The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s (Pacific Council) Highly Migratory Species Management Team (HMSMT) is holding a meeting, which is open to the public located at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Pacific Room, 8901 La Jolla Shores Drive in La Jolla, California 92037. The meeting will be held Wednesday, October 12, 2022 through Friday, October 14, 2022, starting at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time each day. Meeting times are an estimate, meetings will end when business for the day has been completed.

Purpose of the meeting

The principal purpose of this meeting is to discuss and prepare analyses supporting Council action on hard caps for the California large mesh driftnet (DGN) fishery. This action would establish hard caps (i.e., limits) on the number of observed mortalities/injuries of nine high priority protected species identified by the Council. Hard caps may apply to individual vessels or the fishery as a whole. If a limit is met or exceeded, both the observed vessel and any vessels determined to be unobservable would stop fishing, or the DGN fishery as a whole, would close for a prescribed time period. At its June 2022 meeting the Council chose a range of alternatives for a hard caps fishery management regime to support further consideration of the action. The HMSMT will also discuss ongoing work to reevaluate the definition of essential fish habitat described in the HMS Fishery Management Plan, other relevant items on the agenda of the November 2022 Council meeting, and future HMSMT work on tasks assigned to it by the Council.