On September 23, 2009 the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the New England Fishery Management Council issued a correction to the 2010-2011 Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) recommendation for the skate complex. As a result of a mistake whereby unavailable data was wrongly included in the calculations as "zero" rather than "missing", the revised recommendation increases the ABC by 28.6%, from 23,826 mt. to 30,643 mt.
The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) was asked to review a correction to the skate complex ABC, using the same basis for determining the ABC, approved by the SSC February 6, 2009. The PDT’s calculation of the most recent 3-year average of the multi-species skate survey index inadvertently excluded the 2007 spring survey catch of little skates. The original calculation erroneously included a zero value in places where the value was actually missing thereby falsely lowering the multispecies skate index.
The original recommendation based upon the erroneous calculation was for an ABC of 57% (23,826 mt. ) of the estimated catch in 2007 and a total catch reduction (the sum of landings and discards) of at least 43%. After the correction the revised ABC is increased to 74% (30,643 mt. ) of the estimated catch in 2007 and the total catch reduction (the sum of landings and dead discards) is lowered to 26%."
Read the memo from Paul Howard to Dr. Steve Cadrin of the SSC.