2014 Assessment of the Flathead Sole-Bering Flounder Stock in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands
March 04, 2014
"Flathead sole" as currently managed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) represents a two-species complex consisting of true flathead sole (Hippoglossoides elassodon) and its morphologically-similar congener Bering flounder (H. robustus). "Flathead sole" was formerly a constituent of the "other flatfish" SAFE chapter. Based on changes in the directed fishing standards to allow increased retention of flatfish, in June 1994 the Council requested the BSAI Plan Team to assign a separate Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) and Overfishing Limit (OFL) to "flathead sole" in the BSAI, rather than combining them into the "other flatfish" recommendations as in previous assessments. Subsequent to this request, stock assessments for "flathead sole" have been generated annually to provide updated recommendations for ABC and OFL.
Flathead sole are distributed from northern California off Point Reyes northward along the west coast of North America and throughout Alaska (Hart 1973). In the northern part of its range, this species overlaps with its congener, Bering flounder, whose range extends north to the Chukchi Sea and into the western Bering Sea. Bering flounder typically represent less than 3% of the combined biomass of the two species in annual groundfish surveys conducted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) in the eastern Bering Sea (EBS). The two species are very similar morphologically, but differ in demographic characteristics and spatial distribution. Differences between the two species in the EBS have been described by Walters and Wilderbuer (1997) and Stark (2011). Bering flounder exhibit slower growth and acquire energy more slowly when compared with flathead sole. Individual fish of the same size and sex can be 10 years different in age for the two species, while fish of the same age can differ by almost 10 cm in size. These differences are most pronounced for intermediate-aged fish (5-25 years old) because asymptotic sizes, by sex, are similar for the two species. Thus, whereas age at 50% maturity is similar for both species (8.7 years for Bering flounder, 9.7 years for flathead sole), size at 50% maturity is substantially smaller for Bering flounder than for flathead sole (23.8 cm vs. 32.0 cm, respectively; Stark, 2004 and Stark, 2011). Stark (2011) hypothesized that the difference in growth rates between the two species might be linked to temperature, because Bering flounder generally occupy colder water than flathead sole and growth rates are typically positively-correlated with temperature.