West Coast Groundfish
Essential Fish Habitat

Background

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) is currently reviewing Groundfish Essential Fish Habitat Conservation Areas (EFHCA) and the Trawl Rockfish Conservation Area (RCA) off the West Coast of the United States. The Council is evaluating alternatives that include areas to be closed to commercial trawl fishing, as well as currently closed areas to be reopened. These areas are referred to as polygons.

Each EFH alternative or set of polygons, other than Alternative 2.b. (Priority Habitats in the trawl RCA), is labeled according to the group that proposed the areas for consideration. The EFH Alternatives are:

• Collaborative: Alternative 1.b.
• Oceana et al: Alternative 1.c.
• Priority Hab: Alternative 2.b. Priority habitats for groundfish within the trawl RCA

Other EFH proposals were submitted to the Council, but are not being analyzed as stand-alone alternatives. They are included here to inform the Council's decision-making process. They include:

• FMA: Fishermen's Marketing Association
• GFNMS: Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary
• Greenpeace
• MBNMS: Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
• MCI: Marine Conservation Institute
• None: Polygons that were identified byt the Collaborative group, but were not included in their final proposal

During this evaluation, the Council will consider the importance of the habitat to groundfish (i.e., rockfish, flatfish) and other environmental considerations, as well as the economic impacts and benefits to the fishing and associated businesses and communities before identifying their preferred configuration of EFHCAs.

In addition to EFHCA changes, the Council is considering modifications to the trawl RCA, ranging from status quo, to complete removal, to retaining portions that would still be closed to bottom trawling, for the purposes of species conservation. To view the current trawl RCA boundaries, and other reference layers, hover over the layers icon in the upper right of the map and select the layer's checkbox.

How to Use this Tool

This tool allows a user to select a custom set of EFHCA alternative polygons and see a summary of the metrics for their set.

• Hover over a polygon to view its metrics
• Click a polygon on the map to add or remove it from the selection
• Zoom to a polygon by entering its name in the search box
• Toggle a checkbox in the right panel to draw or remove an alternative's or proposal's polygons from the map
• Click the icon next to an alternative or proposal to select all of its polygons
• Click the icon next to an alternative or proposal to unselect all of its polygons
• View the count of selected polygons out of the total polygons for each proposal or alternative next to its name
• Hover over the layers icon in the upper right of the map to select additional layers to draw on the map
• View summary metrics for all selected polygons in the Summary Tab
• View and download a table of individual metrics for selected polygons in the Polygons Tab

To avoid double-counting in the summary metrics, if you select a polygon that overlaps a current selection, the overlapping polygon will be removed from the selection.

For the best experience, use the Chrome browser. Other browsers have not been thoroughly tested.

Credits

The Council, NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), scientists, tribes, fishermen, and non-governmental organizations laid the analytical groundwork for this review through a multi-year synthesis of new data sets and analyses. Results of the Groundfish Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) Review are available through the EFH Catalog as well as the EFH Viewer.

The EFH/RCA Project Team has produced an analytical report which is the basis for the metrics in this tool.

Web Development by Allison Bailey, Sound GIS