Stock assessment and future projections of blue sharks in the North Pacific Ocean through 2020 (21July) - Final Report

Also published as ISC/22/ANNEX/12

This document presents the results of the stock assessment for blue sharks in the North Pacific Ocean conducted by the ISC SHARKWG using a fully integrated, size-based, age-, and sexstructured model. The last stock assessment was conducted in 2017. Improvements and updates in the current assessment include: updated time series data through 2020 (catch, abundance indices, and sex-specific length composition from multiple fisheries), incorporation of new biological information, consideration of an alternative CPUE (catch-per-unit-effort) hypothesis for the late model period, and adoption of an ensemble modeling approach.