Assessment of the South African sardine resource using data from 1984-2011, with some results for a single stock hypothesis

Although the base case operating model for the South African sardine resource was updated from the last assessment (Cunningham and Butterworth 2007) to take account of new data collected between 2007 and 2010 (de Moor and Butterworth 2011a), the International Review Panel for the 2011 International Fisheries Stock Assessment Workshop suggested some revisions to this model (Smith et al. 2011) before it is used in the development of a new MP.

This document presents the updated base case operating models for a single sardine stock hypothesis, assuming a Hockey Stick stock recruitment relationship to apply. The model detailed in the Appendices is generalised for both the single and two mixing-stock hypotheses. Results for the single stock base case as well as some robustness tests are given in this document at the posterior mode only. A separate document will show the full posterior distributions. Initial results for the two mixing-stock hypothesis are given in de Moor and Butterworth (2012).