Hawaii FEP - Western Pacific Fishery Council

As there is a moratorium on the seamount groundfish fishery, there is no bycatch or bycatchmortality associated with the fishery.Five types of non-regulatory measures aimed at reducing bycatch and bycatch mortality, andimproving bycatch reporting are also being implemented. They include: 1) outreach to fishermenand engagement of fishermen in management, including research and monitoring activities, toincrease awareness of bycatch issues and to aid in development of bycatch reduction methods; 2)research into fishing gear and method modifications to reduce bycatch quantity and mortality; 3)research into the development of markets for discard species; 4) improvement of data collectionand analysis systems to better quantify bycatch and 5) outreach and training of fishermen inmethods to reduce baraotrauma in fish that are to be released.To reduce the number and impact of potential protected species interactions in the NWHIbottomfish fishery, primary and relief operators (captains) in the NWHI limited access programare required to complete a one-time protected species workshop.5.3.7 Application of National Standard 1MSY Control RuleBiological and fishery data are poor for all bottomfish species in Hawaii. Generally, data areonly available on commercial landings by species and catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) for themulti-species complexes as a whole. At this time, it is not possible to partition these effortmeasures among the various bottomfish MUS for any fishery except the MHI, where effort dataare available for the four major species caught.The overfishing criteria and control rules are applied to individual species within the multispeciesstock whenever possible. When this is not possible, they are based on an indicatorspecies for the multi-species stock. It is important to recognize that individual species areaffected differently based on this type of control rule, and it is important that for any givenspecies fishing mortality does not exceed a level that would lead to its required protection underthe Endangered Species Act (ESA). For the seamount groundfish stocks, armorhead serves as theindicator species. No indicator species are used for the four bottomfish multi-species stockcomplexes (American Samoa, CNMI, Guam and Hawaii). Instead, the control rules are appliedto each of the four stock complexes as a whole. 21The MSY control rule is used as the MFMT. The MFMT and MSST are specified based on therecommendations of Restrepo et al. (1998) and both are dependent on the natural mortality rate(M). The range of M among species within a stock complex is taken into consideration whenestimating and choosing the M to be used for the purpose of computing the reference pointvalues.21 The National Standards Guidelines allow overfishing of “other” components in a mixed stock complex if (1) longtermbenefits to the nation are obtained, (2) similar benefits cannot be obtained by modification of the fishery toprevent the overfishing, and (3) the results will not necessitate ESA protection of any stock component orecologically significant unit.143