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IV. B. 2. Albacore Fishery Advisory Service 



The overall goal of the fishery advisory service is to 

 develop a real-time fishery management system whereby fishery information 

 required for proper management can be exchanged between fishery/ 

 managers/scientists and the fishing industry. Only the rudiments of such a 

 system are in operation at the La Jolla Laboratory, including: 1) seasonal 

 forecast of the timing and distribution of the fishery issued prior to the 

 start of the season; 2) bi-weekly fish bulletins distributed during 

 fishing season by mail to fishermen, processors, fish buyers, and moorages; 

 3) daily albacore fishing broadcasts transmitted during the fishing season 

 by radio station WWD, Point Reyes Coast Guard, and four commercial radio 

 stations along the Pacific west coast; 4) contacts with albacore fishing 

 industry and sportfishermen in the form of oral presentations at meetings 

 and workshops, and answering several hundred telephone and mail inquiries 

 for information concerning a broad range of topics about albacore received 

 from fishermen and others in the fishing industry, scientists, students, 

 recreational fishermen, and interested public. 



IV. C. Future Research Needs 



1) Hypotheses need to be formulated which are concerned with stock 

 structure, migration, mortality, availability, and the role of environment 

 in affecting the abundance of North Pacific albacore. Fishery and 

 environmental indices necessary for hypothesis testing must be identified 

 and quantified for use in a fishery model currently under development. 

 This model will provide a focal point for many of the albacore research 

 projects, serving as a means of analyzing various data fields and testing 

 fishery hypotheses. 



2) Studies of age and growth are proposed, which will improve the 

 age- specific fishery data that are the basis of fishery assessment work. 



IV. D. Status of SWFC Data Base 



North Pacific albacore data are stored on magnetic tape at the 

 Southwest Fisheries Center. These data are adequate for non-effort based 

 assessment work and are, with few exceptions, complete. Needed are 

 historical data from the Korean longline fishery, and data from the 

 Japanese high seas drift gill net squid fishery which is taking incidental 

 catches of small (approximately 20 cm) albacore and discarding them dead. 

 Recently emphasis has been placed on obtaining catch, effort, and size 

 frequency data from individual catcher vessels of the U.S. fleet. These 

 data will provide for more precise parameter estimation. 



