On Thursday, the two councils that control halibut fishing in the Bering Sea met to address a thorny debate over bycatch.

The International Pacific Halibut Commission -- which sets catch limits in waters stretching from Canada to the Pribilof Islands -- stopped into Seattle for a joint session with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Together, the groups looked at options for counting and cutting back on the halibut that trawlers and catcher-processors scoop up while pursuing other species.

Diana Evans is a staff member for the North Pacific council. She introduced the first draft of a plan to lower the official cap on bycatch.

"The system in place for determining catch limits for halibut's led to disproportionate reductions to the halibut fishery versus the proportion of the removal in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands from groundfish fishery bycatch," Evans said. "That’s recognized by the council in putting forth this action to look at [prohibited species] limits."

Staff members tried to look at the impacts of cutting those limits by anywhere from 10 to 35 percent.

But David Boyse, a halibut commissioner from Canada, said that the analysis didn’t feel complete.

"I don’t think a model like this can put a price on self-esteem, self-sufficiency," Boyse said. "You can’t model that. But that’s what it looked to me. That was the cutoff we were at -- the cusp or the tipping point we were about to go over."

This winter, scientists recommended that 70 percent less halibut be taken out of the central Bering Sea. Fishermen were outraged. The North Pacific council was asked to take emergency action on bycatch -- but the measure failed.

In the end, Boyse said the halibut group decided not to go ahead with cuts.

"It was easy for us to make the decision -- maybe only on a one-year basis -- hoping that the bycatch goes down, to provide this minimum amount of fish for those communities," Boyse said.

More than two dozen halibut fishermen who work around the state stepped up to make comments, along with representatives from the Pribilofs.

Simeon Swetzof, Jr. spoke on behalf of St. Paul's tribal government. He said the council needed to go further and cut the bycatch limit by a bigger margin.

"If we really want to get real about this, it’s got to be at 50 percent," Swetzof said. "Because if it’s not, we’re not going to see the change that we want to see — that we need to see.

Besides the cap, the North Pacific council is also considering an an experimental program to sort halibut bycatch on-deck and get viable fish back in the water faster.

The council will be looking at both proposals during their session on Friday. But they're not expected to take final action until June.