Dr Steve Parker, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research flies to Scott Base on Ross Island this week to board a COLTO Member’s (Sanford) fishing vessel in the Ross Sea, to conduct a fishing survey targeting juvenile Antarctic Toothfish between 5 and 10 years old in the Ross Sea region.
Dr Parker said information on how large or small the juvenile population was could be fed into stock assessments used to adapt catch limits.
“The real value in these surveys is that we do the same thing every year, with really standardised gear. Among other things, the scientists pick the locations, the type of hooks used, and how long to fish for.”
The survey will bring in about 2000 juvenile toothfish, which were usually found in shallower waters – 500 to 800 metres – and data such as size, sex, age and diet would be recorded.
“What we want to be able to do is to look into the future a bit more by understanding the juveniles – the adults of tomorrow. You continue to learn as you go, and a lot of that information has come from the fishery itself.”
Dr Parker said the number of spawning adults was used to measure the toothfish population, and the pre-1997 “unfished stock” was recently estimated to be near 75,000 tonnes.
This had been reduced to about 60,000 tonnes, based on a 2011 stock assessment. The total catch limit for all nations for this season, set by CCAMLR, was 3282 tonnes.
– Taken from the Nelson Mail.