Stock assessment of the hairtail (Trichiurus haumela) fishery in the East China Sea by incorporating uncertainty into the estimation of the biological reference points F0.1 and Fmax

The status of the hairtail (Trichiurus haumela) fishery in the East China Sea has not been quantitatively determined using biological reference points, despite its commercial importance and declining stock abundances since the mid 1990s. This is an attempt to incorporate uncertainty into the estimation of F0.1 and Fmax using Monte Carlo method and make use of the results in the fishery management. We incorporated random variation to simulate uncertainties in the fishery data. The results showed that high levels of uncertainty increased variations in F0.1 and Fmax estimation, which led to a decrease in the probability that the fishery was defined as overfished. We then compared current fishing mortality Fcur with F0.1 and Fmax and found that the hairtail fishery is being overexploited. The changes of CPUE at various tc revealed that increasing tc reduced the probability that Fcur is greater than FBRP, for which we concluded that increasingtc can improve the stock status of the hairtail fishery.