March 21, 2012 – The 2012 fishing year is the fortieth year for which quantitative forecasts of purse-seine landings of gulf and Atlantic menhaden have been made by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The forecasts are based on a multiple regression equation that relates landings and fishing effort over a series of years.
Our 2012 forecasts of landings are conditioned on estimates of expected fishing effort for the upcoming fishing year. Estimates of fishing effort are vessel-specific and are derived from 1) industry input, that is, the number of vessels that companies expect to be active during the upcoming fishing year, and 2) historical performance (catch and effort) of the vessels expected to participate in the fishery. In the Atlantic menhaden fishery, actual purse-seine landings have differed an average of 13% from those forecast for the thirty- nine year period, 1973-2011. Landings in the gulf menhaden fishery have differed from those forecast by an average of 15% for the same period. In this forecast report, we review the 2011 gulf and Atlantic menhaden fishing seasons in terms of:
• landings and fleet size,
• age composition of the catch,
• status of the 2011 forecasts, and we forecast landings for the 2012 gulf and Atlantic menhaden fishing seasons.
Read the 2012 menhaden fishing season forcast here.