"The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (GMFMC) established an Ad Hoc Shrimp Effort Working Group (SEWG) in the spring of 2006. In general, the SEWG was established and charged with determining the appropriate level of shrimp fishing effort in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Gulf of Mexico that would meet various management options. Specifically, the GMFMC directed the SEWG to address two questions: 1) What would be the minimum level of effort necessary to achieve Optimal Yield (OY) in the shrimp fishery (harvest sector) in the EEZ; and 2) What level of effort in the EEZ would derive the maximum benefits to the shrimp fishery (harvesting sector)? The goals and objectives of this working group were to conduct analysis on the Gulf of Mexico commercial shrimp fishery, providing answers to the aforementioned questions. This report provides a description of the basic data and the procedural techniques used to collect harvesting statistics from the shrimp fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. We present an outline of the methodology used in the estimation of shrimp fishing effort in the statistical subareas of the Gulf of Mexico, detailing the assumptions and analysis used to respond to the two questions posed by the GMFMC to the SEWG. To achieve the goals of this project, the working group used several fisheries and economic models to determine maximum sustainable yield (MSY), effort at MSY (Emsy), maximum economic yield (MEY), and effort at MEY (Emey) for the Gulf of Mexico commercial shrimp fishery"--Introduction.

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