Stock assessment of blue marlin (Makaira nigricans) in the Pacific using MULTIFAN-CL

Abstract

In the Pacific, blue marlin are an incidental catch of longline fisheries and an important resource for big game recreational fishing. Over the past two decades, blue marlin assessments by different techniques have yielded results ranging from an indication of declining stock to a state of sustained yield at approximately the maximum average level. Longline fishing practices have changed over the years since the 1950s in response to changes in principal target species and to gear developments. Despite increasingly sophisticated attempts to standardize fishing effort with changing fishing practices, the stock assessments to date are likely confounded to a greater or lesser degree by changes in catchability for blue marlin. Yet, only data from commercial longline fisheries targeting tuna provide sufficient spatial and temporal coverage to allow assessment of this resource. To re-assess the blue marlin stocks in the Pacific and also to assess the efficacy of a habitat-based standardization of longline effort, a collaborative analysis was conducted involving scientists at the National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries, Shimizu, Japan, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, La Jolla, California, and the NOAA Fisheries Honolulu Laboratory, Honolulu, Hawaii. Using MULTIFAN-CL as an assessment tool, there was considerable uncertainty in quantifying the fishing effort levels that would produce a maximum sustainable yield. However, it was found that, at worst, blue marlin in the Pacific are close to a fully exploited state, that is the population and the fishery are somewhere near the top of the yield curve. Furthermore, it was found that effort standardization using a habitat-based model allowed estimation of parameters within reasonable bounds and with reduced confidence intervals about those values.