Goodyear: Analysis of time-area closures to minimize billfish bycatch 



245 



that the initial slope of the relation between the bill- 

 fish percent reduction and target species percent re- 

 duction is much lower than 1.0 for each of the spa- 

 tial resolutions examined. This finding suggests that 

 the temporal and spatial distributions of billfish 



bycatch and target species are somewhat different 

 and that it should be possible to selectively reduce 

 the longline billfish bycatch in relation to target spe- 

 cies catch. The data from Table 2 indicate that a 10% 

 reduction in the 1986-91 billfish bycatch could have 



