2019 Assessment of the Arrowtooth Flounder Stock in the Eastern Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands

The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) arrowtooth flounder (Atheresthes stomias) stock is managed in Tier 3a and is assessed on a biennial basis. Survey data for the BSAI comes from the eastern Bering Sea shelf survey which takes place annually, the Aleutian Islands survey which is biennial, and the eastern Bering Sea slope survey which is also typically biennial, although has not taken place since 2016. In even years a full assessment of arrowtooth flounder (ATF) in the BSAI is conducted. On odd years, parameter values from the previous year’s assessment model and total catch information for the current and previous year are used to make projections and to recommend ABC and OFL for the following two years.

A single species projection model was used to predict the status of the BSAI ATF stock for 2020 and 2021 and to calculate ABC and OFL for those years. The projection model incorporated parameter values from the 2018 assessment model (Spies et al. 2018) as well as catch information from 2018 and 2019 (Table 6.1).