Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery

This thesis considers the development of an operational management procedure (OMP) to provide scientific recommendations for commercial TAC for the South African west coast rock lobster (Jasus lalandii) fishery. This fishery has been under considerable stress in recent years as a result of overfishi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Johnston, Susan Joy
Other Authors: Butterworth, Doug S
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Biological Sciences 2016
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1867613203412811776
access_status_str Open Access
author Johnston, Susan Joy
author2 Butterworth, Doug S
author_browse Butterworth, Doug S
Johnston, Susan Joy
author_facet Butterworth, Doug S
Johnston, Susan Joy
author_sort Johnston, Susan Joy
collection Thesis
description This thesis considers the development of an operational management procedure (OMP) to provide scientific recommendations for commercial TAC for the South African west coast rock lobster (Jasus lalandii) fishery. This fishery has been under considerable stress in recent years as a result of overfishing and low somatic growth rates. Present catch levels, less than 2000 MT, are substantially smaller than levels recorded in the past. The present biomass (above 75mm carapace length) is estimated to be only six percent of the pristine level. At the start of this research, no long-term management strategy for the resource existed. Neither was there any robust, tested, scientific method available for setting the annual TAC for the fishery, which resulted in a time-consuming and unsatisfactory scientific debate each year in developing a series of ad hoc TAC recommendations. The work presented in this thesis is thus aimed at answering two important questions. i) Can an adequate mathematical model be developed as a basis to simulate the resource and its associated fishery? ii) Can a self-correcting robust OMP be developed for the resource? The first phase of this thesis is the development of a size-structured population model of the resource and the associated fishery. A size-structured model is necessary as lobsters are difficult to age and hence most of the data collected are on a size basis. Furthermore, important management issues, such as the legal minimum size which has changed over time, require a model able to take size-structure into account. This model is fitted to a wide range of data from the fishery, including CPUE (catch-per-unit-effort) and catch-at-size information, by maximising a likelihood function. The model is shown to fit reasonably well to all data, and to provide biologically plausible estimates for its six estimable parameters.
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/22567
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:24.523Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2016
publishDateRange 2016
publishDateSort 2016
publisher Department of Biological Sciences
publisherStr Department of Biological Sciences
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/22567 The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery Johnston, Susan Joy Butterworth, Doug S Stewart, Theodor J Operations Research mathematical models This thesis considers the development of an operational management procedure (OMP) to provide scientific recommendations for commercial TAC for the South African west coast rock lobster (Jasus lalandii) fishery. This fishery has been under considerable stress in recent years as a result of overfishing and low somatic growth rates. Present catch levels, less than 2000 MT, are substantially smaller than levels recorded in the past. The present biomass (above 75mm carapace length) is estimated to be only six percent of the pristine level. At the start of this research, no long-term management strategy for the resource existed. Neither was there any robust, tested, scientific method available for setting the annual TAC for the fishery, which resulted in a time-consuming and unsatisfactory scientific debate each year in developing a series of ad hoc TAC recommendations. The work presented in this thesis is thus aimed at answering two important questions. i) Can an adequate mathematical model be developed as a basis to simulate the resource and its associated fishery? ii) Can a self-correcting robust OMP be developed for the resource? The first phase of this thesis is the development of a size-structured population model of the resource and the associated fishery. A size-structured model is necessary as lobsters are difficult to age and hence most of the data collected are on a size basis. Furthermore, important management issues, such as the legal minimum size which has changed over time, require a model able to take size-structure into account. This model is fitted to a wide range of data from the fishery, including CPUE (catch-per-unit-effort) and catch-at-size information, by maximising a likelihood function. The model is shown to fit reasonably well to all data, and to provide biologically plausible estimates for its six estimable parameters. 2016-11-16T13:25:09Z 2016-11-16T13:25:09Z 1998 Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22567 eng application/pdf Department of Biological Sciences Faculty of Science University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Operations Research
mathematical models
Johnston, Susan Joy
The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery
thesis_degree_str Doctoral
title The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery
title_full The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery
title_fullStr The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery
title_full_unstemmed The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery
title_short The development of an operational management procedure for the South African west coast rock lobster fishery
title_sort development of an operational management procedure for the south african west coast rock lobster fishery
topic Operations Research
mathematical models
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22567
work_keys_str_mv AT johnstonsusanjoy thedevelopmentofanoperationalmanagementprocedureforthesouthafricanwestcoastrocklobsterfishery
AT johnstonsusanjoy developmentofanoperationalmanagementprocedureforthesouthafricanwestcoastrocklobsterfishery