Develop new statistical methods for using the groundfish data from the International Pacific Halibut Commission longline survey in British Columbia

The purpose of this Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) is to signal the government’s intention to award a contract for these services to the University of British Columbia, 3182 Earth Sciences Building, 2207 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4.

Before awarding a contract, however, the government would like to provide other suppliers with the opportunity to demonstrate that they are capable of satisfying the requirements set out in this Notice, by submitting a statement of capabilities during the ACAN posting period.

If other potential suppliers submit a statement of capabilities during this ACAN posting period that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, the government will proceed to a full tendering process on either GETS or through traditional means, in order to award the contract.

If no other supplier submits, on or before the closing date, a statement of capabilities meeting the requirements set out in the ACAN, a contract will be awarded to the pre-selected supplier.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) conducts an annual stock assessment longline survey in waters from California to Alaska, including British Columbia (BC). The survey's main goal is to provide data on Pacific Halibut for stock assessment purposes.

At each station, the fishing gear consists of a set of skates each of about 100 hooks. Up to eight skates are on each set, with the number of skates per set varying between years. For BC waters, the survey has enumerated non-halibut species since 1995 (to varying degrees of species identification), and is the longest running annual groundfish survey. For each species, the catch rate of a set is the number of individuals caught per effective skate (where an effective skate of one represents a skate of 100 circle hooks with 18-foot spacing).

However, complications arise because of differing data collection protocols in different years. These have been resolved in stock assessments for Redbanded Rockfish (Edwards et al. 2017) and Yelloweye Rockfish (Yamanaka et al. 2018) and a synopsis of all the data for over 100 species of groundfish in BC (Anderson et al. 2019). The issue of hook competition, whereby the hooks that have already caught a fish are no longer actively fishing, has only been examined in a preliminary fashion and requires further investigation.