Estimating the Andromeda catchability compared to the Africana for South African hake in an update of the Reference Case assessment

The 2013 RS1 Reference Case assessment used for OMP testing is updated to include abundance indices which have become available for the following two years. Trends are hardly altered, though for M. paradoxus a decline in spawning biomass over the most recent years is now evident. If instead of assuming that the catchability for the Andromeda and Africana are the same, their ratio is estimated in the assessment process, Andromeda is estimated to have a catchability 0.75 that of Africana with a 95% CI of (0.55; 1.03).