Section 5 of Gulf of Alaska SAFE, Section 10 of Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands SAFE.

• Main Authors: Alaska Sablefish Assessment, Michael F. Sigler, Chris R. Lunsford, Jeffrey T. Fujioka, Ra A. Lowe
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: Bering Sea; Gulf of Alaska; Alaska; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.13.7730; http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/refm/docs/2002/BSsablefish.pdf

om last year's assessment that abundance would increase due to the above average 1997 year class. The 1997 year class is an important part of the total biomass and is projected to account for 24% of 2003 spawning biomass. Another year class likely is above average, the 1998 year class. Whether sablefish abundance falls after the 2003 peak depends on the actual strength of the 1998 year class. ABC recommendation and decision analysis: Our previous approach for recommending ABC considered the abundance trend. We chose a catch level that avoided further abundance decreases because abundance was low. Abundance now has increased, so we changed our ABC recommendation method to adapt to the changed circumstance. In our new approach, we completed a decision analysis to determine what catch levels likely will avoid the historic low abundance observed in 1979. NPFMC Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands SAFE 449 The decision analysis indicates that a yield of 18,400 mt has only 0.2 probability of reduci