Good news for the future ?

[JLH]

Originally Posted by MakoMike

Remember that those 1993 and on great year classes were produced by the abysmally low SSB of the moratorium years.

Yes that is true and we got very lucky that those great years came when they did. There is clearly a large amount of variability in the YOY numbers regardless of the size of the SSB. What is scary looking at the numbers and charts is that we have only had one good YOY class in the last 8-9 years and that was with SSB at numbers that were, with the exception of the last couple of years, well above average. We are quickly decimating the population of older fish that currently make up the SSB and there are few fish in the pipeline to replace them. It is possible that we could get very lucky again and have a few banner years from a very low SSB but I don't really think of that is a good management plan.