Assessment of Atlantic halibut in the Gulf of Maine-Georges Bank region

Northeast Fisheries Science Center (U.S.)

"Atlantic halibut were fished heavily during the mid-1800s to early 1900s, and due to current low population sizes there are minimal data on halibut in the Gulf of Maine-Georges Bank region. Previous assessments have relied on Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) autumn bottom trawl indices to provide relative measures of population abundance (NEFSC 2001; Brodziak 2002; Brodziak and Col 2005). However, during the 2008 Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM) (NEFSC 2008), a simple production model, termed Replacement Yield Model here, was accepted as an appropriate method to assess Atlantic halibut. The fishing mortality reference point proxy (0.073) from the re-estimated yield per recruit analysis was used to inform the intrinsic rate of growth for the Replacement Yield Model, and the model was tuned to the NEFSC autumn survey swept-area biomass index. The resulting fishing mortality (0.065) was slightly below the FMSY proxy, indicating that overfishing is not occurring for Atlantic halibut. On the other hand, the resulting biomass (1300 mt) from the Replacement Yield Model was well below both the BMSY proxy (49000 mt) and 1/2 BMSY proxy (24000 mt), indicating that Atlantic halibut continues to be in an overfished condition"--Abstract.

Professional Paper

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)