Council advances preliminary preferred alternatives for 2027–28 groundfish management

The Pacific Fishery Management Council at its April meeting advanced preliminary preferred alternatives (PPAs) for 2027–28 groundfish management measures after receiving analyses from the Groundfish Management Team (GMT) and state fishery agencies. Todd Phillips, council staff, opened the agenda item by telling the council, “Before us we have agenda item C7 which is preliminary preferred management measured alternatives for 2027–28 fisheries,” and outlined the council’s tasks, including adopting interim FPAs and PPAs for harvest specifications and management measures.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said it supports removing rebuilding plan language for California quillback and yelloweye rockfish from the Fishery Management Plan given recent rebuild declarations, and recommended specific regulatory clarifications. “CDFW supports option two as the PPA to remove the 150‑fathom non‑trawl rockfish conservation area or RCA boundary line around Lawson and Noll,” Christina Lingve said in the CDFW report, urging clearer regulatory text to reduce stakeholder confusion and enforcement challenges.

Oregon and Washington fishery agencies delivered similar, location‑specific recommendations. Lynn Mattis (ODFW) and Heather Hall (WDFW) both described state analyses that favor options preserving industry access while keeping accountability measures in place. WDFW presented alternate bag‑limit and depth dates and noted potential approaches to limited retention for yelloweye if the stock remains rebuilt.

GMT staff provided the technical backbone for the council’s choices, recommending specific off‑the‑top deductions for research, IOA and tribal set‑asides, harvest guidelines resulting from the recommended deductions, and PPAs for allocation methodology (for example, recommending an option maintaining industry‑preferred allocation structures for slope rockfish south of 40°10′). The GMT also recommended retaining several seasonal and subbag options while urging inseason monitoring and accountability measures to manage model uncertainty.

Why it matters: the council is balancing a mix of rebuild determinations, stakeholder access, and model uncertainty. Several speakers emphasized that some recreational season projections contain high uncertainty and that new inseason tools — recreational annual catch targets and other accountability measures — will be needed to respond rapidly if catches begin to exceed projections.

What’s next: the council asked staff and advisory bodies to continue refining the PPAs and return with draft regulatory language and any needed procedural amendments so members can adopt final measures at the next rulemaking steps. GMT staff will finalize tables and harvest guideline numbers for council action.

Attribution: quotes and technical summaries in this article derive from council staff and agency reports delivered at the meeting. Council and agency presenters included Todd Phillips (council staff) and Christina Lingve (California Department of Fish and Wildlife).