Stock Assessment of Skipjack Tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, Joel Rice, Shelton Harley, Nick Davies and John Hampton. Oceanic Fisheries Programm. Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Noumea, New Caledonia.

This paper presents the 2014 assessment of skipjack tuna in the western and central Pacific Ocean. This assessment is supported by several other analyses which are documented separately, but should be considered as part of this assessment as they underpin many of the fundamental inputs to the models. The updated assessment addresses many of the recommendations provided in the report of the “Independent Review of the 2011 bigeye tuna stock assessment” (Ianelli et al., 2012) that pertain to skipjack. Other key papers document: the methods used in producing the purse seine size data (Abascal et al. 2014), and tagging data (Berger et al. 2014); revisions to the fisheries and spatial definitions (McKechnie et al. 2014); and the guidance of the Pre-Assessment Workshop (PAW) held in April, 2014 (SPC 2014).

This is the reference case scenario for Skipjack Tuna for the 2014 Stock Assessment.