2015 Assessment of the Shortraker Rockfish Stock in the Eastern Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands
February 12, 2015
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 are conducted. The shortraker assessment is conducted with Tier 5 methods. In this methodology, an exploitation rate is applied to the estimated current biomass to obtain the acceptable biological catch (ABC) and overfishing limit (OFL).
The BSAI catch of shortraker rockfish in 2014 was 197 t, which consisted of 101 t from the AI and 96 t from the EBS. The 2015 catch of shortraker rockfish, through October 15, was 139 t, with 76 t in the AI and 63 t in the EBS.