Members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council are planning to transition back to in-person meetings in October.
The council’s October and December meetings are scheduled to be held at the Anchorage Hilton Hotel. Final action on the Bering Sea/ Aleutian Islands Pacific Cod catcher vessel trawl cooperative program is on the agenda for the October meeting.
The draft schedule for both meetings is online at https://www.npfmc.org/3meeting/
During the staff tasking section of the council’s virtual meeting which concluded in mid-June, the council decided that all plan team and committee meetings would be held virtually through September, and that the advisory panel and the scientific and statistics committee would also meet virtually for the October meeting.
Council members said they supported this phased-in approach to a return to in-person meetings in order to prioritize staff resources for piloting additional remote participation options as part of the return to in-person meetings, particularly to allow remote testimony and in the future to broadcast advisory panel and SSC meetings when they occur in-person.
