Data limited assessment of selected North American anadromous charr stocks

Charr populations are particularly susceptible to change, either from the application of harvest or environmental conditions such as climate variation. As an alternative to conventional fishery analysis, we analyze the sustainability and viability of selected North American charr stocks using a number of approaches. We compare several methods for data limited situations to determine the allowable harvest of the Ekalluk River, Paliryauk River, Halovik River, Jayco Lake and Lauchlan River Arctic Charr including Cadima’s Maximum Sustainable Production Method, Hierarchical Bayesian Surplus Production Models, a Status Quo Total Allowable Harvest method, Long-term Average Catch methods and the Depletion-Corrected Average Catch method. Each method provided a similar outcome in terms of the relative importance of stocks to the fishery. The predicted sustainable harvest of larger stocks such as the Ekalluk and Jayco varied more according to the method applied than the other stocks studied. While not a replacement for more comprehensive fishery models these methods can be useful in data poor situations.