Standardized Catch Rates and Preliminary Assessment Scenarios for Queen Conch (Strombus gigas) in the U.S. Caribbean

摘要

Queen conch (Strombus gigas) catch and effort data from the U.S. Caribbean commercial fisheries were used to develop relative indices of abundance for the stocks of Puerto Rico and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Standardized catch rates were estimated using a Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling (GLMM) approach under two different assumptions: a delta-lognormal error distribution and a lognormal error distribution. A non-equilibrium surplus production model (ASPIC) was fit to a time series of commercial queen conch landings (1983-2001) from Puerto Rico. Standardized catchrates were used to tune the model. Two separate assessments were conducted: one for the whole conch fishery and a second one for the fishery of the southwest coast of Puerto Rico, where conch productivity is higher. Due to insufficient data, it was not possible to conduct an assessment of the St. Croix fishery.