NOAA Fisheries

Saving fish stocks and ensuring a sustainable seafood supply

By Craig Collins

By 2000, the outlook for some groundfish along the U.S. West Coast – and for the fishers who harvested them with trawl nets for seafood – was grim. Several of the more than 90 types of groundfish inhabiting the waters along the continental shelf off Washington, Oregon, and California were near collapse. The population of one species, the bocaccio, once a staple of California fish markets, had decreased by 95 percent. Two other species, canary rockfish and yelloweye rockfish, had lost 92 percent of their original numbers.

Illustration of a boccacio, once severely overfished but now recovered in numbers.

NOAA Fisheries

“Groundfish” is a name used broadly to describe dozens of species that live on or near the Pacific seafloor and mature slowly – bocaccio don’t begin reproducing until they are 5 years old, and can live to be 50. As several West Coast species began to dwindle in the 1990s, fisheries scientists estimated it would take decades – for a couple of species, a century or more – to recover, even if commercial fishing were banned outright.

Under federal law, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) is responsible for scientifically monitoring, regionally managing, and legally enforcing the sustainability of wild U.S. fish stocks. This effort is guided by six fisheries science centers, which advise the decision-making of eight regional fishery management councils.

A yelloweye rockfish.

With several species of rockfish in trouble, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a group of federal, state, tribal, and regional stakeholders that includes representatives from both the commercial and recreational fishing industries and environmental groups – took action and collaborated on the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan, which would revive the groundfish industry while permanently protecting thousands of square miles of reefs that benefited the overfished species.

Under the plan, some sections of the ocean were closed off entirely. In other areas, catch limits were severely reduced. As populations gained in number – in many cases, much more quickly than fisheries scientists had anticipated – the council switched to an innovative new system of managing the fishery in 2011: catch shares, in which each boat, rather than competing with other boats to catch the largest chunk of a species quota, is assigned its own share of the total catch beforehand.

The recovery of Pacific groundfish species has been an astonishing success story. By the end of 2019, all but two of the 10 overfished species had completely rebuilt their populations, decades ahead of schedule, and the council established higher catch limits for bocaccio, canary rockfish (more than double the original allowable catch), and Pacific Ocean perch (more than tenfold) that were expected to boost fishing income in coastal communities by $60 million. In January of 2020, regulators reopened an area the size of Rhode Island off the Oregon and California coasts to groundfish trawling.

Eliminating overfishing and rebuilding stocks adds value to the U.S. economy – in 2017, for example, U.S. fisheries generated $244.1 billion in sales and added another $110.7 billion in added value (i.e., jobs, license sales, and other associated benefits). It also ensures the stability of our nation’s seafood supply while protecting the health of marine habitats. In the past 20 years, NOAA Fisheries’ collaborative approach to fisheries management – involving input from the industry, environmentalists, and policymakers – has reduced the number of overfished stocks and rebuilt a total of 47 species populations – creating more opportunities for commercial and recreational fishers and more food for American consumers.