There will be no changes to the Atlantic halibut fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (4RST) for the 2020/21 season, with the TAC set the same as last year at 1,492 tonnes for the one-year period from May 15, 2020 to May 14, 2021.
Out of that, a 60-tonne allocation has been set aside under Section 10 of the Fisheries Act to support the industry/Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) longline survey and tagging project that covers the entire Gulf of St. Lawrence and its estuary from 20 metres to 50 metres and from 100 metres to 300 metres, said DFO spokesman Benoit Mayrand.
“The longline survey and tagging project have been in place since 2017,” he said. “It is carried out by approximately 25 vessels from fishing industries from Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.”
Results from the longline survey and tagging collaboration between DFO and industry are expected to contribute to the next Atlantic halibut stock assessment planned for 2021.
According to the last stock assessment conducted in 2018, “the short and medium-term outlooks for the Atlantic halibut stock of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence is positive,” it states, with Atlantic halibut landings “increasing since the early 2000s and have reached the highest values since 1960.”
However, the good news doesn’t stop there.
The abundance of Atlantic halibut pre-recruits (65 to 85 cm) as well as commercial sizes (greater than 85 cm) “estimated by the scientific surveys with bottom trawls in 2017 and 2018 (are) among the highest values of the historical series,” reads the assessment report.
In addition, “potential winter reproductive areas for Atlantic halibut have been located at depths greater than 300 m in the Gulf’s channels.”
Preliminary results from the ecosystemic survey in August 2019 in the estuary and northern Gulf of St. Lawrence indicate that “the abundance and biomass of Atlantic halibut has remained above the series average during the past six years.”
In 2019/20, 561 vessels participated in the Atlantic halibut fishery in the Gulf, said Mayrand, with preliminary total landings of 266.8 tonnes.
For the 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 management years, the Gulf Atlantic halibut TAC was 1,297 tonnes.
The Gulf halibut quota is distributed based on a sharing formula announced in 2016 following the review of the inshore fixed-gear fleet shares.
The inshore fixed-gear fleet sector receives a transfer of 92.5 per cent (356 tonnes) of the mobile gear fleets’ allocation, which is distributed equally between the eight inshore fixed-gear fleets involved in the directed Atlantic halibut fishery.
