Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeToole
A couple of other points I got from the meeting. While the change to more conservative recruitment failure break point is a move in the right direction it still does not seem to be very conservative. You have to hit the threshold three years in a row to start required action. Since 75 percent of the fish come from the Chesapeake it would seem that a higher level of importance would be assigned to it. I ask after the meeting about this and was told that it would be expected that the technical group would look at this but no fixed check is in place. Second point is related to needing three years in a row to pull the trigger. You could have two very bad years and one fair followed by two bad without required action. Would seem like a running three year average would be the right way, plus a more conservative approach for the Chesapeake.
Most of the reason given for the decrease in fish numbers was related to low recruitment. We have seen the number of spawning stock drop by about 20% in the last five years. It would seem very unlikely that this would be due mainly to recruitment being low since many of these fish from the last five years would not have reached the age to spawn yet. Second is even though the recruitment numbers have been low they are no where near the three year recruitment failure threshold, either the present or the new more conservative threshold talked about above.
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Good points. One thing that is a HUGE factor in redefining the method for determining recruitment failure is FIXING the bar where it is, so that it is no longer a moving target. This is huge, and I think misunderstood by most.
Here's the deal. Status Quo on this issue means that a bar that is already low, is also variable. The bar is set at 75% of the average of all years in the data set. Let's say for example that for the next 10 years we have consistently low JAI indeces (slightly above, or right at the current bar, or just one year out of every 3 slightly above the line keeping the trigger from being tripped), because those new numbers for the 10 bad years become part of the average, the bar will gradually get lower and lower as the average JAI in the data set goes down.
By FIXING the bar at its current level, or recalculated higher level, 10 bad years won't cause the bar to drop, resulting in a what could be a sliding curve toward the bottom, never quite tripping the trigger.