"The main objective in this year's assessment development addressed the overriding recommendation from past reviews concerning the importance of survey time series for accurate determination of total abundance of this and other small pelagic fish stocks. Recent estimates of total stock biomass are often the derived quantities most requested by fishery managers for setting harvest guidelines, as is the case for Pacific sardine of the California Current Ecosystem. Attention to direct information regarding abundance from surveys, particularly the more recent acoustic-trawl method (ATM) survey, served as the basis of the overall sensitivity analysis and associated model scenarios presented here. Indirect information regarding stock abundance from related sources of data and parameterizations, particularly pertaining to fitting biological composition time series in the integrated model, was modeled accordingly and in concert with the main goal to produce robust fits to abundance time series and estimates of current total stock abundance for advising management"--Preface.

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)

Pacific Coast (U.S.)