Multi-species assessment of tunas caught in the tropical Atlantic purse seine fishery : sensitivity of production models to biases in reported catches

Abstract : In this document, different scenarios of uncertainties in a multispecies fishery are presented. Uncertainties have been considered in the estimation of the species composition of the tropical tuna catch as well as in the total catch. Although three species (yellofin, skipjack and bigeye) are involved in the tropical tuna fishery, only uncertainties in the bigeye vs skipjack have been taken into account, in order to simplify the analysis. Regarding the total catch, bigeye has been considered as the species with higher uncertainty due to the IUU catch component. Analyses have been focused in evaluating the sensitivity of the current assessment methods to these uncertainties. Taking into account that the two sources of uncertainty affect the age structure of the catch as well as the total catch, surplus production methods have been applied in the assessment.