2013 Assessment of the Shortraker Rockfish Stock in the Eastern Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands

April 23, 2013

In 2005, Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands (BSAI) rockfish were moved to a biennial assessment schedule to coincide with the frequency of trawl surveys in the Aleutian Islands (AI) and the eastern Bering Sea (EBS) slope. These surveys occur in even years, and for these years a full assessment of shortraker rockfish in the BSAI area will be conducted. The shortraker assessment is conducted with Tier 5 methods. In 2012, a surplus production model was applied to a time series of survey biomass estimates to obtain the current estimated biomass. The 2012 full assessment can be found at http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/REFM/docs/2012/BSAIshortraker.pdf. An exploitation rate is then applied to the estimated current biomass to obtain the ABC and OFL.