Management implications of misspecification in observed recreational removals for reef fish and coastal pelagic stocks

Recreational removals of fishes are particularly challenging to estimate accurately. A recent pilot study indicated that U.S. East Coast recreational removals may be overestimated by 30-40%, which is concerning in the Southeast, where recreational removals often exceed commercial. Management strategy evaluation was used to identify the management implications of recreational removal misspecification on nine reef and coastal pelagic fishes in the U.S. Gulf of America. The R package SSMSE was used to test performance of “Status Quo” management across seven removal misspecification scenarios. When recreational removals were misspecified, absolute stock magnitude was not estimated accurately. However, relative status reference points were generally well estimated when there was constant or randomly varying misspecification (representative relative index of removals), such that Status Quo management was still able to meet biomass, exploitation, and yield targets. The ability to identify reference points and manage the stock was adversely impacted by abrupt shifts or annually time-varying trends in misspecification (non-representative index of removals). Results emphasize that a relative index of recreational removals is generally sufficient to successfully manage a stock.