Evaluating effectiveness of biological reference points for bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) and yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) fisheries in the Indian Ocean

Abstract

Biological reference point (BRP) is one of the essential components in the management strategy evaluation that is used to determine the status of fishery stock and set management regulations. However, as BRPs can be derived from different models and many different BRPs are available, the effectiveness and consistency of different BRPs should be evaluated before being applied to fisheries management. In this study, we used a computation-intensive approach to identify optimal BRPs. We systematically evaluated 1500 combinations of alternative BRPs in managing the bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) and yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) fisheries in the Indian Ocean. The effectiveness and consistency of these BRPs were evaluated using four performance measures related to fisheries landing performance and biomass conservation. Monte Carlo simulation was used to evaluate various uncertainties. The results suggest that the proposed computation-intensive approach can be effective in identifying optimal BRPs with respect to a set of defined performance measures. We found that the current maximum sustainable yield (MSY)-based BRP combinations are effective target BRPs to manage the bigeye and yellowfin tuna fisheries with the “linear” harvest control rule (HCR). However, using the “knife-edge” HCR, better BRPs could be found for both the bigeye and yellowfin tuna fisheries management with improved fisheries and conservation performance. The framework developed in this study can be used to identify suitable BRPs based on a set of defined performance measures for other fisheries.