Did high directed sardine TACs cause the rapid decline in sardine abundance

Abstract

A question that has been raised is whether the rapid decline in the sardine abundance after 2002 can be attributed either in part or in full to the relatively large sardine catches in the early part of this decade. One way to consider this question is to compare the projected sardine biomass under the base case sardine assessment, which was fit to the observed catch and survey data from 1984 to 2006 to the predictions from an identical model had there been zero sardine catch from 2000 to 2006.