Terms of Reference

Performance of a revised management procedure for the British Columbia Sablefish fishery

Science Response Process – Pacific Region

January 2014
Nanaimo, BC

Chairperson: Lesley MacDougall

Context

DFO and the British Columbia (BC) Sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) fishing industry collaborate on a management strategy evaluation (MSE) process intended to develop and implement a transparent and sustainable harvest strategy.  Sustainability of alternative harvest strategies is determined by simulation testing alternative management procedures against operating models that represent a range of hypotheses about uncertain Sablefish stock dynamics.  Performance of management procedures used in these tests is measured against pre-agreed conservation and catch objectives for the stock and fishery.

An incremental revision to the current Sablefish management procedure was proposed during a September 2013 review of Sablefish fishery objectives, when a minimum catch limit was proposed by industry stakeholders.  A minimum catch limit can be implemented by introducing a catch “floor” into the harvest control rule component of the current management procedure.  This proposed revision to the existing management procedure requires simulation testing to quantify the expected conservation and catch performance of the overall fishery harvest strategy. Existing fishery objectives can be used to determine whether these performance changes are acceptable.

Fisheries and Aquaculture Management Branch has requested that Science Branch provide information and advice for January 2014 on the expected performance of the revised management procedure for the British Columbia Sablefish fishery. DFO and the commercial groundfish industry will be the primary users of this information for fishery planning.

Results will be reported via a Special Science Response (SSR) and will follow the methodology for the existing DFO Science advisory framework for Sablefish described by Cox and Kronlund (2008), Cox et al. (2011), and DFO (2011).

Objectives

Science information and advice will be prepared on the performance of a revised Sablefish management procedure following a Science Response process and reported in the document:

DFO. 2014. Performance of a revised management procedure for Sablefish in British Columbia. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Resp. 2014/nnn.

The specific objectives of this SR process are to:

1. Revise the harvest control rule component of the existing Sablefish management procedure to include a minimum catch floor set at the 2013/14 total allowable catch;
2. Complete simulations that apply the revised management procedure to the same observed and simulated data documented by Cox et al. (2011) for comparison with their results;
3. Apply the revised management procedure to commercial landings and survey data updated to 2013 to produce a catch recommendation for the 2014/15 fishery.

Expected Publications

• CSAS Science Response

Participation

• DFO (Science, Fisheries Management)
• Industry

References

Cox, S.P. and Kronlund, A.R. 2008. Practical stakeholder-driven harvest policies for groundfish in British Columbia, Canada. Fish. Res. 94(3): 224-237.

Cox, S.P., Kronlund, A.R., Lacko, L. 2011. Management procedures for the multi-gear sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) fishery in British Columbia, Canada. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2011/063. viii + 45 p.

DFO. 2011. Management procedures for the multi-gear sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) fishery in British Columbia, Canada. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2011/025.