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Fishery Bulletin 1 13(4) 
Fork length (mm) 
Figure 2 
Length- and age-frequency distributions of wahoo ( Acanthocybium solandri) caught in the (A and Bi Eastern 
Tuna and Billfish Fishery (C and D) recreational fishery off eastern Australia and (E and F) the commercial 
longline fishery in New Caledonia between 2008 and 2010. Note that the sample sizes were lower for age- 
frequency distributions because age could not be calculated for all fish with a fork length greater than the 
theoretical length of infinite age (i.e., FL>1499 mm). 
(FI), the effect of imposing a minimum legal length 
of 100 cm TL for the entire recreational fishery was 
explored. Although this length is slightly smaller 
than L 50 , its simplicity may be easier for recreational 
fishermen to remember and management agencies to 
enforce. For scenarios F2 and F3, variations of these 
size limits were examined, including a maximum legal 
length of 150 cm TL (based on size distributions for 
the recreational fishery; see Fig. 2), and a slot limit 
where only fish 100-150 cm TL may be retained, re- 
spectively. As the F from the recreational sector rep- 
resents only about one-third of the total F in the 
southwest Pacific Ocean, we used an additional sce- 
nario (F4) to explore changes to commercial longline 
fisheries. This scenario reduced the postrelease mor- 
tality of wahoo from 90% to 50%, following the hypo- 
