Volume 46
Wahoo Landings in the and J. Rennie Lesser Antilles: Biased Samples Cause Problems for Stock Assessment
Authors
Neilson, J.D.; Murray, P.A.; Finlay, J. Download PDF Open PDF in BrowserOther Information
Date: February 1994
Pages: 346-359.
Event: Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute
City: Fort Pierce, Florida
Country: USA
Abstract
Length-based approaches for stock assessment, a well-known and important class of techniques for tropical fisheries in particular, require reliable detection of modes in length-frequency distributions that correspond to year-classes. They also are based on the premise that it is possible to adequately represent the size structure of the population by sampling the commercial fishery. This paper documents how even when these assumptions are not well met, examination of length frequency samples from the fishery may still allow the development of testable hypotheses concerning stock movements and life history. The example described is the regionally important wahoo (Acanthocybium solandn) fishery of the Lesser Antilles, and includes eleven years of length-frequency sampling from St. Lucia, W.I.