Construction of a Headboat Index for South Atlantic and Gulf Black Grouper

摘要

The headboat fishery is sampled separately from other recreational fisheries, and includes an area ranging from North Carolina to the Florida Keys on the Atlantic coast and from the dry Tortugas to southeast Texas on the Gulf coast. The headboat fishery comprises large, for-hire vessels that charge a fee per angler and typically accommodate 660 passengers. With simple hook & line gear, passengers on these vessels frequently target hard bottom reefs, sampling many members of the snapper-grouper complex. Headboat records were examined in detail, and catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) standardization was employed in an effort to generate a fishery dependent index. Black grouper are primarily caught off of the coast of southern Florida. All analyses were thus restricted to headboat sampling strata 11, 12, 17, and 21. Prior to analysis, data were examined in an effort to identify possible factors that might confound inferences about relative abundance.