Further candidate management procedures projections for the South African hake resource

Rademeyer, Rebecca A; Butterworth, Doug S

Further candidate management procedures projections for the South African hake resource

Working Paper

2014

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Marine Resource Assessment and Management Group

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

This document reports further developments in the hake OMP revision process. First the requested 150 000t upper cap is placed on the TAC, and tunings to different average TACs over the next 10 years are contrasted, together with options for a prefixed TAC for the next two years. The option of a soft lower cap on the TAC of 125 000t is explored, linked to a metarule for overriding this if the overall abundance index for M. paradoxus falls below a specified threshold. While it seems more likely than not that the introduction of this soft lower cap would make for a more stable fishery, there remains an appreciable chance that it may necessitate larger TAC reductions, and to lower TAC levels, than would otherwise be the case. Options to reduce the “lag” effects between changes in resource trends and in the TAC are explored, but with little success; basing the control rule on abundance index averages over the last two rather than last three years leads to greater interannual TAC variability. Results for an initial exploration of robustness to decreases in carrying capacity (a possible effect of climate change) point to the importance of further development of metarules to override the constraint on the 5% maximum downward TAC adjustment.

Keywords

management procedures

South African hake resource

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