2014 Assessment Of The Northern Rock Sole Stock In The Bering Sea And Aleutian Islands
March 04, 2014
Northern rock sole (Lepidopsetta polyxystra n. sp.) are distributed primarily on the eastern Bering Sea continental shelf and in much lesser amounts in the Aleutian Islands region. Two species of rock sole are known to occur in the North Pacific Ocean, a northern rock sole (L. polyxystra) and a southern rock sole (L. bilineata) (Orr and Matarese 2000). These species have an overlapping distribution in the Gulf of Alaska, but the northern species comprise the majority of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands populations where they are managed as a single stock.
Centers of abundance for rock soles occur off the Kamchatka Peninsula (Shubnikov and Lisovenko 1964), British Columbia (Forrester and Thompson 1969), the central Gulf of Alaska, and in the southeastern Bering Sea (Alton and Sample 1975). Adults exhibit a benthic lifestyle and seem to occupy separate winter (spawning) and summertime feeding distributions on the southeastern Bering Sea continental shelf. Northern rock sole spawn during the winter-early spring period of December-March.
Rock sole catches increased from an average of 7,000 t annually from 1963-69 to 30,000 t from 1970- 1975. Catches (t) since implementation of the MFCMA in 1977 are shown in Table 8.1, with catch data for 1980-88 separated into catches by non-U.S. fisheries, joint venture operations and Domestic Annual Processing catches (where available). Prior to 1987, the classification of rock sole in the "other flatfish" management category prevented reliable estimates of DAP catch. Catches from 1989-2014 (domestic only) have averaged 50,200 t annually, well below ABC values. The size composition of the 2014 catch from observer sampling, by sex and management area, are shown in Figure 8.1 and the locations of the 2014 catch by month through September are shown in Figure 8.3.
The management of the northern rock sole fishery changed significantly in 2008 with the implementation of Amendment 80 to the BSAI Fisheries Management Plan. The Amendment directly allocated fishery resources among BSAI trawl harvesters in consideration of their historic harvest patterns and future harvest needs in order to improve retention and utilization of fishery resources by the non-AFA trawl catcher/processor fleet. This was accomplished by extending the groundfish retention standards to all H&G vessels and also by providing the ability to form cooperatives within the newly formed Amendment 80 sector. In addition, Amendment 80 also mandated additional monitoring requirements which included observer coverage on all hauls, motion-compensating scales for weighing samples, flow scales to obtain accurate catch weight estimates for the entire catch, with the added stipulation of no mixing of hauls and no on-deck sorting.
Northern rock sole are important as the target of a high value roe fishery occurring in February and March which accounted for 63% of the annual catch in 2014 (Fig 8.2). About 67% of the 2014 catch came from management area 509 with the rest from areas 513, 514, 516, 517 and 521 (Fig 8.2). The 2014 catch is estimated at 52,250 t based on the Alaska regional office estimate through mid September projected forward to the end of the year by applying the catch rates from the previous 5 weeks for September through December. The projected catch is 26% of the 2014 ABC of 203,800 t and 61% of the 85,000 t TAC. Thus, rock sole remain lightly harvested in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. The fishery in the past has been affected by seasonal and annual closures to prevent exceeding halibut bycatch allowances specified for the trawl rock sole, flathead sole, and “other flatfish” fishery category by vessels participating in this sector in the BSAI. There were no closures in 2014.