Science Advisory Report  2012/002

Revised reference points for snow crab to account for the change in estimation area of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence biological unit

Summary

• Revised reference points based on an expanded assessment area of 57,840 km² are provided for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab biological unit.
• Revised reference are based on estimates of commercial-sized adult male crab biomass for the expanded area and the same approach used to originally define the reference points in 2010 (DFO 2010).
• The revised biomass limit reference point (B_lim) is 10,000 t of hard-shelled commercial-sized adult male crab, which was available to the fishery, and as estimated from the post-fishery snow crab trawl survey assessment.
• The revised biomass upper stock reference point (B_USR) is 41,400 t of commercial-sized adult male crab all carapace conditions, which become hard-shelled crab on January 1 of the next year’s fishery, and as estimated from the post-fishery snow crab trawl survey assessment.
• The revised removal rate limit reference point (F_lim) is 0.346 which is the average exploitation rate expressed as catch in fishing year divided by the commercial sized adult male crab biomass estimate of the previous year for the 1998 to 2009 fishing years.

This Science Advisory Report is from the Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, regional advisory meeting of February 7-8, 2012 on the Assessment of the status of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab stock. Additional publications from this process will be posted as they become available on the DFO Science Advisory Schedule.

Complete document (PDF, 261 KB)

Accessibility Notice

This document is available in PDF format. If the document is not accessible to you, please contact the Secretariat to obtain another appropriate format, such as regular print, large print, Braille or audio version.