Bottomfish Fishery-Independent Survey in Hawaii (BFISH) - Experimental Surveys (2011-2015)

Accurate and precise stock assessments are predicated on accurate and precise estimates of life history parameters, abundance, and catch across the range of the stock. NOAA Fisheries is increasingly looking to advanced fishery-independent survey methods to estimate stock abundance and many authors have highlighted the continued need for development of non-intrusive methods that can be used in areas both open and closed to fishing, as well as for stocks where extractive sampling may remove a significant portion of the yearly quota. While it is commonly agreed that a combination of survey methods is preferable to any single method, in order to be used effectively and efficiently, such methods must be quantitatively evaluated and compared. The development of adequate calibration factors allows pooling of data from disparate methods to generate robust metrics of abundance. In this study, we quantitatively compare a suite of autonomous optical, acoustic, and cooperative research fishery-independent sampling methods for estimating species-specific size-structured abundance for six snapper species and one grouper species, which comprise the major insular commercial bottomfish fishery in the Main Hawaiian Islands (known as the Deep 7 bottomfish complex). This comparison serves as the basis for an operational, fishery-independent survey for stock assessment in the Main Hawaiian Islands.

To quantitatively compare a suite of advanced fishery-independent sampling methods to generate species-specific size-structured abundance estimates of insular bottomfish for use in stock assessment.