Evaluating Effects of Recreational Fishing at Red Snapper Hot Spots Using Index-Removal Methods

For many species, fishing mortality is spatially concentrated and thus confounds traditional assumptions of homogeneous mortality and motivates alternative assessment approaches that can evaluate localized exploitation rates. In the case of Gulf of Mexico red snapper, 30% of the total recreational landings come from a relatively small area off Alabama during a very short fishing season. Index-removal and change-in-ratio methods represent particularly useful tools for assessing local abundance and exploitation rates in this situation when removals are known and there are surveys before and after the fishery. In this paper we evaluate the potential to apply these methods to estimate local abundance and fishing mortality. We contrast these with estimates obtained with a traditional population-wide assessment model.