January 15, 2013 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).
Arlington, Va. — This spring, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will begin work on the 2014 benchmark stock assessment for tautog (Tautoga onitis). The assessment will be used to evaluate the health of the tautog stock and inform the management of this species. The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data, when the public will be asked to leave the room.
The Commission welcomes the submission of data sources that will improve the accuracy of the assessment. This includes, but is not limited to, data on landings and discards (commercial and recreational), catch per unit effort, biological samples (length, age, frequency), and life history information (growth, maturity, fecundity, spawning stock biomass weights, natural mortality). For data sets to be considered, the data must be sent in the required format, with accompanying description of methods, to the Commission at least one month prior to the data workshop.
The Data Workshop will be conducted on March 25-29, 2013 (location to be determined). This workshop will review all available data sources for tautog and identify data sets that will be incorporated in the stock assessment. An Assessment Workshop will take place in the fall of 2013 (date and location to be determined), to include model development and parameterization of the accepted data sets. The benchmark stock assessment will be peer reviewed in the summer of 2014.
For those interested in submitting data and/or attending the tautog data workshop (space is limited), please contact Dr. Katie Drew, ASMFC Stock Assessment Scientist, at kdrew@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740. The deadline for data submission is Friday, February 22, 2013.
For more information, please contact Melissa Yuen, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at myuen@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.