Science Response 2022/032

Harvest Advice for Pacific Sardine (Sardinops sagax) in British Columbia Waters for 2022

Context

The northern subpopulation of Pacific Sardine (Sardinops sagax) in the eastern Pacific Ocean (California Current Ecosystem) has a distribution that can range between Baja California to southeast Alaska. In winter and spring months, most of this stock has the tendency to occur in waters off the California coast in association with spawning. Prior to, and during summer months, large aggregations of Pacific Sardine migrate from spawning habitat to more northern waters mainly to forage. Migratory patterns can be affected by age structure, population size and oceanographic conditions. Typically, most Pacific Sardines that migrate into British Columbia (BC) waters are the larger and older fish in the population. Pacific Sardine have not been fished in BC waters since 2012 due to reduced migration (a general absence of Pacific Sardine in BC waters) and formal fishery closures in 2015 to 2021.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) adopted a harvest control rule in 2013 that applies a harvest rate to an estimate of age-1 year and older (age-1+) biomass that exceeds 150,000 t to calculate potential harvest options for the BC sardine fishery (DFO 2013). As described in the 2013 Science Advisory Report, a range in harvest rates from 3-5% was selected to calculate potential harvest options. The age-1+ biomass estimate used in the harvest control rule is acquired from stock assessment efforts conducted by the United States (US) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The 2022 assessment process of the northern subpopulation of Pacific Sardine by NMFS occurred in March and April 2022. Based on the 2020 stock assessment methods described by Kuriyama et al. (2020), the 2022 assessment model was informed by updated data through to December 2021 (Kuriyama et al. 2022).
DFO Fisheries Management requested that Science Branch incorporate the most recent stock assessment estimate of age 1+ biomass for the northern subpopulation of Pacific Sardine into the DFO sardine harvest control rule.

The objectives of this report are to:

1. Report the results of applying the harvest control rule for a range of harvest rates from 0.03 to 0.05 in increments of 0.01, if the expected stock biomass is above the escapement buffer of 150,000 tonnes.
2. Identify uncertainties associated with this harvest advice.

A formal Canadian stock assessment was not conducted in 2022 so the following advice is based on the multi-year method approved in 2013 (DFO 2013). As such, for additional information about Science recommendations, uncertainties, and future considerations, readers are referred to DFO (2013).

This Science Response results from the Regional Peer Review of May 6, 2022 on Harvest Advice for Pacific Sardine (Sardinops sagax) in British Columbia Waters for 2022.

Science Response 2022/032 (PDF, 300 KB)

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