André Punt, Margaret Siple and Tessa Francis
October 15th, 2019 2:30 PM (PST): FSH 213

Progress on evaluating approaches for determining whether bycatch levels of marine mammals are sustainable

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which administers the portions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) pertaining to cetaceans and most pinnipeds, evaluates the status of stocks and issues regulations for reducing incidental take (bycatch) in US commercial fisheries. Within this regulatory framework, the Potential Biological Removal (PBR) level is a reference point for managing bycatch. NMFS regulations implementing the Fish and Fish Product Import Provisions of the MMPA require that imported fish and fish products be evaluated with respect to US standards. The regulations require foreign fisheries that export fish and fish products to the US, and are identified by NOAA as having fisheries that may incur marine mammal bycatch, to adhere to bycatch monitoring and mitigation standards “comparable” to those applied to US fisheries. An Ocean Modeling Forum working group has been established to develop a set of tools to aid countries in assessing marine mammal stocks, estimating bycatch, calculating bycatch limits, and reducing total bycatch to comply with the US marine mammal bycatch standards. As part of this effort, modelling frameworks have been developed to (a) examine the performance of the PBR approach in situations that are more broad than those used in its original formulation, (b) explore how well PBR-based management will perform for the case of harbor porpoises, harbor seals and gray seals in the Icelandic bottom gillnet fishery, and (c) estimate population trajectories for South American sea lions and fur seals in the trawl and purse seine fisheries for small pelagics off Chile, given uncertainties in bycatch levels and population size. This think tank will outline progress on each of these modelling efforts.