Science Response 2009/002

Canadian assessment of Pacific hake in U.S. and Canadian waters in 2009

Context

The Pacific hake, also referred to as Pacific whiting (Merluccius productus) is a transboundary stock which is jointly managed by Canada and the U.S. Annual stock assessment has been coordinated by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), reviewed in the groundfish stock assessment review (STAR) process, providing catch advice to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC). Scientists from NMFS have led the stock assessment modeling for many years with the assistance of Canadian scientists. For the last number of years, the stock assessments were done using the Stock Synthesis (SS2) software package (Helser et al. 2008). Two alternative assessment models were developed by Canadian scientists and presented to the STAR panel for review in February, 2008 (Martell 2008, Sinclair and Grandin 2008). The 2008 fishery ran later than usual resulting in delays in assembling Canadian fishery data. These data were not available for the February, 2009 STAR panel review.  However, results of these assessments will be presented to the PFMC Science and Statistics Committee (SSC) at its meeting on March 8, 2009. This report summarizes the results of Canadian assessment of Pacific hake in 2009. The assessments are essentially updates of methods reviewed by the 2008 STAR Panel.

Complete document (PDF, 78 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.