An Adjustment to the Abundance Estimate for Patagonian Toothfish (Dissostichus

eleginoides) at Macquarie Island: 2006.

F. Pribac1 and T. Lamb2

Continuing work on the Patagonian toothfish catch and tagging database by Antarctic division
staff has revealed some discrepancies between the release, recapture and fish tables (Robertson
2006). It was thought possible that these discrepancies may have introduced errors (albeit thought
to be minor) into the catch, tag release and recapture data used for the Macquarie Island tag based
stock assessment (Tuck et al., 2006). In order to evaluate possible propagation of input data error
through to abundance estimates a re-analysis of the base case for the tag based assessment for
Patagonian toothfish at Macquarie Island was carried out using corrected data sets.

The release, recapture and fish tables were reanalyzed using an improved methodology. This
reanalysis corrected the data discrepancies and inconsistencies. The resulting corrected catch and
tag release and tag recapture data sets are very similar to the uncorrected (former) data sets
(Tables 1 and 2). The main differences being:

Estimated numbers of fish caught for each season shows minor changes and the estimate
of total toothfish caught since 1996 is reduced by 1.6%
A couple of recaptures have been newly identified and one formerly identified recapture
has been removed (out of a total of 933 recaptures)
The estimated mean weight has not changed except for the 99/00 and 05/06 seasons
which have increased from 3.21 to 3.96 kg and from 3.88 to 4.04 kg respectively.

The updated catch and tag data set were used to recalculate the available abundance and biomass
of Patagonian toothfish at the Aurora trough using the base case of the tag based assessment
model (Tuck et al., 2006).

The updated assessment yields a 0.7% smaller available abundance for 05/06 (table 4) however
the available biomass is 3.3% greater than the previous estimate due to the somewhat increased
estimate of mean weight for 05/06.

Under the current management rules the commercial TAC is 10% of the estimated available
biomass. This would imply that the adjusted TAC estimate is revised up by 3.3 % to 249t.

References

Tuck, G.N., Pribac, F., Lamb, T., and Williams. R. 2004. Abundance estimation and TAC setting for
Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) at Macquarie Island: 2006. Sub-Antarctic Fisheries
Assessment Group document. SAFAG20/1. Australian Fisheries Management Authority, Canberra,
Australia.

Robertson, T. October 2006. TAG QC. Australian Antarctic Division internal document.

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 Table1. Seasonalcatch(numbers),releaseandrecapturefiguresfortheAuroraTroughregion.Releasesincluderereleasedfish.Thetabledoesnotinclude
taggedfishreleasedintheMaquarieRidgeandrecapturedinAuroraTrough.Thenumbersinbracketsrepresenttheresultsfromtheuncorrecteddataset.

Season Catch Releases Recaptures

95/96 96/97 97/98 98/99 99/00 Win 00 00/01 02/03 03/04 04/0505/06 Total
1995/96 180523 (181746) 486 43 58 28 4 0 0 1 1 0 (1) 1 0 136 (137)
1996/97 95045 (98897) 487 37 43 7 0 0 2 0 9 1 3 102
1997/98 58611 (62898) 641 119 19 (18) 3 0 4 5 22 (21) 4 15 191 (189)
1998/99 14815 (14624) 605 8 3 1 6 3 30 2 9 62
1999/00 1993 (3029) 559 0 1 2 1 22 4 4 34
Winter 2000 1495 (1489) 96 1 1 0 13 2 8 25
2000/01 10837 (10058) 356 3 1 23 3 5 35
2002/03 13826 (13812) 497 6 60 8 29 103
2003/04 85824 (85653) 538 70 8 17 95
2004/05 12084 (11787) 544 17 46 63
2004/06 68627 (68590) 595 87 87
Total 543680 (552583) 5404 43 95 190 38 (37) 6 3 19 17 249 50 223 933 (932)

Table2.Themeanweight(kg)byseasonoffishcaughtintheAuroraTroughregion.Resultsfromthe2005assessmentareincludedforcomparison.

Aurora Trough 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/2000 Win 2000 2000/01 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06
2005 5.16 3.53 4.11 4.32 2.9 3.3 2.75 2.72 4.06 4.52
2006 5.17 5.16 3.22 3.89 3.21 2.21 2.44 2.74 4.14 4.88 3.88
2006 corrected 5.17 5.16 3.22 3.89 3.96 2.21 2.44 2.74 4.14 4.88 4.04

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Table3.ThepercentofavailablebiomassremaininginAuroraTroughmodelA(30June2005relativeto1July1996),ModelB(30June2005relativeto1July
1995discountedbyoneyearofnaturalmortality,M),orModelC(30June2005relativeto1July1995discountedbyonehalfofnaturalmortality).The04/05
depletion calculation was performed using an earlier data extraction methodology. The 05/06 calculation was performed using a newer data extraction
methodology(forimprovedrepeatabilityandautomation).The05/06*calculationresultedformadoptionofafurthercorrecteddataextractionmethodology.

% Depletion
Model 04/05 05/06 05/06 *
A 75 71 73
B 88 84 87
C 81 77 80

Table4.Comparisonofavailableabundancesandavailablebiomassusingoriginalandadjusteddatasets.

AvailableAbundance AvailableBiomass(kg) Percentage

Depletion
1996 2006 1996 2006

former 6.56x105 6.21x105 3.39x106 2.41x106 71.1

corrected 6.56x105 6.16x105 3.39x106 2.49x106 73.4

Table 5. Former point estimates of available biomass for Aurora Trough are provided here for reference (from Tuck et al, 2006).

biomass x 103 t M=0.13 M=0.20 M=0.165

Date Point Estimate Point Estimate Lower 95% CI Point Estimate Upper 95% CI
1-July-1995 3.3 3.5 2.6 3.4 4.9
30-June-2006
Rate = 0.84 2.7 1.9 1.4 2.2 2.9
Rate = 0.905 2.9 2.0 1.6 2.4 2.9