USING INDICES TO IMPROVE ROCKFISH STUDIES
Washington Sea Grant’s NOAA Fisheries Fellow studies the use of indices to improve stock assessment methods for hard to study species like rockfish.
Peter Kuriyama, University of Washington, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
Trevor Branch, University of Washington, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
Allan Hicks, NOAA Fisheries, Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Trawl surveys are the primary independent source of information used by fishery managers in most West Coast stock assessments. However, they do not sample rocky habitats very well. Many of the 60-plus rockfish species managed under the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Groundfish Fishery Management Plan are most numerous in untrawlable habitats, including numerous species that are overfished and commercially and recreationally valuable. This project is examining the feasibility of using indices of abundance and other data from trawl, hook-and-line, and other surveys to develop more accurate stock assessments of rockfish in the Southern California Bight for management.
Kuriyama, P.T., T.A. Branch, M.A. Bellman, and K. Rutherford. 2016. Catch shares have not led to catch- quota balancing in two North American multispecies trawl fisheries. Marine Policy 71:60-70.
Monnahan C.C. , K. Ono, S.C. Anderson, M.B. Rudd, A.C. Hicks, F. Hurtado-Ferro, K.F. Johnson, P.T. Kuriyama, R.R. Licandeo, C.C. Stawitz, I.G. Taylor, and J.L. Valero. 2016. The effect of length bin structures on growth estimation in integrated age-structured stock assessments. Fisheries Research 180:103-112.
Kuriyama P.T. , K. Ono, F. Furtado-Herro, A.C. Hicks, I.G. Taylor, R.R. Licandeo, K.F. Johnson, S.C. Anderson, C.C. Monnahan, M.B. Rudd, C.C. Stawitz, and J.L. Valero. 2016. An empirical weight-at-age approach reduces estimation bias compared to modeling parametric growth in integrated, statistical stock assess- ment models when growth is time varying. Fisheries Research 180:119-127.
Kuriyama P.T. , M.C. Siple, E.E. Hodgson, E.M. Phillips, M. Burden, D. Fluharty, A.E. Punt, T.E. Essington, J. Henderschedt, and D.A. Armstrong. 2015. Issues at the fore in the land of Magnuson and Stevens: A summary of the 14th Bevan Series on Sustainable Fisheries. Marine Policy 54:118-121.