Updating New Zealand’s bycatch estimations and risk assessment - including 2015-16

This paper summarises the updates to the time series of New Zealand’s estimates of total seabird bycatch. The paper also summarises changes to the quantitative risk assessment and its underlying methods.
Bycatch estimations have been continued and now extend to include the 2015–16 fishing year. The most recent set of extrapolations have utilised a simplified extrapolation (strata-based ratio) method that is consistent across all seabird species. This approach is stratified by areas and allows for a random year effect for larger vessels (as these have been observed at a higher rate). These in general compared reasonably well with previous estimates and the quantitative seabird risk assessment.
New Zealand’s quantitative risk assessment which underpins New Zealand’s NPOA-Seabirds was rerun in 2016. This paper describes the changes in the methodology applied and the resulting risk scores.