The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and NMFS will convene a Western Pacific Stock Assessment Review (WPSAR) of a benchmark stock assessment for the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) Deep 7 Bottomfish Complex.
Scientists from the NMFS Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) conducted a benchmark stock assessment of the MHI Deep 7 bottomfish complex. This benchmark assessment incorporated new data in the form of fishery-independent biomass estimates, and also followed data filtering recommendations from a series of five community workshops that involved fishermen, managers, and scientists on best practices for filtering bottomfish commercial catch and effort data from State of Hawaii commercial catch reports. Because of these workshops, PIFSC scientists are now able to better link individual fishermen’s catch reports further back in time, and this linking is newly applied in this benchmark stock assessment.
This assessment used commercial data for the years 1948-2015, and assessed Deep 7 bottomfish by building on the modeling framework from the previous three assessments, but with improved data and data filtering as previously described, along with improvements to catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) standardization, and other modeling approaches. The assessment also estimates unreported catches using catch and effort data following methods similar to those applied in previous assessments. After applying best practices from the workshop recommendations for filtering for CPUE calculation, PIFSC scientists applied model selection techniques to select the best structural form to standardize CPUE. CPUE in the model was split into two time series, fishing years 1948-2003, and fishing years 2003-2015) to accommodate new effort reporting from a change in reporting form by the State in October 2002.
note: Public comment is available on 12/11 at 3:30 pm, 12/12 at 3:30 pm, and 12/14 at 11:00 am. The meeting will be closed to the public in the afternoon on 12/14 and morning of 12/15. WPSAR recommendations and a report out will be provided at 1 pm on 12/15. See agenda link below for specific times.
Dates: December 11-15, 2023 (see agenda for times)
Location: NMFS Honolulu Service Center at Pier 38, 1129 N. Nimitz Hwy, Suite 220, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817
Agenda
FR Notice
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: T. Todd Jones, Director—Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Fisheries Research and Monitoring Division (FRMD), telephone: (808) 725–5713, or todd.jones@noaa.gov.