Pacific Fishery Management Council directs staff to prioritize sardine stock‑structure review and related harvest‑rule inputs

The Pacific Fishery Management Council on Tuesday voted to adopt a prioritized list of science and management topics for coastal pelagic species, placing Pacific sardine stock structure first and directing staff to address associated harvest‑control‑rule inputs together.

The council acted after receiving reports from the Coastal Pelagic Species Management Team (CPSMT), the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) and advisory bodies that recommended treating stock definition, EMSY and the distribution term as a single package because the three items are interdependent.

"This should be viewed as informational, and the CPSMT does not support its use for any management purposes in 2025 Pacific sardine fishing year," said Greg Krzykowski while presenting the CPSMT summary on historical landings and retrospective subpopulation attribution methods. Krzykowski and other scientists described use of a habitat model that attributes landings to northern or southern sardine subpopulations after the season and said the team recommends further analysis before opening any in‑season attribution for management.

Public commenters and industry representatives urged faster fixes. Jeff Chester of Oceana told the council that adding the southern sardine subpopulation to the fishery management plan and assigning it a separate annual catch limit would be the clearest route to protect southern catches from being counted against the northern rebuilding plan. “We would be very concerned with attempts to deal with it here in the near term,” Chester said, urging the work be done as part of the G5 agenda item.

Several industry speakers and council members emphasized the operational impacts of the current in‑season accounting, and some suggested contingency or midseason checks if fishery landings approach the triggers in the current rebuilding plan. Council member Corey Ridings, sponsor of the council motion, said the intent was to produce a focused set of alternatives for council consideration and to sequence work so that stock definitions would inform subsequent EMSY and distribution analyses.

The motion adopted by the council directs staff and advisory bodies to: (1) review and adopt the list of CPS science and management topics in the staff white paper (Attachment 1 to G5); (2) recommend near‑term priorities and sequencing, with Pacific sardine stock structure set as the top priority and EMSY and the distribution term packaged for joint analysis; and (3) consider a recurring process (biennial review) to revisit priorities. The motion passed unanimously.

The council was explicit that any change to the CPS Fishery Management Plan stock definitions could require amendments to assessments, harvest control rules and the plan itself; staff said those downstream implications would be covered in any future analyses. SST and CPSMT staff noted the science center has published recent reassessments and genetic work that make stock‑definition an active scientific question.

Next steps: staff will prepare analysis options and scheduling guidance for workload planning; the council intends to consider specific assessment and amendment timelines at future meetings.