Stock assessment of SW Pacific striped marlin in the WCPO. 2019. N. Ducharme-Barth , G. Pilling , J. Hampton

Executive summary

This paper describes the 2019 stock assessment of striped marlin (Kajikia audax ) in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (SWPO) within the convention area of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). An additional six years of data were available since the previous assessment was conducted in 2012, with the current assessment extending the model period through 2017. The model structure was updated to reflect recommendations from the 2012 stock assessment report (Davies et al., 2012), the 2019 pre-assessment workshop (PAW) (Pilling and Brouwer, 2019), updates to the MULTIFAN-CL software (Davies et al., 2019), and to explore uncertainties in the model, particularly as related to the biological assumptions made. This assessment report is supported by Ducharme-Barth and Pilling (2019) which details the fisheries definitions, analyses of longline CPUE data and background analyses related to data inputs and model structures.