North Pacific Fisheries Commission reschedules meeting date to March 2023

The North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) held a special meeting on 18 October to reschedule the Seventh Annual Session of the Commission of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) after postponement caused by complications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The NPFC's subsidiary bodies, such as administrative and scientific committees, will now meet 18 to 25 March, 2023 in Japan, and the commission itself will meet from 23 to 25 March.

The meeting was originally planned for 28 to 30 March, 2022, but was postponed after diplomatic tensions arose in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. Despite the meeting's delay, the commission's scientific work has continued and its experts continue to meet virtually, with recent and upcoming meetings taking place to review Pacific saury and chub mackerel stocks.

The NPFC is the regional fishery management organization covering most fishing in the open seas of the north Pacific. It recognizes eight species as regulatory priorities: North Pacific armorhead (Pentaceros wheeleri), splendid alfonsino (Beryx splendens), Pacific saury (Cololabis saira), neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii), Japanese flying squid (Todarodes pacificus), chub mackerel (Scomber japonicas), blue (spotted) mackerel (Scomber australasicus), and Japanese sardine (Sardinops melanostictus).

The commission's staff continues to work on data preparation to update the stock assessment of Pacific saury using a provisional base model. Age-structured models are under development to contribute to a stock assessment and a management strategy evaluation (MSE) process. And input from the NPFC Small Scientific Committee for Pacific Saury was used to develop and evaluate an interim harvest control rule (HCR) for the management of Pacific saury fisheries, according to the organization.

Quotas on Pacific saury have been agreed and allocated at the NPFC since 2018, but Japan’s actual catch has been consistently lower than its quota limit, despite sharply declining stocks. The NPFC is still working to implement quotas based on accurate stock assessments and models.

The NPFC's Small Working Group on Management Strategy Evaluation for Pacific Saury members recently defined candidate management objectives and reference points. In its recent meeting, several options for HCRs and a simulation platform to evaluate HCRs were discussed, as well as an implementation schedule drafted to aim setting a 2024 HCR.

The NPFC Technical Working Group on Chub Mackerel Stock Assessment met to determine a stock assessment model for chub mackerel. It developed an operating model to test five candidate stock assessment models, and members agreed to complete the evaluations of the model in 2023. Members have reviewed data and abundance indices to be used for stock assessment of the chub mackerel fishery.

Photo courtesy of Princess_Anmitsu/Shutterstock