See what we get. 10% reduction keep
Same regs. Never ever will you get a calm season like we did. And two big lodges closed means 30,000Lbs savings alone. Nevermind for amazing calm season. I think we can do same regs, April opening and will get full season. Pressure will reduce considering two years of a joke regs and less people travelling here.
Based on the IPHC's current recommendation, the 2020 Recreational TAC would decrease by 150,763 pounds.
One hope we have is the IPHC is looking at the impact of US by-catch mortalities. Canada has long disputed what AK is removing in by-catch and lobbied the IPHC to "credit back" (my simple version) to Canada to account for the disputed by-catch impacts to Canada from the US AK fishers. If that is accepted, it could possibly mitigate our situation. That could look like around 400,000 "credited back" to Canada which if that happens our Rec TAC might look a little better with a decrease of 90,000 + pounds.
So the range is something like 90,000 to 150,000 less for 2020 should everything work out.
So the choices we would need to make, with essentially 5 calendar days or 3 work days between the IPHC decision and the SFAB Main Board meeting could very likely require some form of amendment to the regs choices we went with in 2019, or if we simply "rolled over", then that essentially results in an early closure as there would not be enough TAC to run a full March to December season. My personal preference is to "roll over" the 2019 regulation with either a late start (May or June) or an early closure (August or September). What is the fairest approach if we have to chop back the season length? Very difficult indeed, as every area has distinctly unique needs. One possible approach could be to look at picking those months with the highest overall halibut catch historically as a proxy for when people prefer to catch halibut.
My hope is our Canadian Conference Board and Canadian IHPC Commissioners are able to find a way to mitigate the TAC reductions which appear all but inevitable.
Here's a description of how the IPHC stock assessment, area apportionments, and ultimately how the Fishery Constant Exploitation Yield (FCEY) is calculated. I have modified a document the IPHC published adding in a few descriptors and our Canadian data to help.
Each year the IPHC conducts a stock assessment to estimate the abundance and trends of the Pacific halibut stock using commercial fishery data and scientific surveys. In 2012, the Commission began using a decision table to report the results of the annual stock assessment, effectively separating the science from policy. The decision table, prepared by staff, presents the Commissioners with a range of coastwide harvest levels, each with accompanying estimates of potential risk in terms of stock and fishery trend and status metrics. The current stock assessment is performed at a coastwide scale, but IPHC sets catch limits on a regulatory area basis. Regulatory area specific biomass estimates are derived by apportioning the coastwide estimate via the observed survey catch rates and bottom area, and accounting for hook competition from other species as well as the timing of the survey and fishery removals. The Commissioners consider the coastwide decision table and area-specific results of apportionment, as well as the current harvest policy in determining the final catch targets for each year. The current harvest policy utilizes area-specific harvest rate targets (21.5% for Areas 2A-3A, 16.125% for Areas 3B-4CDE).
These rates are applied to the biomass estimates to generate the Total Constant Exploitation Yield (TCEY).
Canada's TCEY for 2020 has been recommended by the IPHC per the Decision Tables to be 5,800,000. Non-directed removals are then subtracted from the TCEY. Those are 31,000 for Recreational discards, 130,000 for commercial discards, 405,000 for First Nations, non-directed over 26 discards 230,000, and 30,000 for Under 26 bycatch for a total of 826,000 pounds (non-directed removals differ by regulatory area and may include all or some of: recreational removals, personal use or subsistence removals, commercial fishery wastage, and bycatch in non-target fisheries).
Subtracting the non-directed removals of 826,000 from the TCEY of 5,800,000 results in
4,974,000 for the Fishery CEY (FCEY), which is the amount available for harvest by the directed fisheries. How does that compare to what we had in 2019?
Deduct the 2019 FCEY of 6,830,000 from the IHPC recommendation for 2020 of 4,974,00, and the difference is a decrease of 1,856,000 pounds for both Recreational and Commercial.
What would the Recreational share be?
How we get there is we add back our rec and commercial discards to the 4,974,000 (+161,000) = 5,135,000. Then apply 15% = 770,250. DEDUCT the Rec portion of discard mortalities of 30,000, and you arrive at a total of 739,250 as compared to 2019 which was 890,013 for a reduction of 150,763 less pounds for 2020. 
