Northeast Data Poor Stocks Working Group report, December 8-12, 2008 meeting

"Data poor stocks are problematic for managers because traditional measures of status (biomass and fishing mortality) are not available. A variety of ad hoc metrics have been developed to address these issues but a synoptic evaluation of the problem has not been conducted in the Northeast. The term 'data poor' will be used to categorize assessments limited by either data or lack of contrast in time series. Fisheries stock assessments require the integration of multiple sources of data including commercial and recreational landings, discards from multiple fleets, fishery independent survey indices, and measures of fishing effort. For some species, one or more of these data sources may not be available or have such low precision that it is not possible to use them in a conventional application within an assessment."--Page 7. by Northeast Data Poor Stocks Working Group. "January 2009." "The Northeast Data Poor Stocks Working Group (DPWG) was formed in 2007, as part of the SAW process, to perform stock assessments of species that are difficult to assess due to lack of critical data or severe modeling problems. Monkfish was the first stock addressed by DPWG in 2007. The current report describes new work performed in 2008 by the DPWG on the NE skate species complex, deep sea red crab, Atlantic wolfish, scup, black sea bass, and weakfish. The DPWG met in October and November, 2008, and had an integrated peer review meeting during December 8-12, 2008 in Woods Hole at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center"--Foreword. Includes bibliographical references.