Stock Assessment for the Main Hawaiian Islands Deep 7 Bottomfish Complex in 2018, with Catch Projections Through 2022
March 19, 2018
Seven popular species of bottomfish remain abundant in Hawaiian waters and can continue to be sustainably harvested, according to a new stock assessment from NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.
A stock assessment of the main Hawaiian Islands Deep 7 bottomfish complex was conducted in 2018. The assessment used a Bayesian surplus production model fit to bottomfish catch and effort data from commercial catch reports for fishing years 1949-2015. Recommendations from the Center of Independent Experts panel concerning the initial 2014 assessment update were addressed, including improved data filtering and standardization techniques, readdressing assumptions for prior values, the inclusion of a fishery-independent estimate of abundance, and exploration of a single-species assessment model for opakapaka (Pristipomoides filamentosus). The surplus production model for the Deep 7 complex was used to evaluate the risk of overfishing as a function of alternative annual reported catches from fishing years 2018 through 2022. The projections included uncertainty in the posterior distribution of estimated bottomfish biomass in 2015 and population dynamics parameters estimated from the assessment model. The Deep 7 bottomfish stock complex in the main Hawaiian Islands was categorized as not overfished and not experiencing overfishing in 2015.
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Langseth B, Syslo J, Yau A, Kapur M, Brodziak J. 2018. Stock assessment for the Main Hawaiian Islands Deep 7 bottomfish complex in 2018, with catch projections through 2022. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NOAA-TM-NMFS-PIFSC-69, 217 p.