Council adopts Cordell Bank revisions to reduce regulatory complexity, retains 100-fathom restriction to limit large-footrope trawl

The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted on Saturday to adopt a final preferred alternative to revise management of the Cordell Bank area that reduces overlapping regulations, reconfigures boundaries to simplify compliance, and preserves a 100-fathom coordinate ring to prevent large-footrope trawl gear.

Council staff described the action as deregulatory and narrowly sized: the preferred alternative would remove the Cordell Bank Groundfish Conservation Area (GCA), implement a groundfish exclusion area (GEA) overlapping the existing bottom-contact essential fish habitat conservation area (EFHCA), and reopen small amounts of seafloor to bottom trawling and nontrawl fishing under revised, simplified rules. Staff said the change would open roughly 10.2 square miles to bottom trawling and 40.1 square miles to nontrawl gears but would…