Big hike in catch limits:

Discovery

The US government is going ahead with sharply higher catch limits next year for West Coast groundfish, citing a rebound in bottom-dwelling stocks once so depleted by over-fishing that commercial harvests were virtually halted 20 years ago.

The surprisingly swift recovery of groundfish – a classification that includes dozens of species of rockfish, sole, flounder and sablefish – off the US Pacific coast is testament to the success of drastic fishing restrictions imposed in 2000, officials said.

“The fish proved that, given the chance, they could come back in a big way,” said West Coast fisheries chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The relaxed rules, proposed in September, were given final approval on Wednesday by the NOAA Fisheries agency and go into effect in January.

The dramatically higher quotas for several key species, including yelloweye rockfish, Pacific Ocean perch and bocaccio, are expected to boost fishing income by $60 million next year for coastal communities of California, Oregon and Washington state, NOAA said.

Higher limits for California scorpionfish, popular with sport anglers, will likewise help generate 200,000 additional recreational fishing trips each year in Southern California, according to the agency.

West Coast consumers could notice a difference, too, with a greater variety of regionally caught fish on the menus of restaurants and available in the seafood cases of their grocers, industry officials said.

But Pacific rockfish producers, for example, will have to reassert themselves in the market.

“Processors and distributors have lost a lot of shelf space to imported fish such as tilapia and swai over the past couple of decades,” said Susan Chambers, deputy director of the Seafood Processors Association.

Catch limits are not going up for all groundfish but higher quotas on some key species, such as yelloweye rockfish, will allow improved access to others. (RTRS)