A Life Stage-based Model for Assessing the Walleye Pollock Gadus chalcogrammus Population in the East Sea

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, walleye pollock Gadus chalcogrammus fisheries in Korean waters have been considered collapsed. Although many fisheries scientists suspect that the collapse might have been triggered by overexploitation of juvenile pollock or environmental changes, such conjectures have been neither tested nor investigated, partially because of limited data on the population. There has been no survey of the population, and the ages of fish in fishery catch have rarely been identified. Instead, fishery catch data from 1975-1997 included information about two life stages, 'juveniles and adults,' and data on catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) during 1963-2007 and those on fish length and weight during 1965-2003 had been sporadically collected from commercial fisheries. To test hypotheses about the collapse of the pollock fisheries, we used a statistical linear model with juvenile CPUE as the response variable, and abiotic (e.g., water temperatures) and biotic factors [e.g., adult pollock, flatfishes (Pleuronectidae sp.), and sandfish (Arctoscopus japonicus) CPUEs] as the explanatory variables. The model results indicated that depletion of the pollock population was associated with both biotic (adult pollock and flatfishes abundance) and abiotic factors (mid-water temperatures in February and October). We further interpreted the results from ecological and biological perspectives, suggesting possible mechanisms.