Catch Shares in Action: United States Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Non-Pollock (Amendment 80) Cooperative Program

• Main Authors: Jos Hill, Karly McIlwain
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Environmental Defense Fund 2013
• Subjects: Agriculture and Food; Animal Welfare; Community and Economic Development; Bering Sea; Alaska; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: https://issuelab.org/resources/22789/22789.pdf; https://issuelab.org/permalink/resource/22789

The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) Non-Pollock (Amendment 80) Cooperative Program was one of the first catch share programs designed and implemented to manage fishing interactions with a non-target species. The goals of the program were largely focused on reducing bycatch to enable the fleet to achieve higher retention of groundfish resources. In this program, participants were incentivized to form Cooperatives to receive exclusive access privileges. Key design elements for this program include eligibility requirements, government-approved Cooperative formation, concentration caps, trading restrictions and sideboards, which are catch limits that restrict the transfer of excess fishing capacity to other fisheries not managed under catch shares.