Report From Hawaii Bottomfish Commercial Fishery Data Workshops, 2015–2016
May 10, 2018
Summary of workshops to understand and resolve issues with data that affect its utility for management and stock assessments.
There are issues with both data quality and data structure of the Hawaii Department of Aquatic Resources (DAR) commercial data that affect its utility for management and stock assessments. Scientists in the region have made multiple attempts over decades to refine DAR commercial data for stock assessment purposes. The Center for Independent Experts conducted an independent external peer review of the 2014 stock assessment for the main Hawaiian Islands Deep 7 bottomfish, concluding that although the methods to standardize CPUE and the assessment model were appropriate, there were strong reservations regarding the quality of the data.
The Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center organized a series of workshops to help understand and resolve these data issues, bringing together participants from the NOAA Pacific Islands Regional Office, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, and fishery stakeholders. The workshops were accompanied by smallgroup working sessions and intersessional analyses. The ultimate goal was to produce a higher-quality commercial data set that is deemed acceptable for stock assessment and management use by scientific, management, and user group (fishery) stakeholders.