The toothfish fishery in the Amundsen Sea region operates under a research plan developed by the Scientific Committee in 2014, designed to provide data to support a two-area stock assessment model. The slope and shelf area within the Amundsen Sea (Small-Scale Research Units 88.2C-G) shows an improvement in the numbers of recaptures of tagged toothfish within the four research blocks. However, an uneven distribution of fishing effort on the seamounts in the north of this region (included within Small-Scale Research Unit 88.2H) has had an impact on the tagging programme and limited recapture data. Although age data from this area are now available from other Members agreed criteria for aggregating age data among laboratories is still under development.
We encourage Members to continue aging in this region and to make their age data available, and we recommend that the Secretariat engage with Members conducting otolith ageing to determine how best to integrate age reading data into the CCAMLR database.
Structured fishing and a season-start delay to the start of fishing in SSRU 88.2H started in the 2023 season. Six tagged toothfish were released in 2023 on a seamount that was last fished in 2017 at which time a large catch came from that feature. As at least several more years of structured fishing are needed to refine results, we recommend that this current structured fishing approach continues.
We further recommend that the approach for setting catch limits in the Amundsen Sea region research blocks be reviewed, to enable improved data collection and the consequent development of an integrated stock assessment for the region.