Assessment of 12 Fish Species in the Northwest Pacific Using the CMSY and BSM Methods

Abstract

We assessed 12 marine fish species in the Northwestern Pacific exploited by Japanese fisheries, using published catch time series, CPUE data and the CMSY and BSM methods. The results showed that one stock was severely depleted, three stocks were outside of safe biological limits, three stocks were fully/overfished, three stocks were recovering, while the other two stocks were in good condition. These results match those of previous research on the status of fish species in the Northwestern Pacific, where overfishing is becoming increasingly apparent. We used the CMSY/BSM assessments as a basis for suggestions to assist in the management and rebuilding of fishery resources in this area.

Assessments of 16 Exploited Fish Stocks in Chinese Waters Using the CMSY and BSM Methods

“…This method was shown to be adequate for the assessment of hundreds of fish stocks in and around Europe (Froese et al, 2017(Froese et al, , 2018Demirel et al, 2020). Moreover, a number of contributions show that the method can be used for stock assessment in China (Ji et al, 2019;Liang et al, 2020b;Wang et al, 2020).…”

“…Thus, there are still deficiencies regarding China's fish stock assessments: the range of species covered by assessments is narrow, evaluation methods are limited and the results are not usually expressed as B/B MSY , i.e., the ratio of stock biomass to the biomass that can produce the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) or other management-relevant indicators. Until recently, very few stock assessments were conducted that allowed for estimating the potential for stock rebuilding (Villasante et al, 2013), although this dire situation is now being overcome (see Zhai and Pauly, 2019;Ji et al, 2019;Liang et al, 2020a,b;Wang et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020).…”

Commentary: Stock Status Assessments for 12 Exploited Fishery Species in the Tsushima Warm Current Region, Southwest Japan and East China, Using the CMSY and BSM Methods

“…In general, caution must be exercised when assessing the stock status using this method (Dowling et al, 2019). However, the papers in SMFEA, including those by Liang et al (2020), Ren and Liu (2020), Wang et al (2020a), Zhang et al (2020), and WA2020, have all applied CMSY to assess the stock status, without discussing the potential bias. A discussion related to bias based on previous studies is thus necessary.…”

Assessment of 11 Exploited Fish and Invertebrate Populations in the Japan Sea Using the CMSY and BSM Methods

“…With the increased use of power trawlers and other new fishing gears, the growing demand for seafood has led to overexploitation of marine resources, and the fishing industry has witnessed a net decline in recruitment and profits in the past 20 years (Pitcher and Lam, 2015;Wang et al, 2020). The depletion of fishery resources would generate a major impact on fishing countries, especially for Japan, where the fishing industry plays an important role, and seafood is an essential source of animal protein.…”