comparisonoflpislengthmeasurementswithanglerreported.docVIP

SCRS/2006/081: Large Pelagics Survey Bluefin Tuna Length Validation Assessment Contributors: David Van Voorhees, Ronald Salz, John Foster, Joseph Desfosse, Craig Brown, Margo Schulze-Haugen, and Christopher Rogers Background The Large Pelagics Intercept Survey (LPIS) collects length data on recreationally landed Atlantic bluefin tuna (ABT). The LPIS Procedures Manual (prior to 2005) specified that interviewers should measure and record the straight fork length (SFL) of ABTs, not the curved fork length (CFL) that is used to define size classes for management purposes. Recently, some members of the recreational and commercial fishing industry have questioned whether or not this procedure has been consistently followed in the field. Some individuals have reported seeing LPIS interviewers measuring CFLs of landed bluefin tuna. Therefore, they have raised a concern that the interviewers may actually have been recording CFLs rather than SFLs. The curved fork length of a given fish is greater than its straight fork length by some small factor (typically between 1-5%). If such errors have occurred, then LPIS estimates of landed weight of bluefin tuna by size category would most likely be positively biased since length data are converted to weights for landings estimates. This evaluation was conducted to: 1) determine the extent to which CFLs were mistakenly recorded, and the extent to which such errors may have biased the overall ABT landed weight estimate, and 2) investigate the effects that biased measurements could potentially have had on prior stock assessments. The approach taken for the first part was to compare LPIS length measurements with measurements from other data sources for individual fish for which the length was recorded also. Two additional sources of ABT length data – the Maryland ABT Catch Card Program and the NMFS Automated Landings Report System (ALRS) were examined. For both the Maryland Catch Card Program and the ALRS, anglers