Advancing Model-Based Essential Fish Habitat Descriptions for North Pacific Species in the Bering Sea
December 01, 2022
The Final Environmental Impact Statement for EFH Identification and Conservation in
Alaska defines EFH as the area inhabited by 95% of a species’ population (NMFS 2005). Our
habitat-based modeling approach characterizes EFH for life stages of species within North
Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) Fishery Management Plans (FMPs) as the area
circumscribing the top 95% of the SDM-predicted abundance.
Essential fish habitat is defined as those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity (50 CFR 600.10). EFH regulations require that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and fishery management councils (Councils) describe and identify EFH for managed species and minimize to the extent practicable the adverse effects of anthropogenic activities (e.g., fishing, mineral and oil extraction, coastal development). As part of this requirement, EFH text descriptions and maps (EFH component 1, descriptions and identification) are necessary for each life stage of species in an FMP (50 CFR 600.815(a)(1)) with an overarching consideration that the science related to this effort meets the standards of best available science (NMFS National Standard 2 – Scientific Information 50 CFR 600.315). There are two separate but complementary FMPs for managing groundfishes2 and crabs3 in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) management area.
The Councils and NMFS must also periodically review the EFH components of FMPs and revise or amend these components with new information at least every 5 years (50 CFR 600.815(a)(10)). In the 2017 EFH 5-year Review, habitat-based SDMs incorporating Level 1 and 2 EFH information were developed for 33 FMP species and their life stages in the eastern Bering Sea (EBS; Laman et al. 2017, 2018). That project, along with related projects in the Aleutian Islands (Turner et al. 2017) and Gulf of Alaska (Rooney et al. 2018), replaced qualitative EFH Level 1 maps based on adult distributions (Fisheries Leadership and Sustainability Forum 2016; Simpson et al. 2017) with SDM-based estimates for individual life stages, substantially refining Alaska groundfish and crab EFH designation and, in many cases, producing EFH Level 2 information for the first time. The EFH descriptions and maps produced for the 2017 EFH 5-year Review were approved by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce as part of the EFH Omnibus Amendment package (83 FR 31340, July 5, 2018) to revise the FMPs