2018 Assessment of the Walleye Pollock Stock in the Eastern Bering Sea

In the November 2017 Plan Team minutes: ”The Team recommends that more NBS surveys be conducted in the near future, as a time series of such data may be essential for understanding changes in the abundance of some individual stocks as well as the overall ecosystem. Some species, such as pollock and Pacific cod, exhibited enormous changes in NBS survey biomass between 2010 and 2017, both in absolute terms and relative to the NBS+EBS total, while others, such as Alaska plaice, exhibited very little change. The Team also recommends that assessment authors evaluate data from the NBS survey to determine if they should be included in their respective assessment models, particularly if more surveys are conducted, recognizing that it may be appropriate to include these data in some assessments but not others, and that the methods used to include these data may vary between assessments.”