Stock assessment of American Samoa bottomfishes, 2026 update

In American Samoa, the bottomfishes occurring in federal waters (3 to 200 miles from shore) are currently managed by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WPRFMC) under the “Fishery Ecosystem Plan for the American Samoa Archipelago” (FEP; WPRFMC, 2009). This FEP originally included 205 species or families of fish and invertebrates (17 bottomfish species) to be managed with catch limits or other regulations. However, most species within the FEP were reclassified as “ecosystem component species” in 2019, leaving only 11 “Bottomfish Management Unit Species” (BMUS) that required management by the WPRFMC in American Samoa (84 FR 2767). These 11 species were retained as they were considered by local fishermen and fisheries scientists to be the most important for management. A further reduction of the management list occurred in 2025, with an effort to focus assessments solely on deep eteline snappers, while removing Pristipomoides filamentosus, which is rare in the region. Further, a newly described snapper species, Etelis boweni, was added to the list, which also includes Aphareus rutilans, E. carbunculus, E. coruscans, Pristipomoides flavipinnis, and P. zonatus. This report presents the benchmark stock assessment of four of these six BMUS deep snappers (Table 7-1), while we were unable to model the other two species (E. boweni and E. carbunculus), given that their data are confounded. These species will need to be managed using an indicator species (e.g., E. coruscans).