Unalaska, AK – The pollock quota is highly likely to decrease again for 2010 by at least 2,000 metric tons. Scientists presented data to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council's groundfish plan team Tuesday and the team set the allowable biological catch at 813,000 metric tons. Last year scientists predicted that the 2010 quota might go back up.

Alaska Fisheries Science Center director Doug DeMaster said that the population of 2006 year class fish was smaller than they expected.

"They thought female spawning biomass would go up to the order of 1.8 million tons and the estimate is more like 1.3 million tons. In part I think that's related to the year class that we had been following. The 2006 year class just didn't show up as strongly as we had anticipated with the models prior to getting this year's data."

Despite this, DeMaster said the pollock stock does show signs of improvement.

"The projection into 2011 is still positive. It looks like we've got a couple of good years of above-average recruitment in 2006 and 2008. So the stock appears to be showing positive signs of recruitment. That suggests that we should be back up to kind of our target level by 2012 in terms of pollock."

Fisheries biologist Jim Ianelli, who compiled and analyzed most of the data, said there are signs of an above-average abundance of fish hatched in 2008, but this is highly uncertain at this point.

The recommended allowable biological catch is based on data collected by fisheries observers and the 2009 summer bottom trawl and acoustic mid-water surveys. It is the upper limit for the possible quotas.

The actual quota will not be set until December's North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting.

Greenpeace is advocating for a more significant reduction in the quota - down to 413,000 metric tons. Two of the groundfish plan team members agreed with them.

Ianelli has said in previous interviews that the pollock population naturally fluctuates and that it rebounded from a much smaller population size in the 1980s when it was more heavily fished.

Pollock is the primary revenue generator for Unalaska and many Aleutian and CDQ communities and is the largest fishery by volume in the United States.