, it exempts us from fishing some of the closer places in town, primarily these crab protection areas, and it just creates a big inefficiency for us where every single trip, if we want to go somewhere, do something different, we're stacking down this gear, which takes hours on and off the boat. And it's way simpler and smoother if we just have all the gear on the boat, are able to fish, where we want to. Obviously, we're not deploying non-pelagic trawl in these, in these pelagic trawl areas, but it's something that we would like to be able to do just for ease of use, safety, efficiencies, all those things. So I'm not sure if that answers the question, but that's kind of the long and short of why we, why we need that.

Thank you. And Ms. Baker has a question. Oh, sorry, Ms. Baker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Cochran, for your testimony. I have a follow-up question about that same issue, and which was addressed in our analysis. And so my understanding is that— I'm, I'm not sure, but assuming that when you're making pelagic trips that you were participating in the trawl EM program. And so I think the inefficient part of this, or the lack of consistency part of this, is when the fleet was fishing under the trawl EM EFP, if you kind of did these mixed trips that you kind of stayed in, in trawl EM, and so the gear wasn't really an issue.

But when the trawl EM program was regulated, if you take, if you plan, if you're in, if you opt into the trolley and program but then you elect to take a non-pelagic trawl trip, you're kind of kicked out of the trolley and program and you go into odds for the observer program, and that's where this, this gear issue really comes into play. Am I kind of understanding the inefficiency there? Please correct me if I've got that wrong. Yeah, through the chair, Ms. Baker, that's correct. When we were developing the the, uh, uh, Pollock EM, uh, EFP, there was a provision in there that said if you had your cameras on, that would, uh, suffice or be able to, uh, prove you to have the non-pelagic gear on the boat.

They could prove that it wasn't being used or whatnot. And so we operated like that for many years and got comfortable with it and kind of made fishing plans, you know, have the pelagic gear and non-pelagic gear on the boat boat. When that EFP expired, it became a federally regulated program. That caveat or whatever, that line in there got erased that, you know, we no longer could have the non-polluting gear on the boat even with the cameras on. So we lost that.

That's been a big burden. We would like to get that back. But yes, when we go on a— when we think we are going to be deploying non-collegiate gear on a pawlik trip.

We do not have the cameras on, and so that is kind of the thing we have to figure out is how do we figure that out, or how do we do that, or how do we, you know, sometimes there will be an observer on board, times there won't be, and so that is kind of the tricky thing with this fishery is there are multiple situations whether you're an EM or non-EM, observed or not observed, other concerns that we face. So I'll, I'll call it good there.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

So I'm going to circle back up to Robert Langdon.

Hey, good morning. My name's Rob Langdon. I'm one of the owners and operator of the Eevee Grace here in Kodiak. Been fishing here, drag fishing, for 44 years, and I really would hate to see any more closures The areas that they're talking about closing are about 30 to 40% of, of my trips per year. Um, I'm, I'm actually currently on a trip right now in Area 525702, and it's our 5th one in 2 weeks, so it's very important to us and, uh, I don't have a lot more to add to that.

It would just really put some hardship on us and the town. You know, every time we come to town, we're a full day's work for the, for the plant for 250 people. So it's a pretty big deal. Anyways, I don't have a lot more than that. I guess If you guys got questions, I'll try and answer them.

Thank you, Mr. Lingen, for your testimony.

Mr. Lingen, do you, do you primarily fish this time of year in the set area too, or do you also fish earlier in the, in the spring? Yeah, we fish every chance we get. Yes, and both areas are very important for deep water and shallow water flats. Yeah, we start as soon as they'll start buying it and we fish until they stop.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. We don't go anywhere but Kodiak. We're a Kodiak boat base boat. We all live in Kodiak.

And we support Kodiak. So, yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

It looks like Gus Dugan can't join us today, so we will go to Brian Horn followed by Julie Cavanaugh.

Okay. Brian is not online. We'll circle back one last time.

So, Brian, Julie Kavanaugh followed by Garrett Kavanaugh.

I tried to use my laptop and it died on me, so I'm not gonna, not gonna even attempt. Thank you for, um, Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you. My name is Julie Kavanaugh from Kodiak, Alaska, and my family participates in the Kodiak Tanner crab and multiple fixed gear fisheries. I do not support the AP's motion. We don't— I don't feel that it's reflective of the perspective of Tanner or Pecod fishermen and ask the Council to move C-5 Tanner crab protections to final action.

I recommend selecting a PPA of Alternative 2, Element 1, Option 2, the custom box, Element 2, Option 1, year-round closure, and Element 3, Option 2, non-pelagic trawl. In addition, an additional option of, um, could include a review with a time frame of 5 to 7 years. The review should focus on efficacy and conservation results with additional considerations of economic effects and fishery benefits impacts. The council's 2022 EFH 5-year review identifies the east side of Kodiak Island in the Barnabas and Chiniak Gulleys as the largest area of habitat reduction in the Gulf of Alaska from fishing effects. Appendix 5, page 56, quote, the largest area where habitat reduction occurs is on the east side of Kodiak in Area 630.

The EARIR confirms that Barnabas Gully is important to Tanner crab crab and has an elevated abundance documented by the ADF&J surveys, the State of Alaska directed Tanner crab fishery, and it also has the single highest PSC rates Gulf-wide. The custom box alternative aligns more close— most closely with crab concentration. It is data-driven and responsive to the objective to protect Tanner crabs in areas of high abundance. A year-round closure is warranted because these crabs are vulnerable throughout multiple life stages Juveniles depend on structurally complex habitat for settlement, refuge, and predator avoidance. Clutch-bearing females are especially vulnerable, brooding eggs externally for 12 months, and protecting these females is critical as they represent the future recruitment and year-class strength.

Adult crab are susceptible to disturbance during molting and mating, as well as their relative low mobility and tendency, tendency to aggregate. Target. Repeated trawl disturbance causes cumulative impacts that are not fully reflected in broad-scale regional assessments, and I am also concerned about the SSC's suggestion that sector fishing effort footprint should be restricted when overlapping. This minimizes the compounding effect of repeated fishing, fishing effort. Seasonal closure would not adequately, adequately protect Tanner crab.

The RIREA speaks to potential shifts and concentration of trawl effort, shorter timeframe in a scenario that reduces benefits and exasperates impacts. I encourage the council to move to final action with the above-mentioned PPA and to bifurcate Alternative 3, initiating a discussion paper. If the council considers additional areas for analysis, I would have referenced a map that I was going to attach to my testimony, um, that is an expanded map from the custom box that is in the data, and it is informed by data and is responsive to PSC concerns and would have aligned with the objective to protect crab. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Yes, Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Cavanaugh, and I appreciate your very clear recommendations. I wonder if you have any specific suggestions for the new closure under Alternative 2? You, you did, I think you supported a review at some time to review the efficacy and conservation results.

Do you have specific suggestions for, for how we might do that at that future review? Yeah, through the chair, thank you, Miss Baker. Just to clarify, are you talking about a review of the possible closure on the east side? Okay, yeah, I do have I do have specific asks. I think that any review should focus on the benefits to the species, to the Tanner crab, whether what, what we see in that box.

I think that there should be possibly, if it can be inserted into the review process, and an idea where if we have new data that shows a slight shift in biomass, maybe the lines could be shifted with that, like some type of dynamic management deal. And I also think that we have enough collected data on the Tanner crab biomass that you would wanna have some type of comparison over time about whether or not this box has done its job in that, We believe that it, it could not only protect today's crab, but it might possibly lead to better recruitment and also possibly more, more years of open directed Tanner crab fisheries. We're interested in understanding if this could lead to Tanner crab spilling out outside of the box and around the east side area. Is. We would be interested in finding out, and then that would be primary, but we also think that it would be important to analyze the impacts and the shifts of fishing effort that would most likely happen within different fishing sectors in the area.

We don't want to be dismissive of that, but we primarily think that the action is related to Tanner crab protection and that the other things are secondary to that, but important to inform us as we move forward. And there's something I'm missing, but I can't remember what it is right now.

Thank you. And Ms. Gunn. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ms. Kavanagh, for the testimony. Um, I'm asking a clarifying question. In your testimony, you mentioned a concern over the SSC recommendation and something about over- overlapping effort.

Can you explain a little bit more what your concern is there? Yeah, so from my recollection and how I interpreted it, which might have been incorrect, the— there's a, um, there's a, uh, in the RIREA, there is a table that shows the footprint of different gear sectors, and, um, there was reference to the fact that the footprint for non- trawl is actually bigger than the area being considered for closure because of repetitive activity by the boats. And it was— the discussion said that it— that it— there might not be a utility, and I'm not sure if I'm using the right word, in having those overlaying footprints be considered as part of it. And we think I think that if you smooth that out and disregard the repetitive fishing effort inside of a small area, you're going to miss the compounded potential impacts to the area and to the crab.

Thank you. And Mr. Carlin? Thanks, Madam Chair. Ms. Kavanagh, in light of your support for closing the custom box, I wonder what your thoughts are on what we've heard from other other testifiers and the analysts brought out too about the potential for shifting effort such that, you know, there's higher CPUE for trawl fisheries within this area, so potentially having more trawling in other areas and maybe offsetting some of the benefits for Tanner crab by having PSE impacts, other impacts in other areas.

What's your view of those kinds of trade-offs? Yeah, through the chair, um, thank you for the question, Mr. Kerland. I think those are really, um, important things to highlight or bring up. I find that, um, I don't know how you would even be able to analyze that concern without some type of comparison. I think in the Bering Sea, they tried to do some predictive behavior analysis and I recall that the fishery participants were angry about that analysis because of the inability to, like, bring in everything.

And I think this was said in testimony, like, weather and whatever else is going on. And I think that there are, for halibut specifically, there are caps for that. So I would— my assumption would be is that an individual fisherman would avoid those areas where they, where they were going to meet their, their, their cap on halibut or something like that. If you look at the distribution of something like arrowtooth, it's everywhere, and there's really good amounts of arrowtooth biomass in several different areas in the Gulf. And I think that that's important to understand and recognize And one of the reasons why we focused on non-plagic trawl was because we were uncertain about what type of salmon bycatch might occur outside of the area.

So that was one of the things we couldn't come to an answer to because there wasn't data. So one of the drivers of choosing just non-plagic trawl was for that specific reason. It seemed like a really critical one. And we also couldn't figure out how to fix the Pollock apportionment issue that would happen if they weren't able to fish in there. And then, funny, this is off the, off the deal, but like, if we close this area to pelagic trawl, there's a scenario where they're still fishing inside of state waters and kind of kind of trapped in there trying to do their job.

So that seemed weird to us, that there'd be a state line where you had trawling going on, but you guys were saying you— but you can't fish out here. That didn't make any sense to me.

Thank you for your testimony. Yep, thank you.

Garrett Kavanaugh is up next, followed by John Hokema.

Garrett's not on. Oh, okay.

Okay. And John's not on, so I'm going to circle back to those we missed, um, followed or starting with Jake Everidge, followed by Riley Spence. This will be the last call.

Jake's not on. Okay. Riley Spence, followed by Mike Helixo. Riley, are you on? Can you unmute yourself?

We're seeing you online. Can you press star 6, please?

Okay, we, we'll try this just one more time after I make it through the final list. I'll circle back. Mike Halikso followed by Chandler Johnson.

Chandler Johnson. Is Mike online? Okay, we can see you as well, Mike. Can you unmute yourself?

Star 6, please.

Okay, he just dropped off. I'll circle back just one more time. Chandler Johnson followed by followed by Corey Dunning.

Can we see Chandler?

Good morning. Can you hear me? Good morning.

I think a lot of us are having technical difficulties. I think we're all online but can't get through. Madam Chair, members of the council, my name is Chandler Johnson. I've been fishing for 41 years. And for the last 35 years, I've run a local Kodiak boat, the Walter N, mostly trawling, but also longline, pot cod, crab fishing, as well as tendering.

This area in question on the east side of Kodiak has many species of commercially important fish, and it's important to all gear types. It's close to town, so with today's fuel prices, places it's even more important. You know, there's other places to fish around the island, but sometimes with bad weather it's one of the only places we can still fish. And it's remained productive year after year. I've also got a Tanner permit, and some years it's been a significant part of my income.

I'd love to see a healthy Tanner fishery every year, but from what I've seen in this area, the benefit to crab of removing predators outweighs any other effect that trawling may have. I've seen where every cod and narrowtooth flounder has a full belly of juvenile crab. When many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds of these fish are removed, how is this detrimental? If a million pounds of fish all have 10 small tanners in their at any given time, the math kind of says something. I don't see how a tanner crab population can overcome that.

So I'm asking you not to close these areas. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions.

Thank you for joining us.

Cory Dunning.

Good morning. Good morning.

I run the F/V Elizabeth F. I've been trawling out of Kodiak and participating in quite a few other fisheries, salmon, Tanner crab, and other fisheries in the Bering Sea and back. The area we're talking about right now is pretty central to a lot of fisheries. It's not just the tanner crab that are at issue here.

The trawl, pulling the trawl out of there would create a vacuum, so to speak, that I believe would be detrimental to everyone.

There's a lot of, a lot of things trawl does that can be easily disagreed upon, and there's a lot of things that trawl does that I believe benefit all of these fisheries, namely just, you know, removal of predators, and that's a cold hard fact. There's a lot of people that will use this ground, and I don't think that there's any reason why we can't all use that ground with all of our gear types. It continues to be the most productive area for the Tanner crab year in and year out, and it is continuing to be one of the most productive areas for trawl year in and year out. So this is pulling the— pulling trawl out of there for a gain that we just don't— that just is not visible right now, just in hopes that something something would happen. This doesn't make any sense.

It's really all I got.

Thank you for your testimony. Not seeing any of the questions. Thanks for joining us.

So, Sharice Floyd. Okay, Sharice isn't online. Brian Horn, followed by Garrett Kavanaugh. Ah, Garrett can't join us. Okay, John Hokema.

Okay, so I'll call Riley Spence one more time, followed by Mike Helixo.

Can you hear me now? Yes, good morning. Oh, sorry, I'm out— I'm actually out here in the water in the sandbox fishing right now, but Yeah, so here's my testimony. My name is Riley Spence. I am the captain of the fishing vessel Mardel Norte.

We also participate in the Tanner fishery. While the Mardel Norte fishes year-round in this area, it has not seen a decline in any fish in this area, and I am opposed to this crab closure, as crab closures in the past have not worked like the marmot crab closures and others alike. I think this is the 4th or 5th testimony that I've done for this closure in this, uh, and in these years, and the science is not proven. This closure will not benefit Tanner crab, and it'll shut down the trawl fishery for no reason. This is a very productive area for trawl year-round, and it would devastate us if shut down.

So again, I say I do not support this closure, as closures have not worked in the past with all these. So, uh, thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions. I appreciate your time. All right, thank you. So, Mike Haligso?

Okay, we're not seeing Mike online, so hopefully we'll be able to work out technical difficulties in the future. Um, so thank you all for trying to join Yes, so that concludes our public testimony on C5. Uh, let's take a, uh, stand down, um, to consider public testimony. We'll come back at— we'll try to come back at 11:30. Um, we'll update you if we need more time.

Um, so, uh, please look for notifications online. So 11:30, we'll resume and see if the council wishes to take action on C5. Thanks.

Testing, testing, testing. 1, 2, 3, Testing.

Council members, please come back to order.

So we have completed our public testimony and staff presentations on C5. See if the council wishes to take action. Yes, Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a motion that I believe staff have received.

Thank you. The motion reads, the council selects the following PPA in bold and revises the purpose and need and alternatives as follows for an additional— excuse me, additional initial review. Per SSC recommendation. Additions are in underlined and deletions in strikeout. Staff should include SSC recommendations in the next draft as practicable.

Purpose and need: crab is a protected species in the Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries, and the council has developed several time and area closures to minimize the impacts of groundfish fisheries on GOA crab. In recent years, new information about Tanner crab biology and management resulted in modifications to the harvest strategy and management measures for the state-managed GOA-directed Tanner crab fishery. The council is considering a new groundfish fishing area closure on the east side of Kodiak in areas known to have consistently high densities and abundance of Tanner crab. The council is also considering modification or removal of existing groundfish fishery area closures around Kodiak Island, most of which were enacted in the late 1980s. Given the importance of crab and groundfish fisheries to the harvesting, processing, and support sectors in the community of Kodiak, the council intends to consider management actions that can serve and protect Tanner crab while minimizing negative impacts on Central GOA groundfish fisheries.

Alternative 1 1, status quo. Alternatives 2 and 3 are not mutually exclusive. Alternative 2 closure area is bold as a PPA. Objectives for closure area: minimize groundfish fishery interactions with Tanner crab in areas off the east side of Kodiak Island, 1, where high densities of Tanner crab are known to occur, and 2, during life stages in which available information indicates that Tanner crab are most vulnerable to fishery interactions. Element 1, closure area.

Option 1, ADF&G statistical area 525702. Option 2, the east side of Kodiak Island with some coordinates there, and I'll reference you to Figure 1.

Option 3, another closure on the east side of Kodiak Island with a lot list of coordinates, and I will also reference you to Figure 1.

Element 2, closure duration. Option 1, year-round. Option 2, seasonal. A, February 15th to June 15th, which is the current Type 2 closure dates. And Option 2B is April 1st through June 15th, which is a directed Tanner fishery closure date by regulation through the Tanner crab survey start date.

Element 3 is in bold as a PPA gear type subject to closure, and Option 1, groundfish pot and trawl, which is non-pelagic and pelagic gear, and Option 2 is the PPA non-pelagic trawl gear. Element 4, timeline for council review, Option 1 is review 5 years after implementation, Option 2 is review 7 years after implementation, Element 5: Performance metrics for Post-Implementation Council review. Changes in Tanner crab PSC levels and rates. Trends in mature female and mature male Tanner crab survey abundance. Directed Tanner crab fishery performance indicators such as CPUE and guideline harvest level.

Redistribution of groundfish effort and catches pre- and post-action. Changes in halibut PSC by affected groundfish sectors, Kodiak groundfish landings during the spring shoulder season, and other metrics as analysts deem appropriate through development of the review. Alternative 3, changes to existing closure areas and regulations. The options are not mutually exclusive. Option 1, remove all Type 3 areas which have never been triggered.

That's Chiricoff, Horses Head, Barnabas, and outer Marmot Bay. Option 2, modify the Type 1 Marmot Flats area by moving the eastern boundary to 152 degrees longitude. See reference Figure 2. With the suboption to mirror the Alternative 2 timeline and performance metrics for post-implementation review and include an evaluation of metrics for red king crab. Tanner crab.

Option 3: Simplify the regulations for Kodiak Island crab closure areas to be consistent with the regulations for the Marmot Bay Tanner Crab Protection Area and remove the conflicting requirements that prevent having non-pelagic trawl gear on board while fishing with pelagic trawl gear in an area closed to non-pelagic trawl gear. And hopefully the reference figures are attached at the end. Madam Chair, with a second, I can speak to the motion. Is there a second? Thank you for the second, Miss Vanderhoeven.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Miss Vanderhoeven, for the second.

There's a lot to walk through here. I just want to start out with a few general points.

In terms of this action, I just— my attempt here with this motion was to really consider recognizing the importance of all fisheries to the community of Kodiak, and we really tried to balance the different perspectives on this issue. And just a few points that I think the staff did a great job of reminding us that I'd like to reiterate is we think about this issue. Unlike Tanner crab management in the Bering Sea and other crab stocks in the Bering Sea, Tanner crab in the Gulf of Alaska are not in a federal FMP. However, for our groundfish fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska, Tanner crab are defined as prohibited species, but due to the differences, some of the differences I think between Gulf Tanner crab and the FMP status, the Council's elected not to establish PSE limits, for example, for Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries and has instead relied on establishing time and area closures to mitigate the impacts of groundfish fishing on Gulf of Alaska crab populations.

And, and the SSC reminded us, and, and I think this was a pretty helpful recommendation from the SSC, that Tanner crab stock around Kodiak may be persistently linked to static bathymetric features, which may make fixed closures an appropriate conservation tool, even in a highly dynamic environment. And so just as a reminder, in moving forward with this action, and it's, I think, reflected in the purpose and need that I'm proposing we modify bit, really that particularly Alternative 2 of this action has some pretty clear objectives, and that is to minimize groundfish fishery interactions off the east side of Kodiak Island where high densities of Tanner crab are known to occur and during life stages where Tanner crab are most vulnerable to, to fishery interactions. And so starting with the high-level questions or things that the council needs to address today, Madam Chair. I am recommending that we follow the SSC recommendation, uh, to do another initial review of this analysis. Um, and my understanding— I've had a few discussions with staff in terms of, um, the time, the potential timing on this action given and even under alternatives to some of the recommendations that have come through the meeting here, both through the SSC, through the advisory panel, through public testimony, um, I think there's a little bit of additional work that needs to be done that I think will, will help us when this analysis comes back to make a better decision.

The question has also come up in speaking with staff since we received a lot of testimony in support of removing Alternative 3 from this action, or bifurcating, or however you'd like to refer to it. I think, I think there were some real concerns brought up about the additional impacts and timeframe for this analysis coming back in another initial review if we remove Alternative 3, or if we don't remove Alternative 3. I have elected to move forward a very focused Alternative 3 relative to, for example, what we received recommendations from, from the AP. And I'll speak to that in a bit of— a bit later. But again, I, I think we can have a little discussion, maybe if this motion passes, about, about timing and what that looks like with the motion that we end up passing here, in terms of to give ourselves and the public an idea of what that might look like coming, coming back.

Um, and again, so I think that's enough for now. Um, moving forward to the changes, um, suggested changes to the purpose and need, I really just have a minor modification again, um, to— I think the initial thinking of the review of all current closure areas around Kodiak Island, groundfish fishery closure areas around Kodiak Island, was a laudable goal. And I just want to be clear, I heard some public testimony suggesting that this idea to review the current closures was something of an add-on to the main focus of of a new closure to protect Tanner crab. And I guess I would just say from my, I hear that, but from my perspective, I've been hearing about a desire to review those current closures for at least as long as I've been hearing about a need for a new Tanner crab protection area. So I didn't personally feel like it was an add-on.

That's why I was supportive of including a review of current closures, that ended up as Alternative 3 in this action. Um, however, after, uh, hearing the testimony and, and on balance, I think a very focused Alternative 3, um, might get us to where we need to go. I, I think there are some very good ideas for perhaps a, a longer-term review of all the closure areas that have merit, but I'm not including those here.

In terms of the recommended changes to Alternative 2 that I'm proposing in the motion for Element 1, the closure area, I, I do— I want to express my appreciation for the AP's approach of considering a number of closure areas recommended in, in public comment, and, and maybe acknowledging that some maybe were not able to be brought forward either that would have been included. But I think again, it's important that we stay focused here in this action, and I'm recommending a new option that really combines options 4 and 5 of the AP motion. And it— with really, I think it came up in public testimony, um, we're retaining option 1 and option 2, but adding this new option that really aims to essentially do what some of us were hoping would be possible is to really find a more surgical area that protects Tanner crab at a level needed while maybe retaining some, some very important groundfish fishing areas open. And that is the intent of the, the new Option 3. The new Option 3 combines the eastern boundary of the AP's Option 4 with the southwestern boundary of Option 5 and, and just another detail note for those of you maybe referencing the figures, the northern part of the new Option 3 closure area matches the Type 2 Barnabas closure, which is different than the option in the AP motion.

And, and I'm suggesting that change in recognition of persistent high densities of Tanner crab in that area. It's shown that— you can see that in the survey data. And this also, I think, I think would simplify the analysis by avoiding discrepancies between the Type 2 closure season and the proposed options, um, under Element 2.

Moving on to Element 3, I am recommending that we select Element 3 Option 2 as the preliminary preferred alternative. I want to remind the Council and the public that a preliminary preferred alternative, we are not bound by that. Have to do that when this analysis comes back. We do not have to select that. What it does is it really— it focuses the analysts and the public on a direction that, at least at this stage, the Council is considering.

I know we heard broad perspectives on this, but I also feel like we heard some pretty unified perspectives on that in terms of the most most important impacts from groundfish fishing gear to focus on with the information in the analysis, with the local knowledge, and I think it's the appropriate time to signal that, that we should focus the new closure action under Alternative 2 on non-pelagic trawl gear. Again, non-pelagic trawl gear has the largest interactions with Tanner crab as measured by PSE, and time area closures protecting protecting crab in the Gulf of Alaska have focused largely on prohibiting non-pelagic trawl gear to reduce crab mortality from these interactions.

New elements 4 and 5, these address the council's intent to establish a timeline and potential performance metrics that would be used to review any new closure area. The timeframes selected in the motion encompass at least one full cycle of Tanner crab and include, I think, enough years for meaningful evaluation. I acknowledge that the AP suggested reviews, options for reviews after 3 or 5 years, and just in, in this council's experience with crab rationalization and other program reviews, after 3 years of implementation really hasn't provided sufficient data for meaningful evaluation. Of newly implemented programs, and, and so I'm expanding those— the review time a little bit in the options I'm proposing. The performance metrics for review in Element 5 were adapted from those suggested by the SSC with a few changes for specificity.

The motion suggests that a future review focuses on mature FEMA female and mature male components of the Tanner crab population. And, and that's with the understanding, uh, and, and the analysis really helped show this, I think, that juvenile Tanner crab are primarily concentrated within inshore areas. And then also just leaving open, uh, the possibility in the motion that there may be other performance metrics, uh, that could be suggested by staff based on the development of this analysis or a future review document.

Moving on to Alternative 3. Again, I've, I've really tried to listen to the AP discussion on this topic, public testimony that we've received, comment letters, and, and I am suggesting for now we leave in a revised Alternative 3 to include specific suggestions questions for changes to existing closure areas and, and federal regulations. Option 1 would remove all Type 3 closure areas, and we've, we've talked about this a little bit in this action. Again, Type 3 closure areas can only be triggered by a significant red king crab recruitment event as defined by a threshold based on historical female abundance estimated from pot survey data. ADF&G no longer conducts a pot survey in the Kodiak area, and therefore, a defined mechanism for that Type 3 trigger closure is obsolete.

And finally, the, the king crab stock has not shown signs of recovery, and declines have continued over the time the closures have been in place. And so even if we could measure it, it's unlikely that a historical threshold would be met in the future. And so I'm suggesting we can remove those closures. Moving on to option 2, or we can analyze removing those closures. Moving on to option 2, there are 3 areas around Kodiak that are closed year-round that we consider for modification: the Alatak and Towers area, the Marmot Flats area, and the Marmot Bay Tanner crab protection area.

We consider considered several factors in determining which of the areas might be reasonable to evaluate for partial reopening. First being Tanner and king crab abundance in the closure area. Second is coverage of the ADF&G survey in the closure area for fishery-independent data that could be used in a before and after reopening analysis to help us understand the changes and 3, of course, was public input.

The— excuse me— the Aleutakn Towers area was suggested for partial reopening by some members of the public. However, as we also heard and as we read in the analysis, this area contains what is thought to be the last remaining productive portion of the red king crab population around Kodiak Island. There are limited ADF&G survey stations in the federal water portion of the closure area, So I am not proposing we evaluate any changes at this time. We did not hear any suggestions from the public on potential modifications to the Marmot Bay Tanner crab protection area, and in fact, we heard just the opposite, that, that area is very important for subsistence users and just a strong request to not make any changes to to that closure area to maintain— in order to maintain its importance to local tribes and subsistence fishers.

We did receive suggested modifications from the public to the Marmot Flats area, and this area has fairly good overlap with the ADF&G survey grid, and I'll refer you to Figure 5.10 in the analysis, which shows very limited abundance of Tanner crab in the area. Area, and you can also reference, or refer, reference Figure 7-2, a red king crab survey density map that shows no king crab in the federal waters portion of the Marmot Flats area. Given that there seem to be very low densities of crab in the area and good coverage of the ADFNG survey, by the ADFNG survey in this area, I am proposing the Marmot Flats area as a test case for potential reopening. This approach was suggested in public comment. And again, aligns, um, and, and the specific boundary that was suggested in public comment aligns with, with statistical area boundaries that in turn mostly align with, with the survey grid boundaries.

And the area that would remain closed, as you can see in the, the second figure attached to the motion, the area would— that would remain closed is adjacent to state waters, which we heard was is important to maintain Tanner crab migration pathways from inshore bays. The portion of the Marmot Flats area that I'm suggesting would be evaluated for reopening is approximately 58% of the total closure area. And just noting, taking us back to the SSC report and our discussion yesterday with staff, I, I just really, I appreciated these public suggestions for partial reopenings of current closures, and this is really consistent, I think, with a brief discussion that the SSC had but was captured in the SSC recommendation, um, that, that, um, experimental designs for management can be really educational, informative, informative, but also the acknowledgment, uh, pretty difficult to design in, in terms of, um, closing half an area and, and, uh, keeping the other half open and, and monitoring each, each, uh, half to determine the impacts are. Um, I think we have the opportunity here, and I'm proposing it for further evaluation, understanding this is a bit unusual, and appreciate, um, the extra thinking that will be needed, maybe from, from this at the staff level to think about this. But I really do think that, uh, this new approach that we might be thinking of provides an opportunity to get at what we really haven't been able to do in the, in the challenge, in the question we've all been thinking about: how do we evaluate current closures?

Have they really been effective in accomplishing our objectives. And again, I think this limited approach, it's, it's a good test case area, and I'd like, I'd like to get some analysis back on what this proposal would look like. Option 3, under Alternative 3, would simplify regulations and apply a consistent approach for deployment of pelagic trawl gear in all crab closure areas around Kodiak Island that are closed to non-pelagic trawl gear. We've talked about this a little bit too. Per federal regulations, vessels cannot have a trawl other than pelagic trawl on board when inside Type I areas and in Type II areas during seasonal closures.

While this regulation is largely no longer applicable to the Central Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet, fleet because there is an exemption to this regulation for vessels in the trawl EM program. We heard in testimony that if vessels are participating in the trawl EM program, they may have a non-pelagic trawl on board their vessel while trawling in the Type I or II area closure so long as they do not deploy a trawl other than pelagic trawl. However, if a vessel opts into the trawl EM program at the beginning of the year that intends to take a non-pelagic trawl trip or mixed trip, that trip no longer carries the EM exemption for that particular trip and therefore loses the exemption from the prohibition to have trawl other than pelagic trawl on board when inside Type I and II areas during the seasonal closures. And as we heard, this is creating some challenges for those Gulf vessels, many of whom are quite diversified. And depend on having both pelagic and non-pelagic trawl trips in their portfolio.

Just taking one last look at management. I think that takes me through the motion. I feel like one thing that I referenced a little bit earlier that I did want to speak to maybe a little bit more clearly, um, Madam Chair, was the timing, um, for bringing this analysis back. I know we don't, we don't usually talk about that in motions, but I think we can speak to it generally here because we've had a lot of testimony, uh, concern about, um, as always, for the time that our analyses take, and concern if we have both alternatives 2 and 3 in in this action, and I think we heard some interest from some stakeholders of bifurcation and moving Alternative 2 forward in, in hopes that that could be done much more expeditiously. I guess I just, um, I was hoping, uh, Madam Chair, as we, as we work through this motion, and depending on the motion that ultimately passes, if we might be able to have a little bit of discussion with staff, or maybe get a check back as, as staff, um, kind of have a chance to digest this motion.

Um, maybe get a check back in October, um, in terms of when, um, we might be able to get the analysis back, considering analyst constraints, SSC review, all of those things. Um, and, and just get it, just because I know that this analysis is, is very important, and so that unique in the sense that we have a very clear action that we're sort of used to dealing with under Alternative 2 and something a little bit different under Alternative 3. And I think putting that out there, I'm sure there will be questions, Madam Chair, and, and so maybe I'll just hold that for now and take any questions. Thank you, Ms. Baker. Thank you for the motion and the rationale.

I'll see if there are any questions.

Yes, Ms. Kimball.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, thank you, Miss Baker, for the motion. I, I am on looking at Alternative 3. Um, it's significantly different from the AP motion. Just tell me if I'm understanding this correctly, that Option 1 is, is, has no effect.

That's, those areas have never been triggered, so you're just getting something and they won't be triggered in the future because there's no POT survey, so you're just getting something off the books. That's not— that does not look like a heavy analytical load to me, but please correct me if I'm wrong. And then option— the rest of Alternative 3, you have narrowed it down to one area to consider, and it's not removing the area, it's making it smaller. Am I— I am tracking your maps, but I'm going back and forth between the AP motion and your motion, And that's the significant difference. You're looking at one area.

Through the chair, thank you, Miss Kimball.

Yes, thank you. Yes, Miss Goin.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Miss Baker, for the motion. Um, I have several questions under the purpose and need Um, you mentioned in your rationale recognizing the unique static bathymetric features of this area and its importance to Tanner crab. And then also we heard from the SSC a request to clarify the intent here with this action, saying that it's unclear if we're preserving structure and function of habitat and/or reducing observed and unobserved mortality. So I'm just wondering if you intended to address the SSC's request request in this purpose and need modifications?

Through the chair, thank you, Ms. Gowan, for the question. Yeah, thank you for— I did not speak to that. I don't think a purpose and need revision is necessary because I thought the council was very clear about its objectives for this action and that it is really focused on minimizing groundfish interactions where high densities of Tanner crab are known to occur, and during life stages, Tanner crab are most vulnerable to fishery interactions. I, I have never identified protecting crab habitat as, as a, as an objective of this action, just because I don't think we have information, quite frankly, to be able to do that. So I am focusing it on those two objectives, and I So I don't think— while I appreciate the SSC commenting on some of the things they did related to habitat, it seemed out of the scope of the action as defined by the council to me.

Thanks for that. So if I understood you correctly, it's— this action's focusing in on the reducing observed and unobserved mortality of Tanner crab, and that's already explained in the purpose and need. Um, my next question is under Alternative 2, Element 1 on the closure areas, the new Option 3.

And give me a second here. So this new area bisects some of the highest abundance levels of Tanner in Barnabas Gully. So I'm just curious if you can explain how you feel this is responsive to the purpose and need to protect areas known to have consistently high densities and abundance of Tanner crab.

Through the chair, thank you, Ms. Cohen. I'll note that Option 1 and Option 2 are still in the analysis, and I would also note that is also a component of the purpose and need that we are considering options to conserve and protect Tanner crab while minimizing negative impacts to the Central Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries. And as I, as I tried to speak to, much of the conversation on this action is that Tanner crab and groundfish fisheries, Tanner crab fisheries and groundfish fisheries occur in the same area. And so I think we're trying to balance those two things. And I think we have three, if element three, or excuse me, option three is added under element one, I think have 3 options that are consistent with, with the purpose and need as I see it.

Thanks for that, and I appreciate your new element 4 here that adds a little bit longer timelines for review, more consistent with Tanner crab biology. For element 5, this performance metrics for post-implementation review, you note the tracking trends in mature female and male Tanner crab, but I'm wondering, you know, if you considered additional life stages of Tanner. We also know this area is important for juvenile Tanner in particular.

Through the chair, thank you. I, yes, I did. I am focusing on mature males and mature females because, at least as I understand I understand it for the particular areas that we're talking about, particularly the gully area that you just referenced, that's where the high-density term that we keep referring to, that's really the important factor, the important metric that I think we want to track under any new closure. As I looked at those heat maps, it's probably not the right term, but for Tanner Craft lab, by and large, most of the juveniles were found in the inshore areas, areas that are already closed. And so I felt like, again, we, we are really trying to focus in on the most important metrics for a new closure in federal waters that we, we might establish under Alternative 2.

And it seemed to me, in terms of— although there are certainly juveniles in, in the offshore gully areas, I think the most important metrics for this new closure that we could track are mature males and mature females. Thanks, that's helpful. Also under the same element on performance metrics, do you envision like any additional research that comes along would be included? If there's new information on ecosystem or habitat impacts to better understand this unique bathymetric productive area, do you envision that that could be included? Included in the review of the closed area.

Through the chair, uh, thank you, Ms. Gowan.

I'm hesitating because, again, having not been through one of these before, uh, we do have an other metrics as analysts deem appropriate through the development of a review.

But I'm hesitant to respond that absolutely yes, ecosystem research might be relevant because again, we have a very focused objective for this action. And while there are many other important things that affect Tanner crab and Tanner crab abundance and, and very important things we care about, I just feel like when we're doing an evaluation evaluation, a focused evaluation of what our very specific objectives are for a new action. I, my sense would be that we would need, we would want to keep the metrics focused as well. But again, I, if there is relevant ecosystem research that would inform whether our closure was meeting those focused objectives, then yes, I would think that would be relevant. I'm having trouble envisioning what that might be, but I hope that's helpful.

That is, thanks. I think my last question is under Alternative 3, Option 3, simplifying the regulations. Definitely appreciate the effort here to simplify regulations for fishermen. I think that's important. I guess my question is making sure we can still track and enforce anything that we're doing.

So regarding this last sentence about removing the conflicting requirements that prevent having non-pelagic trawl gear on board while fishing pelagic trawl gear in a closed area, can trawl EM track for enforcement any use of the non-pelagic trawl in the area if it happens?

Madam Chair, Ms. Gowan, I do not know the answer to that question, and I think we, we talked about that a little bit in public comment today, and that's exactly why I'm suggesting we include it in the analysis, because I think there was a very good description of the issue in our current analysis. And again, this is one I've been hearing about since implementation of the trawl EM program. And so I just think it is— this would be a very opportunistic time to try and work through exactly the question that you have, um, to whatever the outcome is, to, uh, simplify or have as much consistency as we can across regulations. That's the goal here. Thank you for that, and I appreciate you entertaining my questions.

Thank you. And Mr. Kerlin. Thanks, Madam Chair. Um, thanks very much, Miss Baker, for the motion.

Um, my question follows up on, uh, Ms. Goins, second to last question. So on Alternative 5— sorry, Alternative 2, Element 5 about the performance metrics, I think this is hopefully an easy question, but I interpret your intent to be, and I'm looking for verification of this, that analysts would consider these various things to the extent practicable that information is available. The term performance metrics could note that there's like a pass/fail standard or something like that. But I, I gather you were trying to list types of information that should be included to the extent they can be included in an evaluation. Is that, is that your intent?

Thank you, Mr. Kurland. Madam Chair, yes, that's a very helpful clarification. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Any Any other questions? Yes, Miss Kimball. Thank you. Mine's, uh, thank you.

Mine's simple. I lost the motion, but just for— I appreciate adding in the review, um, for Alternative 2 and Alternative 3, but particular to Alternative 2, the 5 years and 7 years make sense to me. The idea is, like other reviews, even though we don't— we haven't done it on a fixed area closure, so that's progress is that we would get the review and if— but the default is that that closure would stay in place. If the council wanted to reevaluate, lift, change the closure, that would be a separate initiated amendment to do that. The review is simply to ensure we have proper information that we're doing our kind of complete circle of adaptive management and seeing the efficacy of the closure.

Is that how to interpret that? Through the chair, thank you for that question. Yes, um, that is my intention, that it be interpreted that way. I'm not suggesting a sunset date of— for a closure. Um, the closure would remain in place, uh, unless the council took a separate action.

And I think, um, the current analysis describes, uh, a previous council process when when some of the closures around Kodiak Island first came into place, there was actual— actually a few regular reviews of new closures that took place. So I, I, I think that would be a good model potentially for the council to think about following in the future. But yes, Miss Campbell, is the short answer to your question.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Any amendments?

Any comments on the motion? Yes, Miss Campbell. Thank you. I have a comment. It might, it might be a question, but there are a few things.

Um, I think it is a question to Miss Baker that, you know, include the SSC recommended recommendations in the next draft as practicable. And I, I appreciate that. That's kind of standard language we use when we want to keep moving something along, and I agree that we want to keep this moving along. The SSC comments and recommendations were really comprehensive. Um, you know, I don't know if it would be helpful to identify a few things that maybe rose to the top, but I'm, I'm prepared to do that.

I, I just wanted to be clear that the SSC asked for a quantitative analysis of displacement scenarios. And I, if everyone looks at those minutes, I'm not sure that that is really possible with the level of data we have on this fishery. I think it's ideal, and I, I think the SSC is, is supposed to provide us— this would be ideal information for what could, what you'd want to see in an analysis like this, but I just don't want to send staff off on doing something I think is really a significant amount of work that I'm not sure we have the data to support. So I, I don't know how to get that across other than speak to it now. There are a few other things in the SSC minutes that I think have come up in our discussion and through testimony that are important.

I think separating ketcher vessels and ketcher processors in the tables, disaggregating some of that, is going to be important. I think disaggregating flatfish, especially given the focus on non-pelagic trawl, would be very helpful. Um, these are all related to the SSC motions. I do think discussion of displacement, particularly in April and May, and maybe the most likely impacts on groundfish CPE timing, Tanner PSE, those are important things to look at, but that could be a qualitative discussion compared to what the SSC has suggested. I think it's important, and the SSC minutes are clear, it's, it's not just can that fish be taken elsewhere, but it's are we going to change and increase tow time or increase PSE in ways that we didn't contemplate.

So I think a qualitative discussion there is legitimate. I also think it'd be helpful to see the percentage of tach caught for flatfish and arrowtooth in the time series. I think it's really important to show that we've had a period of very low flatfish opportunity due to markets, but that there's a big opportunity for increased flatfish fishing in both markets and in the available TAC. And so I think showing that potential opportunity is important. I think the other thing that SSC noted is that the Stellar Sea Lion closures should be provided on the map as well.

Those are relevant to the groundfish fisheries. So I'm trying not to amend the motion with those things, but I'm trying to help focus based on a laundry list of SSC recommendations and, and do it in a way that I feel like could bring the analysis back with very pointed, relevant information for our decision-making, but not slow down the timeline. And now that I've said it all, you can tell me if that's inappropriate, but, uh, those are the things. And I have talked to other council members about, about what they've seen as the most important priority issues out of the SSC minutes. If you'd like me to do it in an amendment fashion, I can whip that up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Kimball. And, and I do, uh, I, I did intend to speak to that a little bit more, so thank you for prompting me on that. Um, I have— I— what I meant to speak to was that, again, the initial statement, uh, requesting staff to incorporate SSC comments in the next version as to go full. That is always sort of our— at the analyst discretion to determine if, if those comments are, one, relevant to whatever, however the council has modified the action for the next round, or two, just feasible.

And, and I think I have had on, on those points that you mentioned, Ms. Kimball, I have heard them from other council members, members of the public. I'll also also note many of those were included in the advisory panel motion as well. And, and I'm confident that our, that our staff heard those, and I've talked about a few of them. Um, sometimes in terms of the displacement analysis, I also had concerns about that and, and was able to sit down with staff and, um, walk through, uh, a potential way to address that in, in a fairly effective manner. I think the SSC CPC did suggest potential model-based approaches that could be taken, but that's not necessarily the only way to do it.

And I think they also laid out some options to look at that, that might establish some, some bookends, but also, like we talked about in testimony, perhaps just some conversations with fishery participants would be a more effective way, an efficient way to get that information and also give us what we need for decision-making. So I think your list was a good one. I think I've had a couple conversations with staff now and have a good sense of, of what's doable. I think things like— I'm sorry, I wasn't able to write down all your list, but if— did you ask— I can't do that. Things like extending the time period that we're looking at Um, which, which was definitely, I think, requested, um, in terms of alternative to— that's, you know, um, that's going to take some work.

So using, um, analyst discretion in terms of, again, the feasibility of doing that. And, and again, also, I know there's really good communication, uh, of course, with council staff and, and Ms. Evans and, and the chair. And so making those sort of game time decisions about about whether to embark on a complicated exercise. I think that happens all the time, and, and just us speaking to it, quite frankly, I think, and throwing out some caution for a couple of those things in the SSC minutes, I feel like our staff have a pretty good handle on how to, how to go forward with that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Thank you for that explanation, and I didn't actually include extending the timeline because I just know how that filters through an entire analysis and what a significant amount of work that could be. So I was leaving that to the discretion of the analysts. I did not pull that out, just to be clear. Thanks.

Thank you. I, I really appreciate this conversation as well and, and honing in, um, on aspects of the SSE discussion that we think are, are most important for, um, the analysis moving forward. I just wanted to, um, and as well as how the motion narrows in on Alternative 3, and I wanted to circle back to some of your original statements, Ms. Baker, and the relevancy of this overall conversation to, um, to Alternative 3. And just wanted to confirm that you're thinking as far as, uh, you know, just the iterative process of reviewing, making sure we're on time, the, the time schedule for your, um, putting this back on the agenda would also apply to the complexity of Alternative 3 relative to Alternative 2. Is that what you're getting at in those comments?

Through the chair, yes, uh, to you, um, that is what I was— you articulated it much better than I did. I am just really trying to balance again the, the different perspectives on this issue, understanding one of the concerns about having Alternative 3 in this analysis is just that it would delay it and it would take additional time. And so the iterative process that you suggested in terms of staff continually sort of their work plan for this issue and communicating with, with you and Ms. Evans, I think we have the ability maybe to get a check back at the next meeting, and if there are, for example, going to be significant analytical delays due to the inclusion of Alternative 3, when the analysis comes back, you know, I just think that will be helpful information that we can have in the future in terms of what the council might want to do at the next step. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying that.

I think we're on to comments. Yep, Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Baker, for your motion. Um, I, I really appreciate all the work that you put into a really complicated issue, um, and I think this is a really good path forward considering the comments that we heard from the SSC and in public comment and the AP motion.

It became clear to me that we needed to do another initial review before we're ready to take action. And I appreciate the discussion about talking to fishermen about qualitatively looking at displacement as, as that being one approach to get there. I think that there are other questions where having those conversations with fishermen would be helpful in some of the other questions that the SSC had as well. And with that, I, I will be supporting your motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Vanderhoeven. Mr. Ritchie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Baker, for the motion. I'd like to align myself with, uh, what Ms. Vanderhoeven said, um, but I want to specifically support the additions in Alternative 2, Elements 4 and 5, and the inclusion of future council review. Um, I believe that in any management decision, especially one with a clearly desired but uncertain outcome, there isn't anything that precludes us as a council from framing an action in a way that mimics or follows experimental design. If we as a council are doing our job and following the science that we're provided to try to reach a desired but uncertain outcome, that outcome really should be more of a hypothesis, and the management decision we make should be framed in a way that follows the usual process but gives this body the opportunity to ultimately avoid undesired or unseen outcomes.

That way we can learn, improve, and adapt in the future. I think the SSC report reminds us of that, and this motion lays the path to achieving that goal. So I just want to say I'll be supporting the motion, and thank you for writing it up. Thank you, Mr. Richie. Any other comments?

Miss Cohen.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Miss Baker, for the motion and again for entertaining all my questions. Um, I'll be supporting the motion to move forward to another initial review analysis. Um, I think the data is showing that this area is one of the most important areas for Tanner crab, in part due to the unique bathymetry geometric features of the gully and the structure and habitat and ecosystem functioning that area provides. Under Alternative 2, I appreciate that we only are adding one new alternative. I feel it's responsive to public input, but it's also balancing not being overly burdensome on staff by adding area.

Under Element 3, I don't think this is the right time to signal a PPA. I think we're at another initial review stage, and we heard mixed public input on this, and I would personally would like to see more, more information before we move to PPA. But I appreciate that you noted that the council is not bound by selecting a PPA right now. Um, I also appreciate additional considerations for the analysis in the next initial review that we heard from the SSC and from public testimony, and encourage the analysts to consider that input without significantly slowing down the next iteration. As others have commented too in the past, we recognize that Kodiak needs all of its fisheries, and we need to find ways to strike a balance here.

And I appreciate that this motion is attempting to do that. Speaking quickly to habitat, I appreciate the analysis includes impacts to habitat and briefly covers ecosystem considerations. And just noting that crab is a benthic species that's intrinsically tied to its habitat, and this area in particular with its unique bathymetric features. And I encourage further information in the next round of the analysis and note that pulling habitat into any analysis like this aligns with our ecosystem-based fisheries management policies. Thanks again for the motion.

Thank you, Ms. Gowan. Any other comments? Mr. Cicada?

Yes, uh, thank you, and thank you, Ms. Baker, for the motion. I appreciate you synthesizing such a complex issue. Um, both the SSC and the AP concluded that the analysis wasn't ready for final action, and I think this motion respects that but still keeps, uh, this thing moving forward. Um, like Mr. Ritchie and others have said, uh, the performance metrics and the review timeline, I believe, are a sound approach. When you have conservation measures that can't be evaluated or against measurable objectives, then they really aren't conservation, they're just restrictions.

The PPA selection of non-pelagic trawl gear, I believe, is consistent with the interaction that the data points to, and I agree with many of the other comments made prior, so I will be supporting this Mr. Muller. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I too will be supporting the motion and thank Ms. Baker for it. Uh, as Mr. Ritchie already commented on, I'm particularly appreciative of Element 5, where we heard not only from staff reports but also from the public in terms of the potential unintended consequences to redistribution of the complete.

This is something I've talked to many, many public members about, and it's of particular interest to me. So I really appreciate Ms. Baker's inclusion of that element into her motion, and again, I'll be supporting it. Thank you, Ms. Baker.

Mr. Seaborn.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I always appreciate Ms. Baker's motion. They, they're always, uh, it's always amazing how she puts those together. Um, uh, I support Alternative 2. Um, having some, some of those options that do provide compromise to reduce impacts to all users is extremely important.

Um, I really appreciate the fact that there's measurable objectives with a timeline, um, that will be based on science, and then you include an established review period. Um, it's important that, uh, all of our regulations are meeting the expectations not only from the industry but also from recreational subsistence users as well. We've heard some of the difficulties that the processors have been facing. You know, there's been some consolidation with the processing capacity at Kodiak. I'm especially sensitive to that in Oregon.

We've had some regulations that have resulted in the loss of infrastructure in some of our smaller ports, causing boats to have to move to some of the larger ports. So I look forward to the next analysis and some of the impacts to those processors and the community in Kodiak.

Some of the areas that were considered for closure have been safe havens for vessels, and so this— in this next analysis, I'll be looking through the lens of safety as I review that. And I also support the inclusion of Alternative 3. I feel that anytime we can reduce some complexities and regulation, that's always a win for, um, you know, the users. So with that, I'll be supporting the motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Seaborn. Any other comments?

Seeing none, um, thank you, Ms. Baker, for all of your work on this motion. I also greatly appreciate all the public testimony that we've received, um, and really highlighting the importance of both the brownfish fisheries as well as the Tanner crab fishery to the community of Kodiak. I do appreciate the inclusion of a new alternative here. I think that it'll allow us to better assess the broader implications of potential closure while Identifying the, um, yeah, how to, how to best scale and balance the objectives of this action, but also appreciate the retention of both the custom area and Area 02. And I will look forward to working with staff as we as we better understand the analytical lift and work through the timing and placing this back on the agenda so that we can take timely action moving forward.

Thank you. Okay, so with that, is there any objection to the motion? Okay, seeing none, that motion passes without objection. And I think that brings us to lunch, and we will Let's take an hour for lunch. We'll come back at 1:35, and we will start with our D1 agenda item.

Thank you.

Welcome back, everyone. So we're ready to begin our D1 agenda item, and we have a series of presentations under D1, and we have Dr. Hopla here to introduce all of those presentations. So thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, members of the council.

Kate Hoppe with Council staff. I'll be providing you with a short overview of the D1 agenda item, um, before turning it over to our presenters.

So under the D1 agenda item, the Council is considering potential management measures to further minimize the impacts of pelagic trawl gear in areas that are currently closed to non-pelagic trawl gear and address potential unobserved crab mortality as stated in its June 2025 motion for this issue. The Council has previously stated that its intent is to revise the performance standard for pelagic trawl gear operations, and I would note that those standards do differ by region. However, in the action memo, staff have flagged for the Council that it is not inherently limited to this approach, you could consider other courses of action in order to achieve your management objectives, and we'll talk through some next steps at the end of this intro.

At its June 2025 meeting, when the Council last took up this issue, it requested several updates to inform its consideration of potential management measures and objectives for pelagic trawl gear and its performance. The 4 presentations are listed for you here, and they compose the substance of this agenda item in addition to public comment. Um, I would just note, Madam Chair, that this is the order that we intend to provide the presentations for you today. Um, the action memo that's prepared for D1 also provides more information both on the broader history of the council's interest in this issue and the 4 presentations and the presenters who are providing them. Um, and then finally, one other thing I wanted to note here is that we have posted the discussion paper prepared for the June 2025 meeting related to this issue.

Um, you will not be receiving a presentation on that. It's posted there for ease of access, and it contains relevant information.

Um, so just concluding with some next steps for the council as it considers the presentations, and public comment. Um, at this meeting, you could choose to take no further action on this issue. You could also choose to request further information from staff in the form of another discussion paper, as well as choosing to initiate an analysis. Of course, if you decide to go with initiating an analysis, you would also need to develop a purpose and needs statement and set of alternatives. And the important part of this is that there's not one specific course of action that limited to for D1 today.

So with that, happy to take any questions or turn it over to Dr. Harris.

I'm not seeing any questions. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the Council. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to speak with you today. My name is Brad Harris. I'm a professor of fishery science at Alaska Pacific University and an affiliate faculty member at University of Alaska Anchorage. And I have the privilege of directing the Fisheries and Aquatic Science and Technology Laboratory.

I spoke with you a year ago at our meeting in Newport, provided an update for you on progress of our gear innovation initiative. And I've been asked to return. I guess whatever I said before might have been somewhat helpful. And so we'll see if we can expand your understanding of what's going on. And in particular, I want to try to address 3 specific things that the council has asked me to give feedback on.

Um, see.

There it goes. Okay. And so, yeah, to get right to it, the Council requested an update on research progress and insights over the past year coming from the GEAR Innovation Initiative. Wait, went one slide too far. He asked for— and including any relevant information from the GEAR cataloging efforts and field study portions of our work with catcher processors and the pollock fleet.

You asked for information on the Gear Initiative timeline for generating updated gear parameter information to be included in the fishing effects model and an update on changes that were going to be forthcoming in terms of the fishing effects model. And so to get right to it, research progress has been outstanding over the past year. The Gear Initiative team, which includes members of the university, my crew, as well as collaborating researchers from the fishing industry, folks from Memorial University. I have mentioned that we have input from colleagues overseas in Northern Ireland and New Zealand that are also providing us with guidance, but we've been able to successfully document almost 300 trawls. That includes acquiring net plans, information on specific rigging configurations, how the gear's fished, information from the field in terms of its geometry, and ultimately the creation of a new structured way to incorporate information about actual gear and how it shapes up and operates during actual fishing.

From my standpoint, this exceeds expectations in terms of what we thought we would be able to do, and this is in large part based on the— or because of— real really constructive involvement from the fishing industry and the net designers and those, the local knowledge holders that hold this information and their willingness to share it in a constructive fashion. Next, we are on track to provide information for the fishing effects review by the SSC that's going to be upcoming in February. That will include all the information that will flow from the gear initiative into the Fishing Effects Model in the form of gear tables. And so these parameter tables, um, we're moving to a model-ready set of estimates in time to make sure that they get full SSC review. And a reminder that nothing will be used in the Fishing Effects Model analysis that isn't reviewed and approved by the SSC, and that will respond to any revisions and recommendations that they ask of us.

Um, next, there are 4 elements of the Fishing Effects Model that are being updated, and I'll walk through generally what those are and our process for coming back to you and helping you understand how those changes have resulted in, or if they result in changes in terms of the model outputs.

So one of the things I want to pause and talk about just for a minute is some sort of a new bottom-toed fishery sustainability roadmap that's forthcoming. And so Back in 2024, we had World Fisheries Congress convening in Seattle, and Dr. Ray Hilborn realized for the first time since COVID we were going to have a lot of international scientists and contributors in the same city, and so he suggested that we run, potentially put together some workshops, and he asked me to lead the one on trawl fishery sustainability. The publications emanating from that workshop came out last week, and just to quickly highlighted for you the structure was a 2-day session, the first focusing on information gaps, the second on recommendations specific for informing food production systems like this one as it regards the sustainability of gears that are just— that are towed along the seabed. We had participants from the U.S., Australia, China, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Peru, and Scotland, and as these were mostly practitioners, fisheries managers, folks at NGOs. Their body of experience expanded far beyond their own countries, including a lot of information from the Global South and regions around the world that have toad fisheries.

We had scientists, managers, policymakers, fishing sector participants, conservation organizations, and although the text is really small, you might be able to see Bill Twait's name, one of your former colleagues, on the lists. He provided some really great insights and brought some of the challenges that your council is facing into this conversation.

Two key perceptions that I think are— I'm using to help shape my presentation today. The first is a recognition that around the world, the public is becoming more concerned and more engaged in conservation associated with mobile gear fishing. Across the planet, these researchers, policymakers, and so so forth, expressed— brought concerns to the table that in a lot of instances, this public concern is beginning to supplant the scientific process. And part of the— this was a recognition that on the side of scientists and communicators in the science arena, we haven't done a very good job of including the public in these conversations about fishing gear, number one. Number two, that their concerns are valid and legitimate, and they need to be addressed through transparent, traceable, auditable information streams so they can see from research through to parameter in a model output for policy, how that information and evidence aligns, um, so they can begin to trust the process.

And so they recommended that we begin to purposefully include perception into these presentations, and so I'm going to attempt to do that. Next, they highlighted that for managers in a food production system, alongside the impact metrics, you also need to understand the food system metrics. What do I mean? We're going to talk a lot about impact and contact and disturbance and potential effects to crab, and those are the things that we don't want. But we're not out there just running around trying to not do those things.

Those are the things that happen in the context of harvest in a food production system. So those need to be put side by side. So imagine impacts, disturbance, disturbance per unit yield. How many kilograms of— or I'm sorry, how many kilometers squared of residual disturbance reside in the Bering Sea associated with 1,000 metric tons of harvest, for example. So the recommendation is to provide those contextual metrics alongside of the disturbance information so that you can find out where you sit, look at your fisheries one to the other, compare your region to regions and perhaps identify a path forward to improving.

So let's talk about this different approach. What I'm going to do as I go forward, I'm going to try to directly, uh, link what I hear in terms of public concern and perception in a few instances to what we're doing to support the council's needs through a transparent input and reviewing process, and ultimately how that influences what we're doing with, uh, the GEAR initiative and the Fishing Effects Process, a transparent, traceable evidence chain that demonstrates how we support decisions.

So next, we get to talk about the fun stuff, the progress we're making for research, and the key takeaway here is that we're now moved away from representative gear assumptions where we tie impact, you know, gear size and bottom contact values to a name—pelagic polychaete, for example—we're moving from that to an evidence-based, realistic estimate of what that size and contact looks like as a function of real gear and real fishing.

So how do we do this? Well, first we have to actually We create a structured process to document the gears that are currently being used. I've talked with you extensively about the gear catalog. Next, and the gear catalog, it tells us some important things.

It tells us, um, what's in the water, what's being fished, but it doesn't tell us how it's fished. That's what we need the fishing practice profiles for. So this is information that we gather that confirms the towing speeds. Scope, the way the gear is rigged, how that rigging may change under different conditions. With that information together, we can then estimate how that gear behaves under these documented rigging fishing scenarios using numerical models of these trawls as well as, uh, realistic fishing simulations.

We use haul logs where operators actually document the geometry of the gear based on net sensors that are already aboard record during active fishing, and we link those to the simulations we produce to determine whether or not they're realistic and how much we— veracity they have and how much confidence we can put into those predictions.

I'm gonna— about a week from now, I'll be headed to Newfoundland to meet with researchers there at the Flume Tank to test gear that allow us to verify the numerical models and and better understand the performance of these simulations as we begin to use them in this applied concept. So, a thing to remember is that one stream is incomplete by itself. A catalog without fishing practice doesn't tell us how the net behaves. A simulation without field checks is too theoretical to use. A haul log without gear information is hard to generalize, but together these pieces become an evidence pipeline for actual fishing gear and fishing practices, and our ability and inform our ability to estimate the size of that gear and what it's likely doing when it interacts with the seafloor.

Dr. Harris, before you move on, we have a question. Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Harris.

And I do, on this slide here, I did want to go back, the, the very first, update you gave us essentially in, in terms of the the Gear Innovation Initiative, you know, a little bit in terms of the Gear cataloging, you were pleased with the progress. And I wanted to ask at that time, but you kind of— it also was addressed here. You said building a process, just even, you know, for the Gear catalog process.

Does that mean that this isn't done in other regions? I was wondering if you said you worked with external partners, maybe you could, you know, sort of use that as a framework. And so were you able to do that in terms of how to document what is in the water and then how it's fishing and all that stuff? How, how much help did you get, or are we building this from scratch?

Through the chair, Ms. Baker, thank you for the question. There are other efforts around the world to try and gather information around gear. The thing to remember is those kind of, just like here, we're tuned to supporting your process. Those other initiatives are also tuned to supporting specific questions, processes. Some are coming from agencies, some are coming from individual researchers.

What we do find is that they're pretty localized, and there's not a, generally are not driven by a desire to bring this level of gear information into the management process to inform decisions and ultimately, perhaps consider gear, gear modifications, gear conservation engineering as part of your toolset for conservation. And so we're getting really excellent input, but it's primarily at the technical level in terms of when you document the gears, here are the key things to look at, um, you know, input in terms of ways to construct numerical models and do simulations, input from— we have folks coming from Northern Ireland to participate with us in the flume tank because one of the researchers has expertise on the use of laser arrays to help produce really precision measurements. He does work in marine archaeology, but there's a really strong crossover that will allow us to really amplify what we can do quantitatively in the flume tank beyond what's been done before. So the answer to your question is yes, both. We're getting great input and feedback, but what we're doing here is unique, both in terms of depth and scale.

Yes, Miss Gone. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Dr. Harris for the presentation so far. Really appreciate it. It's interesting, very interesting work. Um, for the haul logs, you mentioned there's net sensors track how the gear is fished.

I'm assuming that's in the ocean. And then is it looking at like the, the geometry of the opening or whether the gear is on the bottom or not? How does it do that? That, uh, through the chair, Miss Gohan, thank you, that's a great question. Well, I think one of the things, and I'll kind of get to this later on, but the fact that pelagic gear doesn't— is not a definition.

When we say the word pelagic, it doesn't mean where the gearfish is in the water column, it's the design of the gear. And this sensor array is essential for every pollock fisherman to determine first, where's the school that I'm targeting in the water column, and where's the gear, and is the gear shaped up in the best fashion to have the highest catch performance for that school of fish? This is where this gear fundamentally differs from a bottom trawl. Bottom trawl supported by the seabed and use floats on the headline to take its shape. A pelagic trawl takes its shape based on water flow, tension, uh, the spread of the doors and, and those associated forces.

And so the net mensuration system on board, it is designed to show the operator what he needs to know about that gear, where it is in the water column and how it's shaped. That just so happens to be the same information we need to, to link what we can do numerically through fishing simulations to what is actually happening in the real world. So we're getting net— we're getting towing force, we're getting net shape information in the form of, say, door spread, headline height, a suite of those metrics that we can then relate directly to what our predictions are through this fishing simulations.

Thanks for that. And a follow-up, can you tell them the— how the shape of the net differs with different tow speeds, whether it's in the flume tank or through these haul logs? Through the Jeremias going? Yes, exactly. In fact, that's a really key piece I think I tried to explain in the past, in our last discussion, is that the geometry of the trawl is extremely important in terms of the amount of gear that is— can make contact with the bottom.

The position in the vertical in the water column and the geometry of the trawl really influence just exactly how wide the gear is. Imagine an oval that's tall versus squished, right? The actual amount of area available to contact the bottom changes. And so these gears are extremely dynamic And they're built to be that way.

Thank you. Okay, so that was a perfect tee-up for what comes next. So beyond the information I focused heavily on last time, which was about cataloging the gear and what it took to do that, some really important insights have come from the linking of the gear analog to the fishing practice profiles that have allowed us to move beyond the notion of a generic name-based approach that says, well, for a pelagic pollock trawl, this is what contact looks like, to be able to really understand how those parameters change as a function of real fishing. And so what's exciting is we've been able to complete this work from end to end for the catcher-processor fleet. All the vessels in the fleet have participated.

We have all of the gears included in the catalog. Um, the haul logs have been really, um, coming in. That this is something the fleet does voluntarily, and they have to record this information in the— while they're actively fishing, which takes time. Um, and so we've been able to pull together the full evidence chain we need to then move to this next step, which is going to a flume tank in Newfoundland and actually running specific trials on scale models of these trawls that are calibrated for tank testing.

So, let's talk a little bit about the field study. If you haven't had a chance to look at what the flume tank is, think of a wind tunnel and the way we use it for aircraft development and design, or Formula One, or whatever your particular interest is. We have a similar capacity to do this for fishing gear. Here. So, this is a purpose-built research facility.

There's one in Denmark. There's one in Newfoundland at St. John's at Memorial University's Marine Institute. It's a 1.7 million liter recirculating tank. It has a study area that's 8 by 4 meters by 22 meters long, and flow speeds can be controlled. There's a moving belt on the, on the bottom that mimics the seafloor, and a calibrated set of sensors that allow for examination of towing force, measurement of geometry, all of the things that are really important for us to verify and validate the numerical simulations.

The information we need to construct this really 3-point information flow analysis is all in hand. What are the 3 points? Dr. Winger and one of his colleagues from Memorial University University published an important paper a number of years ago that identified the strengths and weaknesses of simulations versus flume tank versus field testing, and they came to the conclusion that you need all three. The field testing with the net mensuration equipment is really valuable, but it integrates all of the uncertainties that come forward, or variability that comes forward, with sea surface, uh, height differences, waves, currents that the direction of tow relative to the tide, unevenness of the seabed, all of those things, making it hard to isolate effects of specific changes to the gear. That's where flume tanks are really useful, but they require us to take a full-size Pollock trawl and scale it down to 1/20th or 1/30th of its size, making some of those calculations difficult and producing some limitations.

The numerical models allow us allows us to create a mathematical version of that flume tank where we can test things at really low cost. You can try out different modifications, you can simulate different fishing conditions, and so the three taken together give us enough evidence to begin to move beyond generic gear definitions to really specific fishing scenarios based on real gear, real rigging, and real fishing activity. What's the Council get from this? This catch this CP gear parameters emanating from this work are going to come forward in a package that goes through SSC review. It'll be validated through the simulation and flume tank process, and it allows us to really produce this clear separation between model-ready estimates and what we're doing in terms of continuing research, because the gear initiative really needs— it's designed to do both, provide inputs incrementally as your process moves along, but keep the focus on building the base needed to innovate and improve gears going forward.

If you identify elements of these gears that you would like to see altered, adjusted, you can incentivize that within the fleet. The fleets can then move forward to try and develop those innovations similar to what Dr. Yokom is going to talk about. And I think some of the work coming forward with some of the American Seafoods vessels that are using some pretty exciting new technology, and that is dynamic doors that have control surfaces that allow for a dramatic stabilization of the trawl as the operator works it through its paces targeting schools.

So, um, one thing— um, Miss Gunn. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr. Harris. My question's on the previous slide, on the— thank you for describing the validation process. That makes a lot of sense to have these math mathematical models to test things before you're testing in the flume tank. Is there also an in-the-field, like in the ocean, validation piece to this?

And specifically, it sounds like speed of the tow is important. So is there something in the field, or do you define like the speed of the tow?

Through the chair, Ms. Cohen, with great question. So in addition to all that geometry information I was mentioning that comes from the net commensuration in that same record is what trawl's in the water, how is it rigged, where are you fishing. And so, yes, we have the link from hundreds and hundreds of field of iterations of actual fishing with that specific trawl rigged a specific way under specific fishing circumstances for which we have that field geometry data. That's what we use to validate or verify that our predictions through the numerical models are accurate. Measure it, and we replicate a specific subset of those conditions when we put that model in the tank so that we can link specific gear rigging fishing scenarios from the field to what simulation showed to what the flume tank showed.

And that's where we can identify strengths and weaknesses, because each of those pieces of information allows us to isolate and understand different elements of the process. Taken together, they give us a holistic picture.

And then quick follow-up. The box below the validation one is on a sensor reality check, and I know we've heard a lot of public interest in sensors, so I'm just curious if you could explain a little bit more what that's testing for sensors. Through the Chair, Ms. Gowan, also great, great point. In addition to looking at of— what I should have said before, we've acquired 3 flume tank calibrated models that collectively represent well over half of the gears in that are available for use in the CP fleet and probably close to 80% of the hauls.

So we've got the 3 trawl models that are really dominant in that fishery that we'll actually be able to put in the tank. We have done, I've shared with you before, experimental work on catcher vessel, Pelagic Pollack gear, using, uh, special accelerometer-based sensors, uh, tilt sensors, to actually, um, directly measure the clearance or contact of the gear through the course of fishing. And we learned that there's a tremendous amount of variability, um, and so forth and so on. But one of the biggest challenges is the sensors hang up. They're chunks of rebar snapped onto a foot rope.

Um, they have to be installed incrementally as the gear goes out, which requires a lot of safe— additional safety steps and effectively precludes real fishing. They have to be taken off on the way in. So we're working with the team at Memorial, a lot of experience in terms of putting sensors on gear, to think about how to overcome some of the fouling issues, contact issues. We're testing two different manufacturers of tilt sensors in parallel trials, and so this is about refining these instruments for research purposes so that when we— let's say we have a new gear modification coming forward and there's a specific set of hypotheses about what that modification is designed to do. Hey, we want to lift this portion of the gear, this amount, or whatever.

Now those tilt sensors become useful in the field setting. We're not going to be able to deploy them across the fleet as a way of sort of monitoring and measuring contact across the board because you can't fish with them on. But when we have a specific hypothesis for a modification, we can now determine the degree to which that modification achieves its purposes. I also have told you before, this accelerometry-based approach, I believe, is an interim step. There's just too much noise relative to signal.

If you think about all of the moving parts and the way an accelerometer measures that movement with respect to gravity, it's, it's pretty noisy and requires us to do a lot of calibration. Specific sensor, its placement on the foot road that specific trawl. We have to put a camera down there to confirm it, that the sensor is actually detecting what it's supposed to. So we're going to run these sensors through a series of trials with known clearance and contact in the tank to better understand their performance.

Okay, so insights, the exciting part. This work has been really informative. The team that's coalesced around the work has got tremendous expertise. And what we've— a couple of key takeaways is that first, the pelagic trawl is not a one-contact condition. Bottom contact varies with design, rigging, fishing practice, and operating conditions.

How the gear is fished matters as much as what the gear is. So operator decisions for pelagic pollock gear shape, trawl geometry, vertical position, an expected seabed contact. Simulations are now useful as management tools. The simulation performance is strong enough to support updated, uh, fishing effects, uh, gear parameters. And those simulations, when I speak of them, I'm talking about them in that full 3-point evaluation process.

They've been vetted with tank work and work in the field. Um, the fleet is more diverse than we originally, uh, expected,, but because of the structured approach through the gear catalog and fishing practice profiles, that diversity is quantifiable. So the cataloging shows real gear diversity, but it also shows that we can systematically characterize it and port that information into decision support tools like the Fishing Effects Model. Bottom contact for this gear is driven by geometry, not just net width alone. So vertical opening, foot, foot rope Trawl position, they are all central to contact estimates, and we now have information and evidence streams for all of those.

Bottom line, fishing effects emerge from gear, rigging, fishing practice, and operating context. This is something the fishing industry has known for a very, very long time. It's fundamental to what they do. We now have a pathway to document those pieces of information and systematically demonstrate that that is indeed the case, and do so in a quantitative fashion. So fishing effects are not fixed properties of a gear type.

They emerge from the interaction of the gear design, rigging, fishing practices, and seafloor proximity. Dr. Harris, I think you probably just answered it in your concluding statement there, but if, if the council was interested in isolating one of the variables for performance, such as bottom contact across the gears, that you're cataloging, is that possible, or is it just, it's just so dependent on, you know, operational decisions and fishing conditions and other variables? So is it possible for managers to isolate one variable?

Through the Chair, Mr. Obnica, that's a good and very difficult question. I think maybe one way to think of it is that the contact that results from fishing is the response of a host of different things. The number one being catch per unit effort, right? Where is the school in the water column? And so rather than thinking about a contact as something an operator comes in and says, oh, I want this much contact, contact emerges from the shape of the gear and its position in the water column.

As it regards pursuing a school. And so in a research setting, we can calculate what would happen, for example, to catch per unit effort if you incrementally increase contact. So we could measure it that way and we could say, oh, for this amount of reduced bottom contact, this is the loss that you would see in catch per unit effort. And you— we could try to identify what the shape of that relationship looks like if the Council wanted to use something like that in an incentive-based approach to encourage the industry to modify the gear to do something, I suppose that, that could probably work. The information is there, but in terms of a property of the fishery itself, height off the bottom and bottom contact is something that emerges from fishing.

It's not something that is— that they're going out there seeking to do specifically. If that makes sense.

Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. Um, thank you so far for the presentation. What would we expect to see in February? I think I, I might— it's a very basic question.

What, what portion of this research would we see in February? What would that look like? Through the chair, Ms. Kimball, I am going to address the that in the section on fishing gear updates. And if it isn't detailed enough, please re-ask the question and I'll dig into it a little deeper there, if that's okay.

Thank you, Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Harris. Just thinking about your response to Mr. Obnika's question, will the simulations and field work show the bottom's not homogeneous, right? And so there's— my assumption is, is, is that there will be differences, depend on a lot of things, current and bottom and all of those kinds of things.

Will you be able to tease those out in, in the work that you're doing? Uh, through the chair, Ms. Vanderhoeven, hopefully. So yes, one of the things that, if you think about your example right there, the simulations and the flume tank allow us to control, right? But they're not realistic. Why?

Because the seabed's not variable. There's no waves at the surface. There's all of the dynamics that just aren't there. But what is there is the ability to isolate various factors and so forth. When we see a difference between the net mensuration-derived Hall log values for an identical trawl, it tells us the degree of uncertainty or additional additional, what we call process error that we're not able to capture in the, in those simulations or numerical models, allowing us to add that into the narrative.

So we can communicate to you, this is the idealized, this trawl, this rigging, this scenario with this headline height has this potential area for bottom contact. What does the geometry look like from the real-world fishing? Hey, this is the additional uncertainty associated with that. And part of that evidence chain and full audit trail includes a characterization of what we don't know. And so one of the, the cool things about that three-part approach is that it allows us to isolate those differences.

And then, you know, number one thing we try to do in science is attack uncertainty and reduce it, right? And so that then lets us focus our work. Maybe it reveals that uncertainty is largely generated by one or two features within the gear. We now know to study those more thoroughly and systematically over time. We should be able to improve the precision and the accuracy of these estimates.

Keep in mind what's in the model now is expert-derived opinion with a heavy dose of precaution.

So one— oh, let's see here. I feel like one thing I skipped as we were sailing along is that we agreed to provide systematic updates to the council regarding starting the progress of this work, and because it unfolds on timescales different than your meeting cycle, we're hosting those on the council's pelagic trawl gear research summaries. And so the link related to the gear work, if you check it periodically, you'll see the numbers are updated, including the sort of emphasis of the work the team is currently focused on. So I've added a section about work in the flume tank, and these numbers were all updated prior to the, the meeting.

Okay, this is, uh, an example of what we're working to do now, where we were trying to translate what we hear in terms of public concern into— not into a scientific question, relate it to the scientific question that's already being offered. Concern in the public is a really important part of this conversation, but it doesn't constitute evidence, and it doesn't constitute an actionable data stream that that we can respond to. But what it does do is show us the public is tracking very similar things to the science community, and that we can do a better job of helping them understand the way our scientific questions link back to the questions that they're asking. And so here are a few examples in terms of, hey, are these gears on the bottom? We need to ask which components touch under real gear rigging depth and speed scenarios.

We have an evidence stream that goes from gear to gear, catalog elements like net plans through practice profiles, haul logs, simulations, and tank validation. And ultimately, when we provide you a number that goes into the bottom contact table, we need to be able to show to you and the public that evidence chain all the way back to the beginning where that information came from. So an audit path that's public-facing that links concern to scientific question connection to evidence stream to parameters is something we're going to endeavor to do when we bring this forward for SSC review and all future conversations with the council and its associated committees.

Okay, so let's shift a little bit and talk about timeline. When will this information be ready, and when and how will it enter the fishing effects model gear tables, which I think we'll touch on on what Ms. Kimball was asking.

The short answer is that it will follow the timeline that we committed to prior with respect to the Essential Fish Habitat 5-year review. We're currently focused on information in this spring and summer of '26 was really focused on, on ACES and Hall logs, setting up our flume tank geometry trials, contact sensor evaluations associated with that. As we move on into 2027, in February we'll be bringing all of this forward for review at the SSC, and that includes the specific methods associated with taking information from the GEAR initiative and moving them into the GEAR tables. So, and a really important point that we've built into the process, because the initiative is going to continue as we do this work. Other fleets are interested, new gears get included as we learn, innovations come forward, we test them.

That's ongoing. We need a pathway to, to pull information from that workflow in a timely fashion to support Council analyses. And so we are taking what's called a source-tiered approach where we use the information available at the time to inform what's in the gear tables. We don't wait wait until the information is final and perfect, right? We're not— we're going to have simulation-informed, tank-validated estimates for, uh, catcher processors available for full review by the SSE in February, and that will include all the methods associated with using that highly informed information pathway.

For a subset of gears, probably the catcher vessel fleet, will be— those dimensional characteristics will be derived from net plans with some limited information from fishing practice profiles, but we probably won't have the full suite of simulations done just because of the sheer volume of the gear. Ultimately, we're going to have gears that are in those gear tables that are not part of this initiative, the fixed gears, pots, longlines, and so forth. They will follow the status quo process the SSE approved last time, and so we'll have different sources of information which we will clearly designate designate. And all of those pipelines, especially all the new ones emanating from the GEAR initiative, will go through SSC review, and we— they won't be used in the fishing effects analysis until those are reviewed and approved.

So we're on track to have that information ready to be included in that full review to support this next upcoming EFH 5-year review.

This is more just to show you internally with our team, we are actively tracking the sort of what we call readiness metrics for each of the key parameters to make sure we're putting our effort in the right places at the right time so that this information gets where it needs to be in terms of its development on a, on a timescale that works for this process. I should also highlight while this work is done relatively exclusively by our phishing effects team, team. We work really closely with regional office staff from NMFS that do the essential fish habitat modeling work for the species distribution models, the defining of essential fish habitat. That expertise is outstanding, and we work really closely with them. There will also be that level of review in terms of inputs to the fishing effects model.

So the team itself will go through these carefully before they they come forward to the council. The bottom of the slide, I've outlined once again what that tier process looks like in terms of a Tier 1. And my— I just chose that 1 being the highest in this case is a validated simulation where tank and field data are used to support the predictions, and we are able to characterize both size, bottom contact, and uncertainty for a subset of gears. We should be able to do this for catcher processors. And then on down the line, we'll have output from this workflow that has different levels of information support associated with it.

And we'll, we will clarify that and make it transparent as we go.

Phishing Effects update. So this model, the takeaway here is the Phishing Effects model methods remain unchanged. What's changing is the evidence base. It's being systematically updated like we do every EFH 5-year review. Um, these are the key elements that are being updated.

I've walked through the fishing effects workflow with you enough times that I was getting bored with it. I figured you were probably over it, so I tried to change the way I presented it here to you today. So I think in general you understand the fishing events that come into the fishing effects model are derived from a catch and areas database that is created, curated, managed, and implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service, linked directly to the catch accounting program there. It's going through a substantial update, and we should see updated outputs coming forward, I hope, in the next month or so. Gear parameters, I've spoken to you about already through the fishing— or through the gear initiative, and all the gears not included in the initiative, we reach back out to those fleets and request that they review the parameters, um, and update them as their fishing practices and gears do change over time.

Um, we review all of the available information that we use to define habitat. Without getting into the weeds, remember the Fishing Effects Model habitat designations are based exclusively on sediment, and the sediment data that's available to us across the domain from Gulf of Alaska, Aleutians, and the Bering Sea oftentimes is updated with additional studies, some of them well outside the domain of fisheries. It could be oil and gas. It could— there's a lot of other activities that collect information. So we reach out to the U.S. Seabed Database curators and gather a new updated set of— this includes lat-long and designations for sediment type, and we integrate those into our geostatistical model used to predict sediment composition throughout the model domain.

So that's being updated. And probably most importantly, thing to remember, that internal to the Fishing Effects Model, once we've got information about where these events occur, catch and areas database, how big they are, that's the gear tables, where they occur in terms of the, our best information about habitat, we leverage a structured literature review that was actually put together almost 20 years ago by a team of scientists primarily based in New England when the precursor to the Fishing Effects Model was being developed. Systematically, we update that review every time a new publication comes out, and so we're going to be capturing and have captured the number of papers presented or published in the literature since the last go-around, and so that's a really important thing to keep eye on it. And I'll show you an example of how the kind of auditable, traceable information stream will provide in that regard. So what stays?

The model structure and methods remain stable. What is updated are the inputs to the model that we should be updating as new information comes along. We built the phishing effects model in this modular way, um, specifically to account for the fact that these would be— new information would be forthcoming and that there's a fair bit of uncertainty associated with the number of these inputs. And because it's modular, it allows us to explore and simulate what would happen if we get it wrong. Dr.

Harris, before you move on, I just— and you may be getting to this a little bit later, but as far as the literature review, you know, we're members of the public and others share various pieces with us every once in a while. Regarding efforts across the globe. So, wondering if you could explain a little bit how the— I guess, how you're taking various pieces and kind of connecting the relevancy to the specific questions that we have in Alaska. And it sounds like it's a very extensive effort. I'm assuming it's beyond Alaska.

Alaska, these pieces coming in. And so what are the— I guess if you can provide a little bit of context for how, how those are being incorporated in a practical sense. Thanks, Mr. Obnica. Thank you for that question.

First, we'll go into great detail with the SSC, as we do each year with this process. But you are correct, the evaluation of the literature is global. There is a North Pacific filter, if will. There's gears out there that get incorporated into the impact recovery literature review that we just don't fish here. We don't have tooth dredges, and we don't have electric trawls, and there's a host of gears.

So first off, those get removed. Um, and the review process isn't just, hey, let's review the literature. It's about operationalizing the information in the literature as it regards impact. So what happens when a bottom trawl foot rope encounters a sponge? Sponge, what does the literature say?

Those are empirical studies, and that's the impact piece. And there's a literature on when a sponge is impacted, how long does it take, uh, to recover, right? And we don't just want to know generally what the science says. We want to be able to organize that into quantitative parameters that we can put to work internal to the model to capture cumulative habitat effects. This emanates from what essential fish habitat is and what the law and the regulations define as the essential fish habitat process.

So we use this tool on the academic side as a research tool and explore various things. When we deploy this as a decision support tool, it's structured around the way the adverse effects are framed, SSE guidance on how to do that. So the literature review was constructed the way. It was done quite a few years ago, this initial work in New England, when the Swept Area Seabed Impacts Model was being created. I was part of that process, and it was recognized at that time that a lot of the council and agency decisions around EFH were people just drawing boxes on maps, and this was deemed to be too vulnerable to outside non-scientific public pressure.

Proposals were coming forward that weren't based on scientific evidence, and so the call was to put together a structured workflow that would document each of those pieces. Our approach to the impact recovery dynamics was a structured literature review. And so, um, the methods for that are unchanged. Thankfully, the New England Council, the Mid-Atlantic Council also used the same tool. They used the fishing effects framework, and they had extra capacity and interest in ensuring this literature review was updated.

And so they did a full— a full— they did the job effectively for us, pulling together all of the— they hired a contractor and pulled together all the literature and produced a really outstanding database which actually has its own Shiny app where you can go in and search. Where that application doesn't include all of the specific gear parameter outputs that we need, we have to go and pull those together, but at least it gives you a full picture of what's in the literature. Yes, Mr. Ritchie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I'll ask this question just because I'm here and I've heard this question from, um, stakeholders. I get to ask questions right now and they don't, unfortunately. So, um, regarding the habitat, um, substrate, that, that information that you get, is it, is it often at the same resolution that the Fisheries Effects Model resolves? And if it doesn't, if you don't get it at the same resolution, or perhaps you get it at a finer resolution, what's the approach?

Because I understand the effects model uses a 5-kilometer grid cell, and that might not always be how you receive the information.

Through the Chair, Mr. Ritchie, that's a great question. So as we build any scientific analysis, especially one that's spatial, we think a lot about spatial information support. And so when we construct something like the fishing effects model, we take a careful look at the resolution of the fishing information. Here we're lucky we have the observer coverage level to resolve this with VMS at the individual event. When we deploy this model in New England, we have to use trip reports.

So that, that's one factor. The next we would look at is the resolution of the sediment information.— from which to derive habitat. We could deploy the model at 100-meter resolution. The problem is the average distance between data points to inform habitat is about 5 kilometers. So we'd way over-interpolate.

You know that this is happening when you see a map and then you see the data points and the shapes of the signal in the map look like the data points. This is an artifact associated with over-specifying or too high of a resolution. Resolution for interpolation. So the 5-kilometer grid framework was selected based on the spatial information support of those incoming products. Sediment data is all over the map, right?

It— some of the observations were, you know, collected during oil and gas exploration. Some were collected on dedicated habitat studies. There's not and hasn't been a coordinated effort emanating from our agencies to fully assess the habitats of our continental shelf regions in this area ever. And so we have to put it together based on this amalgamation of what is available and then bring structure and transparency to that. So the resolution of those data points is really kind of all over the place.

We develop a framework that is defensible based on the underlying information support. That's where the 5K grid came from.

Miss Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr. Harris. Um, my question's building off your answer to Ms. Dravnica's question, and I appreciated hearing that you're incorporating new literature into the process as you update the model. Um, it reminds me that at the last meeting, the SSC had a recommendation that if there's time to run the phishing effects model pulling out some of the longer-lived habitat features like corals or seaweeds so that they're not averaged in with all the other habitat types. And I'm just curious if on your timeline when that might come back to the council.

Uh, through the chair, this is going— that, that question, um, is one that really seems to be resonating with folks interested in the model. There is a process. Just to quickly recap for folks, when we come up with an estimate that is sediment-based, which is the way the Fishing Effects Model moves forward, that isn't just sort of based on our feeling about impacts of trawls on sand and gravel. We look at what species that produce structure can live on sand or gravel and what geological features— sand waves, rock piles, things like that— that can also be important parts of structural seabed, and we look at what the literature, the literature reviews at the level of those features in these different habitats. Those get pulled together to produce that habitat-specific score, but without knowing the distribution of those features at that location, or whether they exist there at all, we derive a score based on the notion that they could exist exist, one, and two, that from the perspective of a fish species, which is the framework for EFH, right, we're looking for adverse effects to these stocks, that the presence of structure is the thing that's most important.

And so, and through repeated reviews by outside expert groups, the SSC in New England and our SSC, the decision is that the best approach is to average those. Those. However, if to Ms. Goins' point, if you got something that recovers within a matter of weeks and something that takes 25 years to recover, and you average that, you've smoothed over that process. That's appropriate based on the outside peer reviews we had for EFH purposes, but it doesn't tell the story of sponges and corals or things that may be also of interest. We want the council to understand what the implications are of the averaging.

So we've done sensitivity analyses where we show you what happens if we pin that value to the, the most conservative versus the most liberal interpretation. So shortest recovery time versus longest recovery time, how does that influence the model outputs? That tells you whether or not this really matters in terms of these predictions. Um, if the council has interest in specific actions related to those other structural epifauna, then those specific runs can be requested where we subset those features and just say, well, if the world were populated entirely, you know, wherever there's structural, like gravel, cobble, boulder, if it was all covered in coral, what would happen, right? And so we can most definitely do that.

For now, what we will do to support the SSC's request is bring forward those sensitivity analyses, and then if there are specific requests related to locations or specific species, and we'll do our best to provide that.

Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. Um, just seemed like a good time to ask a question that I just based on my previous question of what we get back in February. I'm interested in the bottom contact adjustment scores. There's been just a lot of focus there on in previous analyses, And that will all be updated through this new GII work.

So basic question, we, in previous analysis, we, we saw a range. Is that what we would expect to see in our new bottom contact adjustment scores, or would we see 100 different scores attributed to pelagic trawl because that's the number of different types of gear that you're testing and getting very specific information on both the design and the way it's fished, or are we going to see a range again? That's my question. Through the chair, Ms. Kimball, that's a great question. Full details will be put forward to the SSC when that comes along, but in general, the answer is both.

For gears for which we have no new information aside from expert input, you're going to see the ranges. They might get adjusted a little bit, based on input, uh, from gear experts and so forth. And then we have a fixed range, we can then apply a percentage adjustment. That's what the contact adjustment has been in the past, and that's really, uh, an appropriate tool given the large amount of uncertainty, meaning no empirical databases on gear. So we go to the industry and say, hey, roughly how big is this?

And they pull out the net plans and talk and come up with a realistic estimate. And we do it sector by sector, and we in, in involve a lot of gear experts to then interpret that. And then what you have is a range, but think about a range as just a— it's a distribution that's flat, right? The value could be anywhere in between here. What we can do now is actually create the distribution.

So not all the gears in the water are the same size or have the same geometry. You've been asking questions of the FishingFX team that get increasingly higher in time and space resolution so that that broad range, which maybe encompasses the whole Bering Sea, is not the range that's appropriate to February in the Red King crab savings area, right? And so that's where we're, we are concerned that we're giving you overly generalized, more uncertain answers than we could. That's what actually spurred the creation of the GEAR initiative, is to provide you with information at that resolution. So where we have full CP coverage, we know in the A season, in these depths, under these conditions, this is the suite of gears that actually get put in the water.

Here's the geometry of those gears when they're fished in depths shallower than 100 fathoms, which then determines the shape of that foot rope. And what the height of the gear in the water comes from logbook data that's recorded for every toe. And so we can now, instead of a set of ranges in an ever-expanding table that will be overwhelming, imagine there's an equation and it has key parameters in it that include what is the fishery, where is it taking place, what time of year is it, and that geometry is embedded in that equation. And the outputs, including uncertainty, are width of the gear and contact in units of meters, not percentage. Because you can't take the percentage of something that's changing all the time.

The percentage is also changing. And so we want to be able to clear— to bring that information in a direct empirical fashion. After you have those values, you can calculate what percentage that is. That's the full Tier 1 approach. And so as you move from different levels of information support, what we bring you to inform those gear tables will be will have some that are ranges and contacts that are derived now from net plans instead of just expert input.

Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. I mean, you, you encompassed all gears when you responded to my question. I was really just talking about pelagic trawl, but I understand, well, a very similar approach for the gears other than pelagic trawl. But pelagic trawl, will you be doing the calculation to create the percentage by all those different gear types, or do we just need to do that? I'm trying to make sure that we can compare, I guess, the results in this new fashion to the results we had in the previous EFH analysis.

And maybe I should have just said that, but— Okay. Tell me if I'm going to have to need to do those calculations to figure that out, or if you're going to do that. Through the chair, Ms. Kibble, that makes a lot more sense to me. Yes. Yes, we are going to provide a detailed bridging analysis.

Yeah, and I'll get to that in a minute. So one way to— oops, sorry, sure. One way to think about the fishing effects model a little different than the way I've presented in the past is a single fishing event, right? You pull that one tow through the model. What are all of the steps?

Well, first we get that information from the Catch and Areas Database, and it tells us where the event took place, when the event took place, what was the target. That information is what we need to tie that to dimensional characteristics in the gear table, first of which is how big is the gear width. That establishes what we call the footprint, the zone over which this interaction, whether it's with crab or habitat, can occur. Outside of that space, you don't have an interaction. The next piece is how much of that interacted area do you think the gear is actually in contact with the bottom.

That also comes from the gear tables. The location of that event, which now went from a track line to area in the model framework ties it to the habitat. That habitat information and gear information then link it to the literature review-based impact piece. All right, with that gear on this type of habitat, what's the expected removal of these subs— of these benthic structural features? And then what's the associated recovery?

And the balance— so remember, contact doesn't equal impact. Contact is a prerequisite for impact. Impact happens when the features of concern are present, when the interaction takes place. And so we have to account for that, but that's not the end of the story. These features recover over time.

So we want to know the impact and recovery dynamic. So that's probably the most important piece to focus on. It's the ecological engine inside of this workflow.. Okay, once those, uh, elements are, are sorted out, we can now track the residual or unrecovered impact that resides in the system, which we call disturbance. That's cumulative disturbance.

And so every time step in the model, one month at a time over the entire 20-plus year time series, the model holds on to the disturbance that has not recovered. And when, whenever we you hit stop in that workflow, whatever that date is, that's the cumulative or residual amount of disturbance that we predict is held within the system. Okay, that's specifically related to what EFH is. It's about cumulative effects and demonstrating whether or not— so to be clear, we have the fishing effects model because all fishing gears that especially that contact the bottom have effect. When the results coming from the stock assessment authors and the SSC say we find no evidence of an adverse effect, that's not the same as saying there's no effect.

There's a literature of over 300 papers all about the effect. It's about the dynamics between that effect and recovery that we're really trying to, to get to. So that's a really key piece of this process.

Okay, thank you. And Dr. Harris, I, I, I don't want to lose the point at all that contact does not equal impact or the ability for habitat to recover. I, I think that you were very clear on that when we're talking about, and just going back to Ms. Kimball's original question about the contact score per gear, per net, are we considering all the variables and operational decisions? And maybe this is the wrong question in framing, but are you— are we looking, or are you looking at maximum potential per score as far as, you know, the operational decisions and in the, in how that relates to the gear design, or is it some type of averaging for potential contact? So I'm hoping you can clarify that.

I hope that makes sense, but I just want to understand if we're— how that individual score is being input to then understand the impact and recovery. Are we looking at maximum potential of a particular year to do that, or an averaging across all of these different circumstances? Uh, Mr. Odnicki, also a great question, and it really gets to the impact of averaging in terms of smoothing. So my answer is when our information is highly uncertain and we seek to apply the appropriate precautionary principle, as has been the recommended process for fisheries councils since came online, we would, we would use the maximum value, right? We don't know what that range is, and currently we don't know what the real value is.

Currently, the values in the, in the gear tables represent expert-derived maxima, right? 70 To 100% is the most that a trawl foot rope could make contact with the physics still functional. In fact, we already know that's way higher than probably would actually work to tow that gear. To have it phish. So that's— but that's an appropriate number to use given that we don't have better information.

When we have a range like we do and we deploy that in the phishing effects model, every time there's an event, we randomly pull a value from that range because it could be anywhere in there and we don't know. But we also provide you with a sensitivity model run that pins it to the maximum and to show you what would happen if we got it wrong and it's really truly not 90%, and how much influence would that actually have on the model outputs? We will continue to do that depending on the level of information we have. If, if we're randomly drawing a value from a fixed range versus a distribution, that's going to change the outputs. And so that's what we're going to be able to do now for CPs in particular, with— within this region in this time of year, we know the gears in use, we the fishing conditions, so that tells us what the range and distribution of nominal widths would be, and we'll draw a value from that at random.

But as you move around the fishing effects model, that distribution is going to change based on who fishes there, what time of year— or sorry, what time of year it is. And one big one to keep in mind, in particular for pollock fishing, is that the distribution of the fish change a great deal from night to day. We're currently assuming an on-bottom nighttime— or sorry, daytime configuration, which is the maximum amount of contact. As that school spreads up in the water column and the gear headline height also rises, the dimensional width narrows and the amount of gear to contact the bottom goes down. So we're going to be able to now accommodate day and night differences in geometry.

So we'll still be averaging where uncertainty is high. We'll be pulling from distributions that are empirically informed where— I'm sorry, where uncertainty is high, we use the averaging approach with an eye towards really precautionary values. Where uncertainty is low and we have a lot of information support, we can now inform it with empirically derived distributions. Thank you. I'm sorry if I made you repeat yourself.

It's sometimes just helpful to hear it in a different way. So thank you so much.

Okay, I think we're ready to move on.

So just to highlight before I move on that, you know, one toe through the model is kind of a helpful way to think about what this does, right?

We need to have each step in order to get to the product that we're interested in, but each one of these is also subject to update. That's what we're doing. We're not changing the flow, but there's an updated catch and areas database at step 1. There's an updated set of gear tables at step 2. There's an updated, uh, contact, um, estimate at 3.

There's new habitat data coming in. There's changes to the impact and recovery literature, and ultimately that can all influence the outcomes. First, it's really important that every output can be traced back to its information source, its gear contact source, its habitat source, and its impact recovery source. And that's the way the model is currently structured. We have probably close to 10 million fishing records, events that we're reconciling over the time window of the Fishing Effects Model.

So that's 10 million iterations of this process. That's what drives the model.

But how do we communicate these differences to you and make sure you understand, to Ms. Kimball's point earlier, well, how did changing the literature change the outcome? It's called a bridging analysis. You hear about this quite a bit in the stock assessment arena when we move from one stock assessment approach to another, even with the same data, we really want to see incrementally how inputs relate to outputs. So what are we going to do? We'll run the base fishing effects model using the data that was used in the last EFH review that ran through October 2022, I think.

We'll next add the new catch and areas database, but truncate it for that same time window so they're comparable, and we'll run the fishing effects model again with the updated data but no other changes. We'll put out maps, we'll put out the time series, we'll do a sensitivity and we'll characterize the uncertainty. And then we move to the next step. We add the gear tables and we run that same retrospective time window, now adding one piece at a time, and each new piece of information that gets added, we look at how the spatial patterns change, how the time series changes, how the sensitivity changes, and we characterize uncertainty. So you can see incrementally as new information is added how it influences of the outputs.

Thank you. Mr. Pamplin. Thanks, Madam Chair. Dr. Harris, really appreciate your presentation and just your presentation style. This is some pretty dense material, and I thank you for making it accessible not just to the council but to the public here.

Um, could you go back one slide? Um, So it's nice to see the breakdown here of steps 1 through 7. Earlier in your presentation, you also talked about another phase that you might be incorporating, which is impact per unit yield, and so I'm assuming there would also be a number 8, which would show the harvest information for that fishing event would also be included, because I just think that's going to be a really interesting metric from a policy standpoint when comparing different gear types. And so do I have that right, that there would be a new number 8? Through the chair, Mr. Pamplin, if you ask for it.

This is a work— this workflow that is structured here is designed around a process that already has a performance standard determined by the SSC. We don't do analyses specifically on the disturbance data. Data. We build a workflow to provide an information stream to the stock assessment authors for each species and life stage per the regulations, but that, that's simply by taking the Essential Fish Habitat modeling team's outputs, those species distribution models, and using them to extract the time series of disturbance associated with that species and life stage, and we hand it off. That's what the Fishing Effects team done at that point, and then it moves into a process that has its own evaluation, its own standards in terms of performance, and its own review process by plan teams and the SSC.

And any determination of adverse effects or whatever happens there is not— our team is not involved aside from providing the data. And if the stock author wants additional runs, additional information, we we can do that for them, right? Separate from that, the councils recognize the fishing module itself, just who's fishing where with what, how much, the size of the gear and so forth, has value to you for other actions, as does the disturbance information outside the context of EFH. This is one of the things I think is pretty confusing for the public. We say the word Fishing Effects Model, but it has about 7 different uses, and the analogy that I've tried to present to you, think of this as a shipwright's workbench a ship in a bottle, right?

This was a workflow, a set of tools and materials we can combine and put together in order to support your decision-making. It's not a canned model that just you plug in inputs, it spits out outputs. It's a dynamic workflow. And so for the questions that you often ask, how much disturbance is happening here? How do we compare this versus that?

The recommendation globally from the science and management community community is, hey, in addition to the impact piece, you got to include the yield piece because this is a food production system, and we're out there fishing for fill in the blank, right? And so whether it's metric tons, economic yield, whatever, that, that needs to be the denominator in a lot of instances. So you can say, well, what's the act of getting that much fish costing us in terms of things we don't want? So I, my My reason for including that here is really to ask, is this something you're interested in? And if so, what would be useful metrics for you that our team could collaborate with National Marine Fisheries Service catch accounting folks and others to ensure we put them together in a way that actually helps you answer these key questions?

Thank you. Dr. Harris, when you're— when you talk about just bringing into context the impact with our food production objectives in this process. Are you talking about something other than the threshold for impact that we've identified through our EFH process at 10% as far as no more than adverse and temporary or no more than minimal and temporary impacts? Sorry. Are you talking about something other than that if we wanted to identify different thresholds for, for impact relative to our other objectives that we, you know, that we were undertaking in this process?

Well, Ms. Drobnica, I, I can't speak to thresholds. I will say that there is a biological basis for the more than minimal and not temporary standards under EFH, because that framework says, okay, within the national standards and then the approach to fishing. There was an era where we had a lot of those in place, but nothing about EFH. And then around the late '90s, as the Sustainable Fisheries Act revisions and amendments went through for Magnuson, this was added because globally we were realizing, hey, there's a cost associated with the fishing process itself, and we could have appropriate levels of removals, but we could be doing damage to the habitat that begins to degrade the stock's ability to meet MSY-OI standards.

So what would that be? Well, it's an impact that persists over time, so it's not temporary, and it's substantial enough to affect some element of the stock dynamic. That's where the performance standards around essential fish habitat came from. Keep in mind, the approach we use in this region was actually the SSC here stepping forward and saying, we need to make this vague language about more than minimal and not temporary, standardized, operational, and repeatable over time. So we took a really, really precautionary approach.

Any region deemed to be Essential Fish Habitat core area that isn't at least 90% intact immediately flags our process for additional review. That's incredibly conservative, but appropriate given all the uncertainties associated with this. That is not a standard that's applied in other regions. Other councils have other approaches to doing that. That's the North Pacific's decision, right?

Then the same— so the standards for temporary versus not and substantial versus not are operationalized, and I've walked through kind of that decision tree. At the end of the day, that decision initially is a, and the assessment is done by the folks that know most about the fish stocks themselves in terms of their dynamics, and that's the stock assessment authors, and it's done in concert, author to author, through the plan team process. That then comes forward to, to the SSC. You'll also remember they're looking for linkages that are mechanistic. Ostensibly, the reason we're concerned about removing structure is that fish need it.

That's why it's called essential habitat. And so the regs say habitat's essential for spawning, feeding, breeding, and growth to maturity. Those are specific factors the stock assessment authors all look at. Now we provide them a data stream that says, in addition to your knowledge about size at age and how it changes over time, here's information on disturbance, because disturbance and removal of structure could result in reduced size at age as fish have to work harder in order to protect themselves and/or forage. So there's a mechanistic relationship underpinning the thresholds.

The Council identifies thresholds. What I'm saying when it comes to those food system metrics is those are metrics that you can explore, you can examine, you can determine if you think they're high, low, if they're improving over time. You have to think about how you would want to use them. My point is the recommendation globally is to not just look at the impacts side of this equation, but to bring forward the yield side and think about ways to put them together that inform whatever it is that you want to know. How does our region compare to other regions?

How does one fishery compare to another? And it really levels up. Otherwise, if we just look at disturbance, your eye is always going to be drawn to the biggest gears. Those are also the highest yield gears a lot of times, and so to balance that, we need to consider both of us. Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

I think we're ready to move on.

Okay, we talked about bridging analysis. All right, we're almost to the end, promise. Um, so quick takeaways. I, I'll leave you— well, I sort of started off without saying it directly, but the foundation for my comments today really center around an axiom that I think is borne out in lots of different scenarios in our world, and that's concern without decision support leads to precaution without precision. You go in when you've got an ingrown, you know, fingernail, they generally don't take it off at the elbow, right?

That with information you can tune your precision. So decision support is designed to bring— to give precaution discipline. A discipline. What is this about, right? Specifically, the— and an aim, and most importantly, accountability.

And I think that's what the public is upset about. I think that in general, concerns about bottom trawling and so forth that are leading to recommendations to amputate effectively are centered around the notion that something really bad is happening, it's not being addressed, and this is super concerning and we have to intervene. Well, that tells me we haven't done a good job of explaining to the public that we are also concerned about this. It is super important. They're on to something, and we have a process.

We are carefully considering these things, and we're deriving it based on scientific evidence as required by the law and the process. And so that's what we're offering going forward, whether it's GEAR Initiative, Fishing Effects Model, or this general interaction with you, is to try and bring that information forward. But the decision support piece is designed to allow you to act with precaution in a precise fashion. So, key takeaways: sustainability needs to be incorporating public concern, and that public concern deserves transparent evidence and clear trade-off reporting, right? If we— if you take this action in order to produce this protection, what's the likelihood it does so versus makes the situation worse?

We should be able to clearly quantify that and show that to people so that they can I understand the basis for your decisions. And that maybe helps them move past big feelings of concern, which really are great. They suggest that the general population has a strong concern for protection and sustainability of our waters and our fisheries, which is embedded in the law, and it's why I think most of us are here. So I think that the fact they're paying attention and engaged is good. I think they don't quite understand or have access to enough information to help them understand what's already happening and ways to join that conversation constructively.

Next, the gear innovation initiative is providing a new empirical gear fishing practice foundation focused first on polychaete trawl contact estimates, but is applicable to all gears that we use in this region. The gear parameter tables are on the EFH review track. We're going to be able to provide that information without asking somehow for that EFH process to be delayed while we gather more information. We tune the outputs to provide them as the process moves along, and the most important piece of that is going to be review by the Scientific and Statistical Committee to determine the methods, the data, the analyses, and the interpretation are appropriate. Um, and that peer review process is essential, and we're not going to use anything in the fishing effects analysis that isn't vetted by the SSC.

Phishing effects changes are to inputs, to updating the key pieces that drive the model, but not to the methods or to the workflow, with the caveat that if the SSC sees something in the methods or the workflow that they don't like or they would like to see revised or expanded, then we will do that at their requests. And then finally, the yellow tab that's hard to read there has a question mark in it. And back to Mr. Pamplin's comments, food system metrics are metrics that we can put together, but we're not going to presume to do so without guidance and requests from you. This is simply something that the global community is recognizing as a deficit in our communication, in particular to the public. The Bering Sea, Aleutians, and the Gulf is such a huge area, it's difficult for people to understand.

Pollock gear is huge because Pollock schools are huge. A single tow is almost 100% Pollock, and you're talking about 3, 4, 500,000 fish, a single event. So when we present numbers that are not connected to food production metrics to the general public, it, it's easy to become really concerned. And so it's important for folks to understand, even though the gear is large, large, the amount of fishing, especially with overlap, leaves the vast majority of our ecosystem untouched annually. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't have sustainability challenges that we should be concerned about, but when you present a, you know, kilometer squared value or a salmon PSC value outside of the context of what's yielded in the course of those activities, it's really easy.

I, if I didn't have access to this information, I would be tremendously concerned. But 35,000 salmon can also equate to 7 salmon per 1,000 metric tons. Those two things are going to be interpreted really differently. And my, I think what the global community is saying is you need to present them both. And so I think we can do that for you, but I, we really need guidance from you as to what would be useful.

Finally, the next deliverable coming forward is a review-ready gear parameter package that's going to flow through the SSC review, and part of that will be a careful bridging analysis that will help you understand how these inputs are related to changes in the fishing effects model output.

Finally, I just want to pause and say thank you. This is— this last year especially, but, you know, the really the last 3 or 4 as we've put together this idea for a gear innovation initiative, I've been blown away by the active engagement of the industry, net designers, colleagues around the world. We, I mentioned before, have an outstanding working relationship with our regional office staff that's assigned to work on essential fish habitat and benefit tremendously from that back and forth. And so, it's difficult for me sometimes because I think this really ought to be about celebrating operating, a history of careful fishing in this region, a willingness of the industries to come forward and provide information that they hold on to very carefully in other regions, which suggests trust, and the fact that as it stands, our fishery yield-wise, the amount of impacts that are generated are relative to other regions pretty small. Doesn't mean that that's where they ought to be or that we can't do better But I think somehow the sentiment is that these issues are unaddressed and that somehow there's a fire burning out there that's just going to consume all of this.

And if we don't act with sort of an extreme measure, that something, something really bad is going to happen. And I think the one thing you could look at is why is the science community not on that same page? We have access to and can see what's going on behind the scenes. We understand this workflow and the amount of evidence in front of you, and we're not concluding the same thing as is, uh, coming forward in the general public, that tells me we have a communication problem, and we need to do a better job of letting folks know, uh, where we stand. And my hope is that you all can see that this work going forward is, is really not just my team, but just in general, globally, for concern about gear better transparency, auditable, traceable workflows.

This is really exciting. And even though there isn't evidence of an adverse effect that's more than minimal and not temporary, doesn't mean we can't do better. And every one of the industry collaborators we work with is already working to do better. They were before this initiative started. And a lot of what we're capturing here, um, is really just the record of that.

And you're going to hear about innovations that are ongoing and coming forward. I would like you to stay tuned to these new trawl doors that are going to bring an additional level of control to these trawls going forward. I think it has great potential to really balance high-performance CPE fishing with efforts to try and minimize the potential impacts, and the industry is interested in that because contact with the bottom increases fuel costs, increases wear and tear, and it isn't something anybody wants to unless it's key to catch performance.

Thank you. Mr. Tom.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair and Dr. Harris. One, I just wanted to say thank you for doing this work and for convincing others on your team to help you with the work, but I don't really think we do enough of this work to help increase the understanding of the actual fishing gear and the methods and how that actually impacts the environment one way or the or the other, just the greater understanding I think is important. When I look at sort of what you're trying to do, so you are trying to, through the gear work, sort of reduce the uncertainty for how that gear performs, what the impacts might be, but this isn't farming necessarily. You can't, it's fishing. You can't reduce all of that uncertainty out there.

And I'd be curious of your thoughts of like what other components of uncertainty are left, or are there some— any other key pieces of information you've found as you've went through this that you'd like to gain more information on to help even, you know, further refine that work in the future?

Through the chair, Mr. Tom. Well, that's a great question, and I think—.

Great. And that's— that was a pretty good sound effect because, yeah, that's open-ended, which is always a dangerous thing to do to an academic. But I think that's the probably the most exciting part of the GEAR initiative is that as we move into fully documenting these things, it allows us to then make these comparisons, draw linkages. Industry starts to get excited because because now they realize, wow, they have the information they need internally to look at specific gears, specific gear configurations, and how that relates to key catch performance, positive or negative metrics that they would like to enhance or whatever and so forth. So that, that's the real power of this is that it can drive innovation internal to the fleet that isn't really part of the council's process aside from maybe to track over time.

Because the incentive is to, especially in a rationalized fishing framework, is to find the most efficient way to achieve your catch. And so I don't necessarily have any sort of specific insights, um, except for there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty associated with everything we do in fisheries, as you say, because we can't see well underwater and the domains are so huge. But one thing we should know about are the things that we create bait and put in the water. Of all the things in front of us trying to understand recruitment dynamics and the realities of, you know, instantaneous mortality across a stock or movement of fish, those are complicated questions. We built this trawl, we have a diagram of it, we know exactly how it's rigged, we know when and where it's fished.

To me, that's really critical information for any food production system, and it's right there to known. What it requires is trust relationship with the fishing industry and, you know, producing a process whereby they see the value in providing this information. Once we cross over that hurdle, we start to have really productive conversations, and my hope over time is the Council can gradually get a better and better understanding of the, the real dynamics of these fisheries, because your guidance and advice will just get better. And so I think that's what's really powerful about the process. Our colleagues around the world are pretty excited about adopting similar frameworks, and I think the cool thing about that is as that community of practice grows beyond this region, we all get better.

Thank you. And Mr. Carlin. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, Dr. Harris, for your work, and I appreciate your time during the presentation and focusing on the more than minimal and not temporary standard. Those of us who were involved in implementing EFH back in the day focused on that because of the notion that we want to focus on impacts that are consequential for the productivity of fisheries and the ability of the habitat to support spawning, breeding, feeding, and growth to maturity, and not worry about inconsequential sequential impacts so much.

So appreciate your highlighting that. I wanted to ask specifically about the bridging analysis for this iteration of the fishing effects model. Do I understand correctly that that would be provided only for pelagic trawl at this stage because that's the, the subject of the Gear Innovation Initiative, but you're kind of anticipating that in the future as, as the model evolves and maybe is taking a similar approach with other gear types, there might be a bridging analysis for those in future iterations. Am I getting that right? Through the Chair, Mr. Kerlin, no.

Okay. The bridging analysis is going to be— got to show the SSC, they've already asked for this, the impacts of all updates to the model. And so we're going to have updates for gears not involved in the gear initiative. There will be new values potentially coming forward from the groundfish pot fishery, about their gears, from the bottom trawl fleet about their gears, about longline gears. And so the bridging analysis links each update to what the influence is in terms of the model outputs by comparing it to the past iteration.

And so it will be done for all gears. We're not going to— I think what I'm anticipating in your question is during the bridging analysis, are we going to try isolate just the influence of CPs? And the answer is no, because across time, the fishing effects model tracks all disturbance in a grid cell every month throughout its domain, regardless of whether that disturbance came from a pot, a longline, a trawl, a pelagic trawl. And so those are not isolatable. I mean, we can do some leave-one-out style analyses to get to the influence of changes to one particular gear, but we're, we're really focused on overall fishing effects performance as it regards those updates.

We can provide the council with a crosswalk that says these were the gear parameters for CPs in the past iterations, and here's the new ones, so you can see what's changed. But to really understand the influence of that, we have to put it into the full operation traditional system. Hope that makes sense. Yeah, that's a good clarification. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dr. Harris, for your presentation and your work on this project. Thank you.

And safe travels home. So I think this is a good place to take our mid-afternoon break. Sounds like the people behind us know how better to spend their weekend than we do.

Let's, let's come back at 3:30. We'll take the presentation on the China EFP at 3:30. See you then.

Council members, please come back to order.

Welcome back, everyone. So we have a couple more presentations on D1, beginning with an EFP presentation by Trident. So please, see you whenever you're ready.

Okay, we need 1 minute and we can listen to the nice music behind us while we're waiting. PowerPoints come on screen. And if Austin wants to knock over something back there too for our entertainment, go ahead.

Okay. Oh, it's not coming up yet.

I like when Kayla shakes her head yes but really means no.

Thank you for your patience, everyone.

Great, thank you so much. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, and to the Council. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and present an update of the accepted fishing permit research that we're doing at Trident Seafoods as part of our efforts to evaluate the potential to modify the pollock trawl foot rope. With me presenting today is my colleague, Mr. Shannon Carroll, also from Trident Seafoods, and I, yes, and I also wanted to begin— there we go— by acknowledging the others that have been involved in the work that we're going to present today. This work has been made possible by the time and commitment of the captains and crew at Trident Seafoods who put a lot of energy into testing and developing this foot FOOTROPE, providing important input both in study design and in the FOOTROPE itself, and also to acknowledge Seamus Melle and SwanNet USA, who has been our partner on this project.

And I guess I just wanted to provide a caveat at the beginning that this project is not trying to imply that this gear would be universally acceptable for all vessels or companies. And so just want to make that clear at the outset that we're not implying that this is— the results of this can be applied universally. Thanks. Thank you for the clarification.

So to start, I wanted to provide some background information that would help as far as terms and concepts that we'll be discussing, as well as some context for the development of this gear. So we'll talk a little bit about measuring seafloor contact and the trawl design, um, for the Pollock trawl. So giving a little bit of background leading up to this work.

Starting off just thinking about measuring seafloor contact, there's multiple ways to do this, from a simple, um, sensors that allow for the measurement of on or off bottom using things like the device shown in this picture where you simply have have a weight that, once relieved of the pressure by being off bottom, pulls a string and allows for on/off information for bottom contact. There are also multiple companies that make acoustic trawlsonars that provide information about contact with the seafloor.

These often are used to also look at something called clearance, or the distance between the foot rope rope and the seafloor.

There are challenges with these different approaches that we have found, such as variability in— pardon— being recognizing that there's variability in contact both in the location of the foot rope and over the duration of tow, as which was found by research done by Brianna Baumann King in 2019, showing that contact is highly variable over a— over a pollock tow.. These instruments only provide on and off bottom information without information about clearance, which can be challenging when you— when the fishermen need to fish near the seafloor when pollock are found nearby. And then also attaching instruments on the foot rope can be very challenging given the large size of the mesh at the front of the trawl, making it difficult to find attachment locations, and for the need for the gear to be going over and net reel. So it would either need to be modified so that it can go over the net reel or to be attached and removed with each tow. And Dr. Harris talked about some of the complications with that.

One thing that was interesting from the study that he was referencing is the time that it took to attach those sensors in order to deploy them for that research. The captain then was off the fish, and then it was— we had to wait to deploy the gear again because we'd gone so far away from where the fish were in the time that it took to deploy the instruments.

With the acoustic sonar technology for measuring seafloor contact, these are also challenged by the fact that the, the instruments on the head rope can't necessarily always accurately measure contact and clearance between the foot rope and the seafloor when the rope is fished really close to the seafloor. As I mentioned,— this is when the pollock are near the seafloor, this is where the gear needs to be. There's also limitations with acoustic sensors in regard to wavelength frequency factors and other elements that could make it difficult to measure foot rope when it's near, near the seabed.

In regard to measuring seafloor clearance, this is the study that Dr. Harris had mentioned. This is from Brianna Brianna's work from 2019. So this is the instrument that's used to measure that clearance. Uh, Dr. Harris had mentioned the rebar. Um, essentially what this does is it's an attachment of an accelerometer, something similar and akin to what you might have in a cell phone that tells you which angle, um, it's orienting.

So that type of technology put into a housing and attached to a piece of rebar or something that can allow for, um, attachment to a foot rope. The way that this is measured, the clearance, is basic trigonometry. I don't need to go too much detail, but essentially it uses basic trigonometry to take the angle of measurement relative to the seafloor and a known distance with that piece of rebar or whatever other type of sensor technology or attachment. And so this just gives you a really quick overview of what that looks like to give an angle relative to the seafloor, and it gives you that measurement, and then you can use that to calculate distance above bottom.

So this we found in the study with Brianna, Brianna Bauman King, in 2019, was that the attachment can bind up, as described also by Dr. Harris. The clearance measures were limited by the length of that rebar, so you can only get estimates of clearance based on that length of the rebar. And then generally in the conservation engineering community globally, bottom contact sensors are largely seen as unreliable, just given the amount of errors found in the data with the sensor binding up as described, influenced by external factors such as water currents, net speed, debris, variations in the angles, and the need to smooth the data just given given how much variability can result from just simply the way that it is attached and used. Data processing is also very time intensive. The durability that is needed for the ability to redeploy these, and then also the need, as Dr. Harris described, of needing to remove and reattach these given that they can't go over the net rail.

There's also acoustic issues. Acoustic sensors that can be used to measure seafloor clearance. However, there is a dead zone where the measurements cannot really be provided accurately within that first meter of the seafloor, just due to the, the acoustic technology and the need to have that sound signal returned. Also, these instruments are challenged by the need to be able to place them in a location on the foot rope where there's not a lot of structure for attachment. And the need to either be removed and attached or to be able to go over the net reel.

And this is just an example of showing that dead zone from a paper by Kotwicki et al. In 2012, showing some of the challenges with that acoustic dead zone, which is why they have a pairing with a bottom trawl for the survey, and then also showing some of the diving behavior and some of the way that pollock react and are found so close to the seafloor at times. Um, so in order to address this, when we started out thinking about how do we measure seafloor contact and clearance for our foot rope to try to understand, um, contact and understand what's going on with our gear, we submitted, um, a, a proposal to the 2024-25 crab disaster RFP that was, um, issued, uh, developing a real-time sensor to inform fishing decisions. Um, and this idea here was to develop a sensor that would allow for for us to better estimate contact and clearance with our polychaete trawl. This was in collaboration with Sextant, a company that designs underwater housings and cameras.

This project wasn't selected for funding. However, it gave us an opportunity to really dive deep into the sensor technology available and the limitations therein.

And then what we really thought about is, well, if we were to come up with a bottom contact sensor, what does that look like practically speaking? And we were thinking a little bit about lessons learned from other programs with integrated technology for regulatory purposes. So I was able to observe electronic monitoring, and as that became part of our fisheries process, and to think about how that— how long that process took and what some of the challenges were, then integrating that technology, thinking about the challenges with developing the technology, developing best practices, thinking about the data collection and the turnaround time in order to get feedback to captains, challenges over who owns data, etc. So we thought a little bit about some of those challenges as we were diving deep into this idea of trying to look into bottom contact sensors. And what we came up with, and I apologize for the, the long lead-up in the background here, but this is what really led us to think about, well, this doesn't seem like the path we wanted to take.

We would rather focus on just modifying the gear and understanding fishing parameters that affect bottom contact. And so this is what really drove and inspired our direction and thinking about modifying the foot rope, um, as far as next step in addressing, um, concerns around contact and impact. So for a tiny bit more background, I just wanted to give some overview on the gear and explaining it in order to help help with understanding some of the slides that I'll be using to explain changes to the foot rope that we've undergone.

So this is a pelagic trawl, and I provided a video— oh good, here we go. This is from the Flume Tank. We recently just went and deployed the modified foot rope as well as the, the standard foot rope that's being used to— and I'll describe that in a little bit. This is also the model that Dr. Harris will be using next week for his study, and it just shows a little bit— they're zooming in on the foot rope, but they're there at the mouth of the net to give you a sense for what this net actually looks like. This is at a— oh, it's not gonna let me fast forward— this is at a 1:32 scale for reference.

So I put this in here because I think I think it's an interesting context. So back in 1971, in the Modern Fishing Gear of the World, which is a popular book for, as I've described in the AP, gear nerds like myself who think about gear a lot. But at the time, they wrote about the importance of the flexibility of a trawl, like the pelagic trawl, to harvest animals that inhabit different areas of the water column. And they talked about, a quote from this is, "A fundamental first essentials for success in midwater trawling— the means to ensure the trawl operates at the required depth. Thus, whereas most ground trawling is still conducted without the use of specific fish detection devices, their use in midwater trawling is of fundamental importance, and midwater trawling has developed in close association with fish detection devices, especially the echosounder.

So this is a key part in understanding the fundamentals of pelagic trawl. It's also referred to as named trawling, meaning that acoustic images are used and targets the fish, and then the, the pelagic net is then situated anywhere in the water column from near the seafloor to shallower depths in order to target the animals that they see on these acoustic sounders to find and target those fish.

So this is just an example of what that might look like, and again, the captains are very good at seeing these images and knowing where the fish are found, and then adjusting their gear up and down in the water column appropriately to target them. And just as a way to explain the difference between the bottom trawl and some of these things, and I'll highlight a few of these just as an example of the differences, but it's not meant to indicate any implication for bottom trawling, just meant to show the difference. Yeah, just to, I guess, add to that caveat, that I think one of the things that people are struggling with is what is the difference and why is it managed differently? And this is just, I think it's more about how it's fished and what the gear does that is presenting unique challenges with pelagic trawl. So this isn't, these, we have two slides that show a picture of a bottom trawl that it's not indicative of the type of gear or the scale or any of the impacts from bottom bottom trawling.

It's merely meant to just show the differences in how the gear operates.

Thank you, Shannon. Again, also acknowledging that there is also innovation happening in the bottom trawl space. Um, so whereas, um, again, we have this aimed trawling for pelagic trawling, being able to move up and down in the water column to target the fish that are observed on the acoustic sounder, bottom trawling is intended and meant to be near the bottom and not move up and down vertically.

Also, this is important as far as the design. So this is a net, the pelagic trawl net, with a large vertical as well as horizontal mouth opening. The idea being that large vertical— large opening, large mouth opening to target and harvest those schools, as Dr. Harris had described in his presentation, needing— not allowing allowing for, in this design, the floats, but having— sorry, I lost my place there. Yes, having some kind of a balance between flotation and spreading. And so the way that this works is having a net suspended in the water column using spreading forces, the doors of the net spreading open that net, and then needing weight as a way to counteract those spreading forces to create that large mouth opening.

So, um, per regulations, floats are not allowed on our pelagic trawl. So in order to get that opening, we really rely on the spreading forces of the doors. But then again, in order to have that take shape, we need to have a counteracting force, which is the foot rope. So here is again the image of the, the scale model of the pelagic trawl and the flume tank.. So we have those doors which are providing that spreading and opening, and then we have clump weights and the foot rope which provides those counteracting weights.

So really, I guess, again, it's a long walk in background to really show that this is the design of a pelagic trawl, and the foot rope is there in order to provide that counteracting, that counteracting force. And so again, is per the study that was done by Brianna in 2019 for her master's research, the idea was to try to understand contact over the extent of the foot rope. And this is really a very simplified summary of what her findings were, but the idea was to look at different amounts of contact and clearance. So she mapped out over different parts of the foot rope whether or not— so the dark, the black, which I'll show you in a little bit, is when you have less than 2 inches dimensions of clearance. And then as you get closer into the white shadings, you have more and more clearance between the foot rope and the seafloor.

And so what she found as far as contact over the— if you can kind of imagine, and this is not to scale or meant to be an exact representation or of the foot rope, but this is just sort of to illustrate that over the extent of the foot rope and over the over the duration of a tow. You can imagine that these— this is a tow, these different lines in these different locations, you have highly variable contact. And that was a consistent thing that she found, as well as asking the captain to indicate when he thought that his gear was on bottom and finding that often, when verified with the camera, it was off bottom when he thought he was on. Again, again, sort of suggesting some of that dead zone and difficulty in knowing when you're on bottom with that acoustic technology. Um, but highly variable contact was observed, and this is, um, some images that you can see, um, how close it is gliding above the seafloor and that near proximity at times.

Um, so again, the net is suspended in the water column using these spreading force forces to create that opening. The foot rope is there for the weight. The doors are not on bottom. They would collapse if they were. Compared to a bottom trawl, again, this is opened as opposed to those spreading forces.

It's opened with flotation. The foot rope is designed to make that consistent and uniform contact with the seafloor, so much so that when you look at the bottom trawl survey, they have sensors there to make sure that they are making that consistent contact, and the doors can be off or on bottom. So sort of differences in the design and approach of harvesting fish. So that leads me to talk a little bit more specifically to the foot rope. So the foot rope, as I think everyone is familiar now with this design, is this piece of the trawl.

And if we zoom in, again, my sort of cheesy cartoons here, but that there is an example of a foot rope. But this is a picture I took on one of our catcher vessels. So that is the foot rope that's used on that particular vessel. And I apologize, I had pasted this image incorrectly before, so we had to update the slide, but essentially this is a 2-inch, uh, wine chain in that direction, which is about the size of 2 quarters. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm referring to the foot rope.

And so the foot rope location of where it's fished depends, um, and yeah, the location of the water column depends on where the pollock are found again. So the idea to use that acoustic technology to harvest the fish where they're at, whether it's higher in shallower depths or near the seafloor. For example, our captains reported that this past A season was pretty frequent that the pollock were up in the water column. So there is that variation. And then so we know— this is a challenge that when fish are found near the seafloor, that foot rope can make contact.

We know that measuring contact is challenging given the existing equipment and the challenges therein, as I described, and the high variability in contact over the extent of the foot rope as well as the duration of tow, as described from the work from Brianna King in 2019. We also know that uncertainty exists with respect to crab unobserved fishing mortality and impacts to other demersal organisms because of the lack of information there. So all of this led to our objective, and what our decision was as far as path to move forward was to think about an engineering solution that can overcome the presumption of unobserved fishing mortality and negative impacts through simply thinking of a way to have a reduction in the number of contact points.

The objective was also, in, in designing something this, to think about other parameters. So making sure that whatever we came up with would not also impact operations or safety, making sure that whatever we came up with would be fairly universally applicable so that we could use it on different types of nets and vessels within the fleet, that it would be affordable so that for ease of uptake, wouldn't require major modifications or change in our repair replacement schedule in order to make it more accessible in order to have this be something we could implement and test in a shorter turnaround time. So that would also not increase bycatch, it wouldn't affect our increase in things like catch of PSE. And then also, and maybe more— one of the more important ones is make sure that we don't reduce efficiency. And so not reducing pollock catch with whatever engineering design that we came up with.

And this is really important, and I think in all gear designs and conservation engineering studies, one of the main focuses is making sure that whatever change is made is not going to affect efficiency. And I'll explain this in a little bit more detail because I think it's an important point to make.

So fishing efficiently means less impact when you have a quota fishery. Fishing off bottom when the fish are there is not an effective solution to minimizing impacts, and I'll explain this with an example to, to really kind of drive this point home. So fishing off bottom when the fish are near the floor is not effective, and the idea there is that non-targeted fishing means increasing the number of tows to get the same amount of quota. So simply, if the quota is consistent, if you're inefficient, you're towing more, and this can result in increased time the gear is in the water, meaning there's more potential for bottom contact, use of fuel, etc., you increase the chance that you might encounter bycatch animals, prohibited species catch, and it's also more time that the fishermen are spending on the water, so there's more chances for safety issues with the crew.

And so this is a little bit of an example here. You'll have to excuse me, it's pretty basic, but basically the idea is the quota isn't changing. So either the fish are found— when the fish are found near the seafloor, you can either fish where they're at, or you can intentionally fish off the bottom. So in this hypothetical example, I'm being very basic and saying, imagine that you have a change in your approach such that you're reducing your impact by 50% with the same gear or a modified gear. So you're being less efficient, but you have 50% reduction in contact.

So if we think about having, just as a basic example, 100 units of quota, and assuming that for each tow you use 2 units of fuel, and for each tow you have 5 units of bycatch. In these two examples of an efficient tow where you might have 10 quota units per tow, or an inefficient tow where you have 5 quota units per tow, however, in this inefficient example you you have reduced bottom contact. Just doing some basic math, you would need double the number of tows to get the same amount of quota. You'd use double the amount of fuel and double amount of bycatch. So even though you have a 50% reduction in contact for an individual tow, for that overall quota, you end up having no change in contact.

So this is just a very basic example to sort of show the importance of efficiency and how when we don't maintain efficiency with gear modifications, it can actually lead to more adverse effects. And so that was why, when thinking about a modified gear design and an engineering approach to this question, we really wanted to focus on efficiency to make sure that that was being maintained.

So now getting more into modifying the Plagic Foot Rope and the steps we took to think of an engineering a solution to think about maintaining fishing efficiency while reducing bottom contact when fishing near the seafloor. So again, there is our foot rope, and I'll be using very basic images in this to sort of demonstrate this, again reminding people that that foot rope is that chain there that we're discussing. And again, this is my little cartoon of looking into the mouth of a trawl and thinking about moving towards us in the direction of toe. So this is sort of thinking of a standard foot rope design, and of course there's variation in design for what is being used currently, but this is an example of what we're comparing the modifications to.

So the original concept was by Seamus Melly at SwanNet, and the idea is pretty simple, which is to take that foot rope, cut it into smaller pieces, and change the orientation so that the attachment is varied and the way that it's designed is different, but you maintain the weight. And this is sort of why I spent so much time going over the trawl and understanding sort of how it's deployed and used. So the foot rope is really there to provide that weight, that anchoring weight to counteract the spreading forces. So the concept design here is to maintain that weight in order to overcome those spreading forces to get that mouth opening, but changing the orientation of the chain.

So if you were to look into the mouth of the net, it would look somewhat like this instead. So you would have these small areas of contact with 2 meters in between the, the chains. So you'd have these open spaces, um, similarly for those who are familiar with raised sweeps that same kind of idea if you have raised spaces between the contact points. And so here is a video of that modified foot rope in the flume tank, and so this is basically showing how it operates. Maybe we could replay it, and then Danny is going to be passing around this model.

This is a 1:32 scale for your reference, but it gives you a little bit of idea of its construction. And maybe I'll play this one more time if I can. I don't know if I'm going to go backwards. There we go. Thanks.

So this is essentially the idea. So you have those open spaces in between the chains, and the chains are oriented in the direction of toe.

So, yep. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I missed going. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentation so far. It's really interesting research.

I'm curious, what's the clearance there between like the chain to where those ropes are? Through the chair, Ms. Cohen, I will be talking about this in a little bit. If I don't answer it sufficiently, please let me know, if that's okay.

Okay. So this again is assuming consistent contact over the foot rope for demonstration purposes only, to give a sense for what that contact might look like. And I added another slide to really drive home this idea that, again, we, we know based on empirical research that their contact is not consistent over the foot or for the duration of toe. So as opposed to this kind of oversimplification, it would be more simply something like this. So then the times that you do make contact, you, instead of having that full contact in that area, you'd have those, those, that 2-inch path of chain.

Um, and so we don't have, um, concrete estimates of, uh, reduction in contact. Um, however, I'll be talking a little bit about how we're planning to integrate this into Dr. Harris's model to get a better estimate of that. But just a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation to give us a sense for what we were looking at, we simply, um, and again assuming full contact, and we know that this is not the case based on the research. But from one of the vessels that we worked with, we know that wingtip to wingtip, that span is 420 feet. And for that particular vessel, we had 113 chains, and we know the width of that contact is 2 inches because that's the width of the chain, which is about 19 feet.

So if you think about contact over the extent of that space, it's 400 less feet of contact or 96% reduction in contact. And again, these are not hard numbers that we have estimated with empirical research, but this is just an approximation to get a sense for what, assuming full contact, whatever, what the contact would be. Um, and so that's a little bit about the design and the concept and what we were trying to achieve with this modification in the foot Footrope. Now we'll talk a little bit about the timeline and what we've been doing in order to implement this and test for efficacy. So we started in 2023 in the A season, in the winter, to really think about developing camera systems that would allow for us to evaluate the footrope in practice and to come up with a finalized footrope design for one of our catcher vessels, which was with Swanette, that did that work.

And then in the B season, after doing some preliminary tests on the cameras and getting this net plan finalized, I went out with one of our catcher vessel vessels, one of our Trident vessels, to test this, what we're calling the SPF, or the suspended parallel foot rope. The name's not great, but that's what we're calling it for now. Open to suggestions, but got to go out on the vessel, and the captain tested it, and we gathered data on it, which I'll talk about here. So, we looked at changes to operations and safety and efficiency. So, a big part of this first test was really to get captain and crew feedback.

If they hated it, it was going to be back to the drawing board. So, we really wanted to make sure that it wasn't putting our captains in any harm's way and that we weren't losing fish. Fish. We also collected information about catch composition, and I collected research data as well. This included cameras that were attached in 3 different locations over the extent of the foot rope, and I, in doing that, I looked and monitored for the angle of contact with the chains, the idea being that I wanted to make sure that those chains were parallel in the direction of tow.

As you can imagine, that if the chains were in a different orientation, it would be back to a similar design of the traditional foot rope. As Ms. Goehn alluded to, I also looked to see if we can get information about clearance of those fishing lines and any amount of contact with them to see if we could see any interactions with demersal animals, look at variables that might affect variability in these, in these elements, and then also just get a sense for your performance. Are there any issues with those chains tangling in the meshes with deployment, etc.? I also deployed sensors on the foot rope and the head rope to get a sense for how well the net was spreading relative to traditional, uh, the standard foot rope. And then I also marked, um, 7 areas on each side of the foot rope, and I did an inspection with every toe to get a sense for how the shine was appearing on the chains themselves.

Shine is often used in gear studies to think about gear contact and how it's making contact with the seafloor, especially because when contact is happening with the sand, it polishes up that metal of the chain and gives you a sense for where that contact is happening. So I divided the chain into 5 sections and recorded the different shine and where that was happening, as well as any indications of contact with those fishing lines.

From there, we had, we had good success, and the captain said that he did not see any change in catch and decided that he wanted to just keep using it. That gave us, that gave us the motivation to keep pushing forward, and we wanted to test it on a different catcher vessel that had different horsepower, different captain style to see if that made any impact on the efficacy of this modified foot rope. That was also successful, so then we moved to adding it to 2 additional Trident catcher vessels, and then also wanted to add it to a catcher processor, having felt like there was some success there and not being concerned about losing pollock or affecting safety or other elements of catch composition. And so I did, I went out with a catcher processor to collect additional data similar to what I did with our Ketcher vessel. And then in 2025A season, added it to additional vessels.

And then a point of note is in 2025B season, based on some of the things I was seeing, I wanted to see, well, could we reduce the amount of weight? Can we go a little bit lighter on the foot rope? And so we had a version 2.0 that we tested in the 2025B or summer season. Where the, the weight was reduced, and I'll show that here. Essentially, from the center until the wingtips, so the last 8 bars of the net, we removed every third chain, which was a 21% reduction in weight, which we tested on a Ketcher processor, which was also successful.

In the 2026, this past ace season, we had a modified foot rope available to all of our vessels. A couple of them, they got to it— they were made right towards the end of the season, but going into our summer season, the summer season, we're going to have all of our Trident vessels using this.

Oops. Just to give a sense that there's a wide variety of vessels and nets that we've tried this on, we've been also bringing nets home to monitor wear and tear over time. And replacing the rope as needed. Additional— in addition to reducing weight and testing that out, we've been, we've been playing a little bit around with the rope size that's needed for different vessels and horsepower, meeting with other companies to share the findings of this. There is a captain that suggested adding a breakaway feature, so we're taking feedback from our captains who are providing great input on this, and the intent is to develop and write peer-reviewed scientific article with Seamus Melly at SwanNet to make this information publicly available.

And then also, as I described, we took a trip to the flume tank this past April to, to do additional looking in the design to see if there's anything we can learn by having it there in the flume tank.

And the next steps are going to be doing data analysis. I've been collecting data over every season where the captains are collecting information about catch that will be done in a modeling exercise to evaluate drivers of efficiency. From the video footage that's been collected for the times I've been out on the boats, we're going to be looking at the percentage of the time the footrop is on bottom and the amount of variation above the seafloor and looking at variations in this by catcher vessel and catcher processor, both the— both the version 1.0 and 2.0, and then to try to get an estimate measurements of clearance when possible. To Ms. Cohen's comment, I did look at seeing if there was ways to estimate clearance using AI methods, and I worked with this company for a while, and we went down a rabbit hole, and the amount of error, just because the clearance is, you know, that we're dealing with is such small numbers, that the error was higher than what we'd probably get to get that kind of resolution.. So that wasn't an option.

So unfortunately, we're not going to get accurate estimates of clearance, but we are going to be integrating this into Dr. Harris's GI model to get at better estimates of contact and clearance through his model. So that's a way around that. But then also, just to give this example— sorry, these are videos that should hopefully play— this gives a sense of some of the variation in, um, contact and clearance that were observed through the video that were collected. So I'll be able to make relative estimates of differences in contact and clearance, which I'll be doing, um, and quantifying that, um, although it won't be an accurate number that's quantified, it's going to be relative estimates. And then again, from the flume tank, we were able to get, um, some cursory look at variables that affect contact, um, Dr. Harris is going to go into a much deeper dive than we are into this, but we were able to look at a few different parameters that affected our, our clearance and contact.

And then we also wanted to make sure that we are achieving the objectives that we are intending. So one big thing I was looking for at the flume tank was making sure that those chains were going in the direction of toe, again, that being a really critical element of this design. One thing that we found at the flume tank that was at the center of the foot rope and in the wingtips that was occurring. However, in a section of the midspan, we saw that some of the chains were oriented not in the direction of tow as we had hoped. So we thought a lot about that while we were at the flume tank, and I think we're going to look a little bit further into that to see if that's a modification that we need to make in the real-world design.

However, that doesn't necessarily match with what we saw in the camera footage. In the camera footage, it's it's really clear that the chains are going in the direction of toe. So this could also just be a feature of some of the constraints in doing flume tank work where you don't necessarily have accurate representation of the gear in the model form. But we're going to be continuing to look at that, working on this publication with Seamus Melly, and then also, as I mentioned, we're going to be integrating this model, this design, into the, the Gear Innovation Initiative with Dr. Harris so that he can get a better estimate of contact and to explain a little bit better, um, how this changes, um, contact from a standard, uh, foot rope design. And then again, continuing to work with, uh, SwanNet as, um, this gets deployed on additional vessels.

Anything from you to add? Okay, thank you so much for the opportunity to present this. Thank you very much for the presentation and for your work on the EFP. I'm sure we have a couple questions. Ms. Kimball.

Thank you. Thank you so much for going through that presentation, Dr. Yokom, and you made— you spent some time with us, as did Dr. Harris, explaining why we have to pay attention to CPUE changes. Otherwise, you negate all of your conservation benefits. Do you have initial data already on the efficiency piece, or is that not something you can share?— you just said that's in the next steps for data analysis, but was there any immediate feedback you can provide? Through the Chair, thank you for the question, Ms. Kimball.

Yes, it's very— so I don't have the p-values and things like that yet. That will be coming. But so far, the feedback is that there's no change in efficiency. The captains have been essentially giving the feedback that it's the same, and I've done some preliminary look at the data, and I'm I'm also seeing no differences in catch efficiency using this modified foot rope so far.

Yes, Mr. Thumm. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I was trying to understand the design piece. And so with the weighted chain oriented to a different direction, is the idea that you could bring the foot rope down close to the bottom where the chain may contact, but the actual rope itself would not contact.

And then second piece was, did you think about— do you have to have the double rope with the chain in the middle, or could you leave one end of the chain free to orient itself better to the direction of tow, or does that create other problems in the use of it?

Through the Chair, Mr. Tom, thank you for the question. For the first part, my gosh, I shook my head, so I gave you the answer, and I'm trying to remember the question now. The first part was the— oh, correct, yes, you're correct, that is the idea for the design there. And then as far as having the loose chains, the biggest thing there is a safety issue. So when these nets come up over the net reel, having a loose chain that could swing about would be really dangerous.

Dangerous for our crew on the vessels. So that provides a way for it to be kind of suspended in a way that it can safely go over the net reel, but then also that also assures that it goes in that direction of tow so that the— basically the footprint is only that 2 inches, whereas you would not have as much control over a loose piece of chain that might kind of change its placement in the sediment., so could end up having more contact. So this ensures that it stays in that line, and then any contact is sort of in the shadow of that 2-inch footprint. Thank you. And Mr. Carlin.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Um, thanks, Dr. Yoakam. I, I wanna follow up on, um, the clarifications you were providing regarding clearance. Um, so I, I understood your points about, um, it being difficult to measure empirically when the gear is deployed. Played, but I wonder if you could just tell us in terms of kind of the dimensions of the, the chain loops and the spread between the loops, what's— what is the spacing there?

And what I'm thinking about is it's, it's sort of not just a binary with contact and not contact, but there are, you know, bottom features that might be elevated above the substrate or organisms, you know, of different sizes. So I wonder if you could talk about that spacing in that context, please. Uh, through the chair, Mr. Kerlan, thank you for the question. Um, so as far as the dimensions, um, again, so it's that, you know, got that 2-inch sort of footprint, um, and then in between the, the chains, uh, closer to the center of the foot rope, they're 1.6 meters apart, and then as it spreads out towards the wingtips is 2 meters apart, so it's about 6-ish feet between the chains. And then as far as the, the other features, you know, without having estimates of clearance, it's hard to really be able to say what those dimensions are.

But in the video footage, it's, it's very clear that the animals, the demersal animals that are encountering it, go under as far as animals that are found near the seafloor, as well as to see the ease of being able to move to the side of it as it approaches. So you can see fish and animals basically, as that 2-inch chain is approaching, kind of just move to the side and out of the way and be unaffected. Also, with using video camera pointing aft, you can also see that that there is really, you know, even when there is contact with the seafloor and there is sediment that's suspended, that there is clear area without sediment suspended between those two chains. It's very localized contact and sediment suspension as far as that goes. Did you want to add something, Shannon?

Yeah, if you don't mind, and certainly correct me if I'm wrong, but there's also a couple of things that we've looked at to evaluate clearance. And while we don't have an exact number, I think two things have been somewhat constructive. One of those is the shine test that Noel talked about, and when you have uniformity of that shine, you can get a sense of, you know, how much of the chain is on the bottom, and then what you are looking to see then that there's clearance from the fishing line, which are buoyant. And then the second was in the flume tank, there is a— because the pelagic doors collapse when they hit the bottom, there's a sort of minimum depth or minimum height above the seafloor they have to be, and we did get a sense of how the net operated at that depth, and there's sort of a limit to how much you can smush those chains down due to a variety of factors. But so even though the camera footage hasn't panned out in terms of being able to articulate the exact clearance height, there are other things things that we've looked at to, to get a good sense that the net is behaving the way that we think it should be.

And maybe I'll just add one more, if that's okay. Um, yes, as, as, um, Mr. Carroll said, that, you know, at some point it takes the weight off, and so you can't go any further with that weight. It's sort of taken that, taken that weight on. Um, and I also wanted to correct myself that, um, when I talked about the spread, but the distance between the chains, that's for sort of the initial design. They're awfully, um, obviously further apart for that design where we've removed every third chain.

So I wanted to mention that. And then also to say, in all of the video footage, I never once saw, uh, the fishing lines, uh, make contact with the seafloor. So there was always some amount of clearance between the, those fishing lines and the seafloor. And that was further evidenced by looking at the wear and the tear of that, um, of that fishing line. So we would bring it it back and spread it out and really just go over it with a fine-tooth comb and make sure we saw no evidence that that was being dragged on the seafloor, and we have yet to see that.

So I think that we're feeling pretty confident that there will be maintained clearance below that fishing line. And if I may ask one, one follow-up, um, so I, I get that the, the chain itself is 2 inches wide, um, with the, the loop, if the bottom of the loop is in contact with the substrate, what, what's the the, the, uh, vertical distance there to the fishing line?

Um, through the chair, Mr. Kerlin, um, it would depend a little bit on the height that the fishing lines were above bottom. So as the fishing lines go up, um, you get more of a, of a hoop, and then as they get lower, you get a little bit more of a flatter profile. So that distance is going to depend on, um, how much clearance there is. And again, And that hasn't been empirically measured. Okay.

But roughly, do you have a sense of what the dimension is, or? I would be estimating. I don't want to throw out a number without— Thank you.

Thank you. And Ms. Gone. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr. Youkum, for the presentation. I'm curious, well, A, I commend Trident for your leadership here in working to to find solutions. Really appreciate that, and new gear innovations, and intrigued by the 2.0 version as well.

And it looks like you've deployed this among the fleet. Are you then doing field studies to see like how the gear differs between different vessels and how it's fished? In particular, does tow speed matter? Like, are you finding characteristics that matter in how the gear is fished among vessels?

To the Chair, Ms. Cohen, thank you for the question and thank you for the acknowledgement. So, we— I did collect research data on 3 different trips to get that information, but then the captains have also voluntarily been collecting data for me since this began. So they're collecting information on catch, vertical opening, things things like that, and that will all be part of the modeling that I do, the statistical modeling to evaluate that. So I am looking to see some of those differences in the data. So there's gonna be some, I think, interesting findings there, but I think it'll probably match sort of the anecdotal evidence that we're seeing.

And then as far as trying to get at different variables that affect contact and whatnot, we looked at that a little bit in the flume tank, and I think we'll also put that into the modeling that we do. But I do think that one of the, the best pieces for that is also to see how this plays out with the GI modeling project done by Dr. Harris. I think that's gonna be a really good way to, to look at those variables, but it will be part of the statistical analysis that we do and, and part of the, the great dataset that the captains have collected for us.

Thank you for that. And just a, a quick follow-up. I have, A lot of questions. I'm really interested in this work, and maybe we could catch up offline, just recognizing we're sensitive on time right now. Thanks.

Thank you. And Miss Kimball, mine is really fast. I just wanted to know where you were in the queue for the getting it put into the GII work.

So the chair, Miss Kimball, um, Dr. Harris and I already have plans to get that in, and the nice thing is, is, um, The model that we're going to be putting in is one that he— I think he talked a little bit about being a really common model that he's planning to do a lot of analysis with. So we intentionally have done work, and the flume work, et cetera, all of that is done on that specific net that he's got in there, but all of them should be applicable to the model. But we're already talking about it and getting ready to put that in, so hopefully it will be done soon and incorporated and timely manner.

Thank you. And Mr. Sakata?

Yes, thank you very much for the presentation. Um, you had mentioned that, that there is some kind of a self-correcting mechanism, that once the kind of the chains hit, that they can't be driven further into the ground. Is that unique to this design, or would that be true of the regular foot rope? Is there some unique characteristic of this design that causes that kind of auto, you know, uh, not driving it into the ground feature, or—. Through the chair, Mr. Tsukata, thank you for the question.

Um, no, I think that's— it's— I think that's a simple kind of more of a physics thing, that once the, the weight has bore— like, the— once it's bore sort of the weight of the, the chain and of the net, I don't think you can— you basically drive it any further. So I think it is similar to what you might experience on a more standard foot rope. However, one element of this design that's a bit different are those fishing lines that are positively buoyant. However, I think it's more a matter of physics, just that you can only drive it down so far. Quick follow-up.

In this design, I heard about the shine and where that hits the bottom, Was there any attempt or was there any data that showed kind of the impact force or the force on bottom relative to other gear, or was it just kind of it's on or off the bottom?

Thanks. No, that's not something we looked at. It's a good question. But I guess the video, the video footage just sort of speaks to that a little bit and seeing seeing the way, as I mentioned before, um, kind of just seeing how localized that contact is through the video footage provides some indication of that, but there were no empirical data collected on that. Thank you.

Thank you. And Mr. Ritchie. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, thank you for the presentation.

Without getting too into the nitty-gritty, I, I guess I'm just a little confused what— it seems like this isn't too major of a modification except for the orientation of the chains on the foot rope. So That, that's what made this have to qualify for, for an EFP. Um, just a little clarification there would be helpful. Um, through the chair, Mr. Otey, thank you for the question. Yeah, this is, um, just a matter of the, the CFRs and the way that the description of the gear is written, um, meaning that there's, there's not allowed to be 2 parallel lines or 2, and this has additional lines, so it's just a matter of not mashing with the regulation.

That's helpful, thank you. And I was going to add this to Ms. Kimball's question, but the REFP is set to expire at the end of next year. It's also obviously not legal under current regulatory definition, so one, just how it gets integrated into the GII work and the fishing effects model, it's, it's not part of the sort of standard gear, just to be clear. And then we will be likely asking for an extension on our EFP later this year, at the end of the year, so that we can continue to use this gear on our vessels and hopefully continue to expand that.

Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Yokom and Mr. Carroll. Just to that, I'm trying to think back to the action we took last June to modify the definition of pelagic gear, and I don't recall, would, with, if that, when that definition is in place, would you still need the EFP, or I'm just trying to figure out if we are going to have to go back and modify if this becomes common gear. Gear in the fishery.

My recollection is that that gear definition action was largely housekeeping, focusing around certain aspects of the salmon excluder and other things, and did not modify the requirement that there couldn't be two fishing lines. So yes.

Thank you. Any further questions?

Um, I really appreciate the reminder of how you started on this journey, um, with your initial focus on sensors, um, and then submitting an RFP that wasn't funded, um, and your kind of overview of the, the challenges of both tilt and acoustic sensor sensors right now in their commercial application. Um, as Dr. Harris also mentioned, You also said in your kind of your research and development of the, or your development of the proposal with the original RFP, you learned a lot about those limitations, and there are some considerations that made you refocus on gear modifications instead of reapplying for another RFP to direct efforts towards sensor technology. Just wondering if you're— and there's a lot of public attention on sensors right now and the availability of the technology to measure. Has your, I guess, has your thinking changed at all over the last couple of years, or do you see any additional value in revisiting that as far as your efforts? I know that there might be some others ongoing as well.

Thanks. To the Chair, thank you for the question. I'll respond. I'm happy to give Mr. Carroll an opportunity as well, but I think I think that seeing how effective this gear modification was has sort of fortified my, my belief, and I'm very happy that this is the path we went down. I really like the idea that we know kind of, I guess, worst case scenarios, maybe not the right way to say it, but in the event of sort of full contact, we can just say that this is the maximum amount of clearance there is and to be able to just go with that and not to spend that time and trying to quantify that and measure it.

Again, sort of reflecting back on observing and witnessing the process of the integration of the electronic monitoring and how complicated that was and the technology needed to enforce those regulations. I really, I live by the KISS model and keeping it simple, and I like the idea that, you know, that this is the maximum amount of contact and you can just kind of go from there. So I really like also just being a conservation engineer. It's my preference in general, but I Do you think that this was the path to go down, especially knowing and even investigating further into sensors and knowing those limitations and the complications therein?

I think the biggest thing that I learned, Madam Chair, is that even some relatively, I mean, simple modifications, as Mr. Ricci put it, it takes a long time to, to test that gear and to to continue to make those innovations. Just thinking about, you know, getting nets modified in Seattle to have them up in Alaska to fish, and then making, responding to sort of how that gear is being fished and the research questions that are being asked, and bringing it back down to Seattle to make those changes. When you add in an additional technological component that, for example, for the camera work, it just adds other elements that slow the process down. And so the priority has been the gear modification specifically, but the process does take longer than I think, you know, somebody that's fairly new to gear modification work would expect, just because of the logistics of trying to get things into real fishing applications versus doing something in a research setting where you're carving out specific time to do it. So because that's so important to the focus of our work is trying to find something that works while maintaining catch efficiency, that just adds time to it.

Thanks.

Thank you for that. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none. Thank you again for this work. It's incredibly important and responsive to both the interests of the Council and the public.

Thank you.

So I think we're ready to move to a presentation from Scott Goodman and Dr. Sean Hardison.

Thank you, Madam Chair and council people.

Uh, I think my, um, my tradition here is I've begun talking or continuing to talk about crab research has been to mention baseball briefly, so I'll, I'll do so again. The Mariners blew one today. It's Sunday, so we had to pay attention a little bit, unfortunately. I do have one other baseball metaphor, but that's it. It's in the middle of the presentation.

So for the record, I am Scott Goodman, Executive Director to Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation, and very much appreciate the opportunity to come and present some of our research, our relevant and useful research for this topic, and then a little bit more. Um, importantly, I have also a co-presenter for about 5 slides in the midst of this. That's Dr. Sean Hardison, and he is online listening. So when we get to him, I'll turn it over to, to Sean for a few. Um, I have 30 slides here, and some of this is very much relevant to the issue at hand, D1.

A couple of other things are related to some other crab research that's ongoing right now.

Our team that we work with is here. There's 5 or 6 of us that are on our science team. We've additionally added a couple of other research partners. I'll mention this briefly a little later too, but just for For the, those of you who may not be familiar with us, this is kind of who we are as a group of researchers focused on cooperative crab work. For my update, I will include some brief mention of another one of the seasonal distribution surveys, our CPS3 survey, which we got ready for but that had to abort.

I want to talk briefly about our tagging and movement research that we're continuing with our partners and sort following the arc of that. And then importantly, the ongoing synthesis of the available information. I think Dr. Harris touched on this, but everybody's goal in science and research, of course, is to publish. But for important and relevant useful information that you collect as you go, there's also ways to apply that. So Dr. Hardison will talk a bit about synthesizing some of our available tag survey fishery and ecosystem information.

I want to share a little bit about, you know, what does this mean, how are we working with the mobile gear, the trawl folks, the pelagic trawl partnerships, and what we've done there just recently. Also to talk briefly about two focused projects, just to touch on that, these parts go slow, so we're working on a couple of plans here for an Apilio MSE, which is in important. And then also that we're well into a Tanner crab PhD that focuses on shortcut methods that can help us go fast with some important pieces of crab research. We have a big field survey that's starting soon. I want to touch base on that one.

It's called OPS1 for a peelie pot sampling. And then importantly, circling back into UFM pot research, UFM research, which is the Unobserved fishing mortality piece, I have a single slide there that I'll touch base on what we're planning there for one of our special disaster relief research projects. And finishing on that, there's quite a bit of other research ongoing, so I'll mention some of that briefly too.

CPS3 was our third attempt. We're currently batting .500. We tried last year to do this one, and we had some challenges that stopped us. This this year, we were ready to go in Dutch Harbor, and Mother Nature stopped us with the 30 or 40-year ice event. So we were in Dutch Harbor.

Everybody, of course, I think even everybody in the fishing industry was paying attention to the shelf with the ice extent, the ice coverage. We were watching these sorts of maps daily, and the projected maps. At the beginning of this survey, we had about 70 or 80% of our planned sampling grid covered by ice, and by the expected start date, it was 100% covered, and then our near-term forecasts were even more and more in ice. We watched it a number of ways. I put this slide in to just show in a marine exchange screenshot, you could see where the fishing industry was stopping.

You can represent a proxy for ice coverage by switching wave heights. So the white part is the zero wave heights. It's— we were using this to evaluate, could we get into the ice at different places, or there's ribbons or openings in the ice to even go do the work. The red dots that are spread out all over, that's the Nymph survey. Those are 20 miles apart.

The box that you see is the red king crab savings area, and then the more densely spaced sampling stations are part of our CPS3, sampling. That's what we were trying to do, but we stopped this one and kind of saved our powder for upcoming efforts. Along with this, we were coordinating on some custom projections with NOAA and the ice experts directly. We received this update about every other day, um, showing us if we had a shot or not. This is where we are with this in the bigger arc of what we've planned for the seasonal distribution surveys.

I think this council and others had a long arc in talking about winter surveys and what they would be for and how they could be used to inform interested efforts to go and access different resources around or within a spatial management area. So we've hit the first two of these in '23. We did it with just pot vessels. In '24, we added a trawl sampling component. And then we still have two of these queued up for, 2027 and 2028 now.

I've present— oh, this might not be in the right place to ask this, but can you remind me what the, the original target was as far as having a robust time series for, for the survey to then carry forward if, you know, funding didn't become, or, you know, wasn't readily available in the future? As far as management, um, informing management or otherwise. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I think this was a little bit of, uh, in development because we were responding to, um, immediate closures and disasters and economic crises. But the first of the surveys was, uh, put together relatively quickly with state and federal help, and then the disaster relief coming online.

I believe we had a Initially, a 3 to 4 year arc for additional surveys. I think for this king crab sampling, it was a 4 to 5 year arc. And that was based on some preliminary understanding of the differences between cold years and warm years and where distribution of crab react to that. So we didn't want to have just 2, of course, so we wanted to try and cover some things that were related to the changes. And then just importantly, we were actually hoping for the opportunity to sit and wait at the ice edge this time and then be able to go in because of that being a very unique event, but we couldn't do it.

This, this slide is just a representation. I believe this has been presented before, um, on a number of places, but you see, can see what we get as a measure of densities here of crabs across the area and some of the basic results. This is one of the pieces of information that we look forward to synthesizing with the other priority focus areas, one of which has been to also assess tagging and movement of king crab. We have kind of a long calendar, long arc here now for this multi-year project. Some important partnerships, Dr. Leah is kind of the lead with NOAA.

She's provided this summary again for me, and she's currently on Leg 1 of the NOAA survey handling king crab as we speak, I believe. So there's been an awful lot of tags here. To put a table in front of you in terms of these types of tagging experiments, I'd say 30 to 40 crabs, 30 to 40 animals if you're doing a single project focus. Is pretty adequate in terms of sample size when you're trying to assess a complicated idea like where king crab go over different temperature regimes and sex or maturity classes. We've taken an approach to do it over a long period and kind of in stanzas or different deployments.

So we— there's more than 1,000 tags here. Importantly, These range between about $2,500 and $4,000 a tag, so you're talking about quite a bit of money and effort over a long arc here.

This is what you get when you do the preliminary processing of those types of tagging deployments. You're looking at a scatter plot of vectors of movement. The initial part of each arrow you're seeing is where the crab was was deployed, and then the endpoint or the arrowhead was where that tag popped up and was recovered. There's a little bit of post-processing to determine a level of accuracy around each vector. The different colors represent each of the deployments or the different stanzas for this research in the last slide.

So what do we do with this and how do we put this all together? It's— complicated. We look to see, do we have any data gaps? Do we have any places where we still need to do this? The answer is yes.

We have a little bit more tagging to do for red king crab, but an important part here is to come up with a plan and a utility to synthesize the available information to inform what we know now and then ultimately in the near future. So Shawn is online, and I'll go ahead and stop right here. Shawn, I advance your slides as you let us know.

Sure, thanks Scott, that'd be great.

Good afternoon and thank you all for giving me the opportunity to provide an update on my work on understanding Crystal Bay red king crab distribution in data-poor seasons. So the results that I'll be sharing with you today are an extension of work that is currently in peer review and work that I have spoken on in greater detail at the most recent crab plan team meeting, and so I recommend that those that would like to see more details than I have time to share today look at those slides from the crab plan team meeting that are posted on the council website. And additionally, the in-review manuscript that these results build off of is publicly available as a preprint online. So to start, we know that Bristol Bay red king crab migrate migrate seasonally, and these migrations are sensitive to environmental dynamics. And the result of this is that red king crab distribution relative to trawl closure areas isn't static, but it can change from year to year.

And so my work uses movement models to relate the movement of red king crab, which Scott described, we quantify using satellite tags, to environmental dynamics. And This— sorry, someone—.

Sorry about that. So this movement modeling approach allows us to predict the distribution of preferred red king crab habitat given environmental dynamics and observed movements at the times of year when tags released from crab float to the surface and send their data to satellites.

So, and the results that I will share with you today are based on 116 tags that were deployed on mature female red king crab in November 2021 that popped up in late April and early May of 2022. And the deployment and pop-up locations of these tags are shown by the purple arrows on this map. So it's kind of hard to see from this, this image, but the, there are arrowheads associated with where the crab tags released and floated up to the surface and pinged the satellites so they could be geolocated.

So applying the movement model to these data showed that mature female crab movement during this period was sensitive to to bottom temperatures, depth, and sediment grain size. We then took this relationship between movement and environment and predicted the distribution of preferred habitat for migrating crab within this region where tags were deployed at high density.

And the habitat preference predictions are shown by the colored grid on this, this figure. And we enclosed the region of the most highly preferred habitat habitat in the red polygon. So this is the region where preference was in the upper quartile of predicted preference for the year. It represents the areas of Bristol Bay that are attractive for migrating crab at this point in the year. And so this is, it's a rough, this visual marker to identify the area of high preference habitat is qualitative and it's meant just to draw the to where crab are likely to go between, between November and April.

And lastly, we related preference predictions to data collected during the March collaborative pot sampling surveys in 2023 and 2024 that Scott mentioned and found that preference significantly predicted abundances and presence/absences of mature female crab in data. So before I move on, I just want to make a note about an important distinction between habitat preference and density distribution. So what we're showing here is habitat preference distribution, which is an indicator of how attractive a particular habitat is to migrating crab. Given a combination of environmental variables, habitat can still be attractive without crab being present. However, we would expect to find crab in high preference areas during this time, which is what our comparative analysis with the collaborative pot sampling survey data shows.

Next slide, please.

We next extended habitat preference predictions into the late April, early May period for each year between 2014 to 2025. And again, we're, we're drawing a red polygon around the area of high, most highly preferred habitat. This analysis suggested that the preferred habitat of mature female red king crab varies interannually in response to bottom temperature conditions in Bristol Bay. And this is important because this is the time of year that female crab are moving to release their eggs, mate, and molt. Next slide, please.

To illustrate this further, we color these— so what I did here is I extracted those red polygons and I shaded them according to the average bottom temperature within each of these high preference areas during the time of tag pop-up in late April and early May. And the pattern that emerges suggests that in warm years, mature female red king crab preferred habitat further north in Bristol Bay, whereas in cooler years, preferred habitat was distributed from central Bristol Bay to the southwest along the Alaska Peninsula.

Next slide, please.

And lastly, we overlaid the relevant trawl closure areas to visualize how predicted preferred habitat habitat distribution for mature female crab relates to closure areas. And the course takeaway here is that the dynamic environment of Bristol Bay creates dynamic habitat preferences that are not always going to be contained by static closure areas.

Next slide, please.

So where does this lead? Well, given bottom temperature projections into late April and early May, we could use this model to project habitat preference distribution into that period. Projections similar to these could support the delineation of dynamic closure areas. However, producing these projections is contingent upon the availability of bottom temperature projections that are currently produced, but not on a schedule that aligns with their usage in this context.. And so we plan to work with our NOAA colleagues developing the oceanographic model being used to produce the bottom temperature projections in the coming months to understand the feasibility of producing forecasts that could be used in this way.

And additionally, the results that I've shared with you all today are based on a single year of tagging data and habitat preference predictions. Are limited to the end of April and early May. And we ultimately plan to increase the complexity of our model to allow for fitting the model to multiple tag deployments that have different deployment durations. And that's currently the limitation here. That's preventing us from considering multiple tag deployments.

That's why I'm focusing on the biggest one for mature female crab.

And by doing this, we can begin to account for interannual— with between-year variability in environmental dynamics and crab behavior, and also within-year variability.

And this improvement will allow for producing more robust predictions of habitat preferences during the times of year that are relevant to Bering Sea trawl fisheries. And Happy to take any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. See if there are any questions. Yes, Miss Gowan. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr. Hardison, for the presentation. It's really interesting work that can be directly applicable to our management of fisheries in Bristol Bay, so thank you for that.

Can you clarify if you're expanding this work to male Bristol Bay red king crab, and maybe you said that and I missed Yes, thank—. Through the chair, thank you, Ms. Gunn. Yes, I'm actually currently working with BSFRF to do just that. So the plan for the coming months is to develop projections of male red king crab density distribution in Bristol Bay for autumn 2026 and winter 2026.

Thank you. And, and one follow-up question. I know there's a separate project called Oceanography on Deck that's collecting bottom temperatures from various vessels from various sectors in the fleet around the Bering Sea. Is there an opportunity to use data like that coming in real time into your modeling?

Through the chair, yes, absolutely. I think that could be an interesting and valuable direction to explore. I think it would have potential.

Thank you. And Ms. Baker?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Hardison, for the presentation. I really appreciate you, you presenting this slide here, understanding what you said though about the limitations. Hopefully my first question is simple. I'm sure you said it, I just missed it.

The very top of the slide says that we could use this model to project preferred habitat distribution into late April or early May. Was that— was the starting point November? Is that what I heard you say earlier, roughly? What was it, the fall, the previous fall until late April, early— or early May, or did I misunderstand that? Through the Chair, Ms. Baker, thank you for the question.

Yes, that is correct. So assuming the interpretation of that projection into late April, early May would be for crab moving between the November to late April, early May period, if that makes sense. Thank you, great, I appreciate that. Again, I'm just really excited about the potential for this particular type of model and glad to hear you intend to work with, with NOAA folks maybe to see if progress can be made on that. My second question, hopefully— and I'm not looking at the slide again— you went through earlier the tags that were deployed and returned, and I just seem to remember there was a much higher return rate for the males than the female, or maybe not much, but a noticeably higher return rate.

Do you have any or success rate, sorry. Do you have any ideas about what that might be about? Yes, through the chair, thanks again for the question. I do not. That would be a good question for one of our biologists, Leah Zucker, who has led a lot of the, a lot of this work.

She's on the survey right right now. But yeah, sorry, I can't provide more clarity there.

Thank you, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. I didn't also hear— thank you for the presentation— hear you say how many of the years of tagging data contributed to this study. Was it all 8 years, like the 500 tags, Or was it something else?

Through the chair, Ms. Kimball, thank you for the question. This study specifically involves just 116 tags that were deployed on one deployment project.

Thank you. And I guess a follow-up then. It was helpful to see slide 18, and so your conclusions are really in warm years based on those 116 tags, you would, in warm years, you'd predict Bristol Bay red king crab moving further to the east inward, and in cold years maybe extending along the peninsula and in partial in the red king crab savings area? Is that what, is that what you're drawing you're drawing your conclusions from? That's right.

So, thanks for the question. Because we're fitting this model to a single year of data, when we are predicting in other years, we're assuming that the habitat preferences of migrating crab don't change from year to year. And so another way to think about these predictions is if we took those crabs from 2021 that we deployed with tags and drop them into 2018 or some other year, we would expect them, based on what we observed in 2021 and '22, to go into these areas that are shown on the maps here.

Thank you.

Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I guess it just kind of hit me that it was based on the one year. It looked like they were deployed from just a couple of areas, and I don't know enough about your sampling design to know if, if that is meaningful or not. If, if you looked at a broader distribution from where the tags originally deployed, if you would anticipate different results?

Yes, thank you for the question. That is a really good point to bring up, and I think that's a limitation, another limitation of this analysis is this was one of our earlier tag deployment projects, and so I think the emphasis was on deploying many tags, and the— ultimately, as the program has gone on, the distribution of tag deployment locations has expanded greatly. But yes, I'm not quite sure how the kind of narrow deployment, spatially narrow location of deployed tags would impact the outcome relative to if you were thinking about tags deployed on a broader area.

If I might add just a brief follow-up there, thank you, Sean. Through the chair, I think that the deployments of each of these years have been selected based on some of the information about what we're trying to accomplish. And most of these crabs have been tagged during the NOAA survey or some other mode where we've basically seized the opportunity. So, especially during the NOAA survey, the females don't show up everywhere. And if we're getting seeing onesie, twosie low samples, that would probably not be the place to deploy tags.

And then in places where the catches during the survey were more dense, the assumption would be that those are representative. And I think in only one of our summary evaluations have we seen sort of a scatter. In other words, if the tag that all go back in the water in one place show a scatter in where they're collected, then you would be hard-pressed to infer movement or in a unified movement. But since they generally have moved in a similar trajectory, not exactly, but similar trajectory, I think the, the information is useful. But I think Sean's important qualification of what this utility is based on right now, we're hoping that we build everything we can in and kind of create a more complete picture.

Okay, Shawn, I think they're good. I'm going to go on. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for your questions.

I'll continue on. I think I'm on slide 20 here. There's just a few more things to cover. One of them is is, you know, what can we do in the meantime? In the meantime is an important thing, especially when there's a stressed resource and low fishery, and a reality for the crab industry for sure.

So one of the things that we chose to do in response to the council, and we've talked about this a little bit already, was communicate what we have learned from our recent research and the updated information and began and continued to dialogue directly with the Pollock industry. So this slide just shows that, you know, we shared a memo late last year directly to APA and UCB and others in the Pollock fleet and proposed some simplified options. This was prior to some of Sean's work coming online, and I've just put this forward as a representation. It doesn't really show up well, but each of these is a— we, you know, like for Option 1, we said the best thing is probably, if possible, to stay out of the area. Option 2, stay out of the eastern half of the area.

Option 3, the, the 3 quartiles that are shown. And then Option 4 was to propose something that was outside the area, but in an adjacent and likely important area. And that was received. There was a discussion back and forth, and then the Pollock folks came up with some plans that they said, based on what we know and what we can do, here's our ideas. And those are the two maps that I think they will be reporting on here shortly as well.

But, um, I wanted to bring this forward because I think BSFRF is strongly supportive of this, and I'll offer a little more public comment about it when we get to that. But this is important, even though it's not a refined model, it's not based on all of our information, it may differ actually from, you know, what ultimately becomes a really good or more informed way to do this. This— we see this as a good starting point. Sean's utility was coming online during this, and one of the things that we were able to do was say, hey, Sean, can you take this information and evaluate it? Is it meaningful based on your spatial utility?

And his response was, yes, it was. So we saw this as a good thing.

And you'll hear more about this shortly.

Some additional things that we have been focused on and spending a lot of energy on to help with going faster on some of the important crab research, completing a PhD always takes time, but one of the things that my colleague Madison Heller Shipley has been working on is assessing a shortcut method for MSEs. She's, she's got a Baird Eye PhD that's supported by BearDyed Disaster Relief, and one of her primary focus points there is what do you get with a shortcut mode if you— if it takes 3 years to do an MSE to evaluate options, and then you could do a shortcut mode that takes a year, what do you lose? So she's zeroing in on some important results there. And related to that, we have a SnowCrab MSE that is just spinning up. It's been very important to focus on some of these things to help the industry understand, is there anything that we can do to be more flexible here?

Away from the council, but I know you guys are aware of it, the crab plan team, SSC, all the assessment authors, everybody who has been attentive to snow crab issues, their collapse, their recovery, and all the details that go with size at maturity, the varying things that are included for what is the industry target, maybe there's something different to do for the industry, and then how do you do that. So those are all things that are fed into the snow crab MSC at this point, and we'll be reporting more on that soon.

Our big field survey that is still online for this year, we don't anticipate being blocked by ice in August, the Apiliopod Waterfowl Trout Sampling Survey Number 1 is in process plans right now. There's a current RFP that's open for the crabbers. We anticipate that this will be underway this year. This is one that we had hoped to execute last year, but for a couple of reasons, we're not able to. So this is the general spatial and temporal plan.

You're seeing a kind of a core area of snow crab ground during the survey area that we're intent to go do. This one is not as "easy" as Bristol Bay. It's further out. The nearshore— or sorry, the nearest sampling grounds are more than 240 nautical miles away from Dutch Harbor. This is just to give you an idea of what we're doing.

What are our big questions we're trying to help answer here on this one? I won't spend a bunch of time, But of course, what's going on with the snow crab during its, during its response to the collapse? Is it actually recovering? Is it stabilizing? What are the dynamics?

So part of this whole plan here is to go out and increase some sampling, not just rely on the NOAA survey, but to do some additional things. So how do opilio catch rates and size compositions differ across different gear types with a little more high resolution pollution sampling in some particular areas. And then, of course, very importantly, how do we keep folks involved? Crab industry vessels and stakeholder input need to be built in, especially during this disaster relief period.

I won't spend a bunch of time, but I did include our, our primary objectives here. I would say we're always open to follow follow up on any of the questions, but these are the kinds of things that we're evaluating here. Increasing density, it's a more focused survey of specifically snow crab. And the one specific thing I will mention here, there's been an awful lot of industry focus and other management, management and research focus on hybrids. So this is one of the industry's opportunities to potentially help to evaluate evaluate not just changes in snow crab, including what do we see out there for big males and mature males that may be reflecting smaller than normal size, but also another way of sampling some hybrids.

There's an awful lot of other crab research that's going on. I've pulled this one up before. I'm zeroing in on the end, but I wanted to bring this one up. There was 6 additional additional special disaster relief projects that were funded under the King Crab/Snow Crab strategy, and these are those 6. One of them is the simulated pot loss project that we have a lead on, so I wanted to just briefly touch on that.

I think we received some requests recently to ask how's this going and what are we doing and what do we have underway. So just briefly, you can read the title here, but we're basically taking about 50 or 60 pots out into Bristol Bay. We're going to set them up as if they're fishing. The general plan is to let the industry go first so we're not interfering with the first burst of activity. We're hoping for an opening here in the fall, so that fishery opens October 15th, and we'd give it a couple weeks and then go out and start this project in the field.

So 50 or 60 pots. Primary focus points are to deploy satellite pop-up tags on the rock cord mechanisms. So that's a kind of a unique and novel way of seeing what the timing is of when that rock cord actually parts and releases. Then the tag would pop up and we'd get a date timestamp on that. Um, cameras— we're purchasing a number of high-definition programmable cameras, not for all 50 or 60 pots, but a subset to be able to document as these pots stay in the water as simulated lost gear, what kinds of crabs or other organisms show up in them over time.

So the camera work is a pretty important part. We want to know where these guys are all at. We don't want to turn our simulation into actual lost gear, so we have smart buoys that we're deploying also to help us mark where we are at, and we're intending to have crab charters help us with these. So these are another opportunity. We hope to have everything back in hand, nothing left in the water at the end of year one.

I would say there's a number of technical details. This is an equipment-heavy project, and we're going to be going out more than one time during the project to make sure things are working correctly and running as expected. The PIs on this project are myself and Corey Lesher from ABSC, and then one of my other partners at NRC, Kyle Antonellis, who's done quite a bit of derelict fishing gear work. We have several collaborators on this one, and we're looking forward to being able to report more on this one soon. Thank you, Mr. Goodman.

Um, we've got a question— or I've got a question, but go ahead, Ms. Kimball. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just what would you do with the results of this research? Is it anticipated you would then accommodate for that additional crab in the stock assessment, or we're gonna go pick up all the pots? Like, what are we doing with that?

Thank you for the question. Great question. Through the Chair, Ms. Kimball, I think our goals here are to provide some in situ information about what goes on in pots when they become lost. I think everybody knows crabs are looking for structure, so if there's an available piece of structure, they're probably going to go near it. There have been lots of lab tests about rock cord decay rates and what kinds of cords and escape mechanisms need to be implemented, but there's been very little in situ activity about how they actually work, so this would be one of those opportunities.

Additionally, I think this project, we had hoped to kind of pair it up with a little bit of a broader-footed collaboration. I think initially we had been thinking of proposing it along with a Mobile Gear component, a trawl partnership, but we couldn't pull that off. But I know that we have some plans here to extend that. Lost pots are an important safety risk for more than just trawlers, but we don't want to see lost pots out there. So I think if we learn from this one, this could very easily be paired with additional work that would, you know, extend into something like a census of how many gears out there on lost pots.

And what do— what do pots look like over time as they've been in the water? There's reports we've been collaborating with trawl industry partners about, you know, where they get it, what it looks like, exchanging pictures, exchanging extent of interactions with lost gear. So we definitely see this one as an important starting point to pair up with some of that. Thank you, Mr. Goodman. I'm really excited to see this project happening.

I, I think my question was along the same lines as Miss Kimball. So Um, are the, the primary function— well, it's, it seems like a long time for a camera to be in the water, a full year. So, um, was wondering about the viability of footage after a year. And I, I guess, uh, was the primary function of the camera to identify crab mortality associated with lost pots before the rock cord releases, or What would, what would be the primary function of that? Great question.

So these are a number of the details that, um, we hope to refine a bit with some pilot testing in the, um, probably within the next 6 weeks or so in Kodiak or somewhere else in Alaska with some short but focused testing on what, how do the cameras act. We've got programmed camera capability, so it currently a lot of cameras Those are our hydrostatic pressure triggers, so they turn on, and then when they, they turn off, it's because the battery died. Um, I don't think we're comfortable in any regard in deploying $250,000 of camera and then coming back to pick them up in a year. So we're going to be doing some early check-ins on the camera pods. Um, I don't believe that if, uh, they are malfunctioning in any manner, we would put them back out.

But if they're functioning like normal, we would probably clean them up and refresh them and put them back in. So, um, some of that camera work is, uh, there's some technical details that we're still uncertain about, but the general goal would be to periodically have a visual image of the activity within the pot. So of course, early, before the rock cord is gone, because these are going to be deployed as beta so we expect crabs to show up, we expect fish to show up. But then we also want to know what's going on. So if we get a satellite tag from one of the camera pots, then we know we've got some potential activity that would be new, like what's going on in a pot that has its escape mechanism technically intended to be functioning.

Do we see crabs coming in and out? And that's primarily what the cameras are for in that regard. I would quickly add that the other technical challenge that, um, we're considering single-lined pots versus maybe even long-lining these pots. After watching what the ice did this year, we would hate to have all of these go away because of ice.

Yes, Miss Gohan, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Goodman, for the presentation so far. I'm also very interested in seeing this research get underway and appreciate that it's responsive to the Council's research priorities on understanding fishing impacts on crab. It was also flagged by the Unobserved Fishing Mortality Workgroup from the Council, and then also the state's Bycatch Task Force as a research priority. So I appreciate this work.

Will you be able to estimate from this work footprint of pots and how they might drag as well on the bottom? Great question. I— my quick direct answer is yes, we hope to be able to do that. We have this project where there's going to be cameras in pots that will be hauled back, and we also are anticipating a little bit of other activity. We think that some of that could be done in our early testing here, and we know that's an important question.

About what is the— is it static bottom contact? Is there movement of these pots as they get retrieved, etc.? In terms of, you know, what does that mean in relative terms, I think it's still quite small. The number of pots that are out now in the recent fisheries, which have been unfortunately marked by, you know, season closures and limited quotas, the number of pot potlifts is dramatically lower than historically would be the case. I think during— since rationalization, if you added everything up, the number of potlifts in the fishery is probably on the order of 250,000 or 270,000 potlifts a year for everything.

And recently we've been like 40,000 to 50,000, maybe a little more than that, and in some years much less, like 20,000 or 30,000 potlifts. So just the sheer amount of gear in the water that's at risk of not being retrieved has greatly diminished recently. I'd say over the last 5 to 6 years, maybe a little longer than that. And then in terms of the footprint itself, um, we've done some preliminary calculations and reported on that at different points over the last few years too. But if you were to take sort of these seasonal averages and look at how many pots are out there And, um, what is that actual footprint on the bottom?

It's extremely small. It's about 1 square nautical mile if you had all the pots from all the seasons on the ground at the same time. So just in terms of the physical contact with the bottom, if it's just on the bottom sitting there, it's pretty small.

Okay, I think I'm zeroing in on it. I just have 3 more. This one is to just mention that we are, of course, looking at some habitat research as we go. We've supported some of this either directly or indirectly, and noting that it is mostly been focused so far on Bristol Bay red king crab on sort of the 2 major life history spots. One, the early life history and habitat evaluations, which we've We've been partnering with the state mostly, but others in using the cam sled to do some video work.

We're starting to help with some additional work that is focused on adult or later life history spots. One of those has been to advise on habitat research for projects that are in development right now. So we would be reporting more on some of our habitat research focus points here very soon.

My last slide of substance is a deep one, not to bring in a text-heavy slide up at almost 5:30 on a Sunday, but here you go. This is your 12 council priorities for the last 5 years. Everything that's in red, red is either directly or indirectly related to CRAB. These are not the exact, um, verbiage, but I did put a link there from the actuals. So if you want to go read the details, you can click that.

But the important point here is to make sure that we're continuing to do useful, relevant, and prioritized research as we go. There's almost each of these that are highlighted or bold. We have some strategy or approach that's underway right now. And I think that's all I have available for questions. Questions.

Thank you very much for the update. Yes, Miss Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is back on the snow crab pot survey. You had some red text at the top saying nymph survey year, year testing.

I'm wondering if that's to correlate with the survey modernization work. What is it there you're comparing with the nymph survey? Great question. Thank you. Through the chair, um, Miss Cohen, this one is directly related to what you just said.

So, you guys have heard from Dr. Foy and many others at NOAA that the Nymph survey is in transition as part of their strategy towards new gear, sampling methods, overall design, etc. And we know of one opportunity this year that we may be able to coordinate on that is dependent on their availability to do it, but they have something like an August 1st through August 10 window that they're going to be doing some of their own internal testing with their standard 8312 net versus a new version of their main sampling gear for Bering Sea. Our goal would be seize the moment here because we know that some of the federal capabilities are uncertain going forward in time, but if we can align with them and be on site with both pots and trawl sampling using our um, specific nephrops trawl. That's our intention. The reality is, in a really cold year, they may actually be precluded from doing that work because of necessity to go back into Bristol Bay and reto for the reproductive condition of females.

So there could be some interference here between objectives and choices made.

Thank you very much for your leadership and all this really critical work as well. Thank you again. Thanks for the opportunity.

Hey, um, Austin, are you going to be here tomorrow?

Are you going to be here tomorrow? Okay, we still have some cups to rearrange, so that's good.

Um, is— sorry, I'm getting— yeah, I'm Getting a lot of mileage out of that one. Um, do you know, is Susie here too? Okay, are you going to be here tomorrow? Okay, great. Um, I think we'll take your report in the morning and then the AP report.

Following the AP report, we'll take public testimony on D1. I would ask members of the public, if you're able to sign up tonight so we can, um, do some quick math in the morning as far as timing, um, would be very helpful. But, uh, we will close public testimony at the end of the AP report, technically. But, um, yeah, any help there would be much appreciated. So we'll see you tomorrow at 8 AM.

Thank you, everyone. Bye.