Additional sardine projections based on constant catch scenarios assuming alternative November 2019 recruitment levels

Short‐term projections of the South African sardine resource under alternative small sardine bycatch and large sardine

west and south coast catch options have been run, assuming five alternative west component recruitment scenarios for November 2019, each corresponding to one of the five most recent years. The previous baseline projections randomly sampled west component recruitment from all of these years. The impact of the alternative catch options on the sardine resource is now considered given the June 2020 survey observation of recruitment west of Cape Infanta.

This document reports on some of the short‐term statistics assuming five different recruitment levels for November 2019,
and one new recruitment level, and provides a new randomly sampled set of results taking the June 2020 survey
observation of recruitment west of Cape Infanta into account. The possible management implications of these updated
results are discussed.