Hawaii FEP - Western Pacific Fishery Council

Weke CPUE120100Pounds per record80604020047 51 55 59 63 67 71 75 79 83 87 91 95 99Figure 25: Time Series of Weke (Mulloidichthys spp.) CPUE from HDAR DataMeasures to Address Overfishing and Overfished StocksAt present, no CRE stocks in the Hawaii Archipelago have been determined to be overfished orthat overfishing is occurring. If in the future it is determined that overfishing is occurring, a stockis, or either of those two conditions is being approached, the Council will establish additionalmanagement measures. Measures that may be considered include additional area closures,seasonal closures, establishment of limited access systems, limits on catch per trip, limits oneffort per trip, and fleet-wide limits on catch or effort.The limits and reference points illustrated in Figure 23 can be applied to both multi-speciesstocks and to individual component species stocks, realizing however, that much of the data inthe State of Hawaii commercial catch reports are often at the genus or family level. As statedearlier, while managing the multi-species stock to provide maximum benefit, fishery managersmust also ensure that the resulting fishing mortality rate does not result in excessive stockdepletion. Preventing recruitment overfishing on any component stock will satisfy this need in aprecautionary manner. Best available data are used for each fishery to estimate these values.These reference points are related primarily to recruitment overfishing and are expressed in unitssuch as spawning potential ratio or spawning stock biomass. However, no examples can beprovided at present. Species’ for which managers have collected extensive survey data and knowtheir life history parameters, such as growth rate and size at reproduction, are the best candidatesfor determining these values.Using the best available data, managers will monitor changes in species abundance and/orcomposition. They will pay special attention to those species they consider important because oftheir trophic level or other ecological importance to the larger community. For Hawaii, apreliminary approach aggregates HDAR data into two five-year bins for comparison, an early bincomprising 1948-1952 and a recent bin comprising 1995-1999. Table 28 ranks coral reefecosystem management unit species based on their proportion of total commercial fisherylandings (not including aquarium or aquaculture fisheries) in the 1948-1952 data bin. Although itis difficult to draw definitive conclusions from this exercise, the differences in the landings datayear170