The International Pacific Halibut Commission is asking commercial longline vessel owners interested in participating in the 2021 Fishery-Independent Setline Survey to tender their request to participate by the Jan. 31 deadline.
The survey, to be conducted between May 29 and Aug. 31, will cover 25 charter regions within the IPHC Convention Area, with a standard grid of stations from Oregon to the northern Bering Sea, including the Aleutian Islands. It involves the collection of standardized data for use in the Pacific halibut stock assessment. The data is used to study aspects of the resource such as growth, distribution, biomass, age composition, sexual maturity, and relative abundance of other species. Legal-sized Pacific halibut and Pacific halibut less than 32 inches in length that have been sampled, as well as incidentally caught bycatch fish that would die upon release will be retained, sampled for biological data and sold by the PIHC to offset FISS expenses.
Only vessels with captains and crews that have Pacific halibut fishing experience within the last five years will be considered. The IPHC may require an inspection of the vessels prior to awarding the charter.
These vessels need not be licensed for Pacific halibut fishing in Canada or the United States to be eligible. The IPHC is not restricted as to nationality of the vessels it charters for this survey as long as customs and immigration regulations are followed. Interested parties should submit tenders based on the 2021 IPHC Fishery-Independent Setline Survey vessel tender specifications. The tender specifications and vessel tender forms may be downloaded directly from the IPHC website: https://www.iphc.int/management/science-and-research/fishery-independent-setline-survey-fiss/62-fiss-vessel-recruiting.