2 Arrow squid fishery catch effort data

The New Zealand arrow squid fishery is based on two related species. Nototodarusgouldi is found around mainland New Zealand north of the Subtropical Convergence, where N.sloanii is found in and to the south of the convergence zone.

Except for the Southern Islands fishery (aroundAuckland and Campbell Islands), for which a separate Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACC) is set, the two species are managed as a single fishery within an overall TACC. Jigging vessels apply most of the fishing effort on the main islands fisheries. The Southern Islands fishery is almost entirely a trawl fishery. Because the Southern Islands fishery is readily accessible to trawlers, and because squid can be caught with little fin fish by catch it is an attractive resource for trawlers.

The New Zealand squid fishery began in the late1970s and reached a peak in the early 1980s when over 200 squid jigging vessels came to fish in the New Zealand EEZ. The discovery and exploitation of the large squid stocks in the southwest Atlantic substantially increased the supply of squid to the Asian markets causing the price to fall. In the early 1980s, Japanese squid jiggers would fish in New Zealand for a short time before continuing on the southwest Atlantic. In the late 1980s the jiggers stopped transit fishing in New Zealand and the number of jiggers fishing declined from over 200 in 1983 to around 15 in 1994. Over the last 11 years the jig catch has ranged from 9000-54 000 t and the trawl fishery has fluctuated between about 30000-60000 t. A summary of the arrow squid fishery history and stock assessment can be found in Annala etal. (1999).

All commercial fishing catch and effort data for the squid fishery are recorded for the Quota Management System and are stored in the Ministry of Fisheries databases. The squ_ce database holds a research version of these data. These data are used to calculate biological reference points such the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) in terms of Current Annual Yield (CAY) or Maximum Constant Yield (MCY).

The data in the squ_ce database are a copy of all arrow squid fishery catch and effort data from the MFish databases from 1989 to 1994 and are summarised in Gibson(1995).