Splitting pollock.

• Position: North Pacific Fishery Management Council divides up the pollock and cod fisheries between onshore and offshore processing

Splitting Pollock. It was the issue that split apart -- literally -- the North Pacific groundfish industry. After two years of analysis, at least $2 million dollars in socioeconomic research and hours of debate, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in June divided up the pollock and cod fisheries in the North Pacific between onshore and offshore processors.

The onshore/offshore split is the biggest allocation decision the fisheries management council has made since it was established by the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act. Alaska pollock is the largest commercial fishery in the nation -- it's the largest finfish resource in the world -- and the decision to split the fishery in half affected more fish than any management move made in U.S. history.

The onshore/offshore scheme would reserve a certain percentage of annual catches of Alaska pollock and Pacific cod for the exclusive use of boats delivering to shore-based fish processors. Under the new rules, each processing ship or catcher-processor must declare at the beginning of each year which component it will participate in for that year -- onshore or offshore.

Fishing boats may deliver to any processor, on shore or at sea. A catcher/processor vessel that chooses the onshore component may not process its catch, at sea that year, and must choose one location to process each species of fish.

The onshore/offshore allocations are set differently for the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands area. The council's proposed allocations:

...