The red rock lobster supports the most valuable inshore commercial fishery in New Zealand. This fishery has been managed with catch quotas in nine Quota Management Areas (QMAs), which are usually treated as independent populations or stocks.
To estimate those quotas, each population is fully assessed every five years, requiring a lot of time and effort by a team of at least five researchers working on the review of the previous assessments and data inputs, the addition of new data, data processing, and development of a new assessment.
Every year, instead of a full assessment, a rapid update assessment is done for each of the stocks that were not assessed that year.
A rapid update repeats the previous full assessment model, only updating data inputs, which significantly speeds up the required process to provide advice about stock status in the interim years between full assessments.
This document describes the operation of the stock assessment rapid updates completed in 2023 for six stocks that can be used to guide management decisions of New Zealand red rock lobster QMAs.
For the beginning of the 2023–24 fishing year, all red rock lobster stocks evaluated were estimated to be above sustainable levels.
FAR 2024/13 Rapid updates for New Zealand rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) stocks in 2023
Type
Report - Fisheries Assessment Report (FAR)
Published
Last updated