Some insights into sardine sustainable yield rates

A simple approach is used to calculate annual sustainable yield rates (surplus production divided by biomass) for eleven of the world’s sardine stocks. The average value across stocks of the median for each over time is 0.34 in relation to spawning biomass. Viewed overall, the corresponding value for the South African sardine is 0.44. The current management procedure used for South African sardine sets the annual directed TAC (at basis) near to 0.09 of the biomass estimate from the November survey each year. Adjusting for biases associated with the hydroacoustic estimates and for the ratio of the November to spawning biomass, this corresponds to a 0.18 fraction of spawning biomass.