FIGURE 5.4 Groundfish landings from the Bering Sea, 1955-2001.

SOURCE: Graph prepared from data in Table 2, North Pacific Fishery Management Council (1999).

quently, total groundfish harvests declined, presumably due to reduced abundance.

The fishery recovered during the 1980s and landings have remained fairly constant since then. In the past decade (1990-2001), groundfish landings from the Bering Sea averaged 1.6 million mt, of which pollock accounted for 76% of the landings. Pacific cod accounted for 10%; yellowfin sole accounted for 7%; and the remainder included other flatfish, sablefish, and rockfish.

In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, a large pulse fishery for pollock developed in the Donut Hole in the central Bering Sea and a much smaller fishery developed near Bogoslof Island (north of the eastern Aleutian Islands) beyond the eastern Bering Sea shelf (see Figure 5.5). The Bogoslof fishery peaked at 377,000 mt in 1987, whereas the Donut Hole fishery peaked at 1.4 million mt in 1989. The latter was an intensive, essentially unregulated fishery with vessels from many foreign nations. Owing to severe depletion of pollock, most nations had stopped fishing by the time an international agreement was signed that closed the Donut Hole to fishing in 1993. Because of concerns about relationships between pollock near Bogoslof Island and those in the Aleutian Basin, the domestic Bogoslof Island fishery was closed in 1991.