Stock assessment of the Torres Strait Spanish mackerel fishery

Abstract

Objectives:
1. To retrieve and collate all available biological, historical fisheries, and commercial non-indigenous and Islander catch and effort data on the Torres Strait Spanish
mackerel fishery.
2. To review, document and report the extent and quality of the collated data and determine the most suitable model for a stock assessment of the Torres Strait Spanish mackerel fishery.
3. To optimise use of all available data to describe current trends in the fishery, and undertake a stock assessment of the Torres Strait Spanish mackerel fishery.
4. To advise on monitoring, reporting and/or further research required to improve or enable future assessments of the Torres Strait Spanish mackerel fishery.
This assessment is the most comprehensive attempt to evaluate the status of the Torres Strait Spanish mackerel fishery. The assessment used all available biological and fisheries data to provide an indication of the current level of exploitation and sustainability of the fishery. At a time when the status of the Torres Strait Spanish mackerel fishery is uncertain and undergoing extensive revision of its current management arrangements, results from this
assessment provide stakeholders with an understanding of the status of the fishery to enable future management decisions to be derived from a more informed basis. A major facet of this assessment is that it has highlighted the various sources of uncertainty that exist in the data
and model assumptions. Furthermore, the analyses and modeling conducted in this assessment facilitated critical review of the fishery; thereby, making more effective use of the available catch data and past biological research on the species that will assist in setting target management objectives for the fishery.