Document Type

Article

Department/Program

Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Publication Date

2017

Journal

MARINE AND COASTAL FISHERIES

Volume

9

Issue

1

First Page

68

Last Page

78

Abstract

Recent advances in methodology allow the history of the total mortality rate experienced by a population to be estimated from periodic (e.g., annual) observations on themean length of the population. This approach is generalized to allow data on several species that are caught together to be analyzed simultaneously based on the theory that changes in fishing effort are likely to affect several species; thus, the estimation of times when the mortality rate changes for one species borrows strength from data on other, concurrently caught species. Information theory can be used to select among models describing the degree of synchrony (if any) in mortality changes for a suite of species. This approach is illustrated using data on Puerto Rican handline fishery catches of three snapper species: Silk Snapper Lutjanus vivanus, Blackfin Snapper L. buccanella, and Vermilion Snapper Rhomboplites aurorubens. We identified the best model as the one that provided for simultaneous decreases in mortality rate around the year 1997 and for separate, species-specific magnitudes of change in total mortality. The simultaneous estimation of parameters for multiple species can provide for more credibility in the inferred mortality trends than is possible with independent estimation for each species.

DOI

10.1080/19425120.2016.1259696

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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