RESEARCH ARTICLE


An Evaluation of 0-Group Abundance Indices of Barents Sea Fish Stocks



Elena Eriksen1, *, Dmitry Prozorkevich2, Gjert E. Dingsør3
1 Institute of Marine Research, PO Box 1870 Nordnes, N-5817 Bergen, Norway
2 Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO), 6 Knipovich Street, Murmansk, 183763, Russia
3 Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biology, PO Box 1066, University of Oslo, N-0316 Oslo and Institute of Marine Research, PO Box 1870 Nordnes, N-5817 Bergen, Norway


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© 2009 Eriksen et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Institute of Marine Research, PO Box 1870 Nordnes, N-5817 Bergen, Norway; Tel: +47 55 23 53 51; Fax: +47 55238687; E-mail: elena.eriksen@imr.no


Abstract

The International 0-group fish survey in the Barents Sea (1965-2002) aimed to give initial indication of the recruiting year class strengths. Since 2003 the 0-group survey has been a part of a Joint Norwegian-Russian ecosystem survey of the Barents Sea, conducted by IMR (Norway) and PINRO (Russian Federation). The electronic 0-group databases were missing some data and contained errors, therefore the databases have been quality checked and corrected for the period 1980-2006. Two separate sets of 0- group indices were re-estimated, both with and without correction for capture efficiency, using a stratified sample mean approach, and 0-group indices were correlated with other appropriate abundance indices. The exclusion of errors from the database has improved our confidence in the indices and analysis. In general, the 0-group indices seem to be reliable predictors of year class strengths and are adequate to use as input in stock assessment-models and recruitment studies.

Keywords: 0-group fish, abundance, Barents Sea, recruitment.