Biological data that are collected in commercial port sampling programs are a critical component of the assessment and management of Gulf Menhaden Brevoortia patronus and Atlantic Menhaden Brevoortia tyrannus. The menhaden port sampling program represents one of the longest continuous commercial sampling efforts in the United States; however, this sampling program has not been evaluated recently to determine whether the program adequately characterizes the size and age structure of the catch despite significant changes in the spatial extent and magnitude of the fisheries in the last three decades. We conducted a simulation study to evaluate current menhaden fishery sampling targets and to examine the relative performance of a suite of alternative targets. To simulate data collection, we conducted a bootstrap analysis of the observed port sampling data. These observations were resampled with replacement across a range of current and alternative combinations of number of trips and fish sampled per trip. At the current target for sampling intensity and allocation, the mean sample weight and proportions at age for ages 2 and 3 are well characterized in both the Gulf and Atlantic menhaden fisheries. The proportions of age‐1 fish in the catch differed by stock and region, with samples from the northern Atlantic regions displaying the greatest uncertainty overall. The proportions of age‐4 and older fish were poorly characterized in both fisheries, which is likely due to their rarity in the population (Gulf) and lack of spatial overlap between the fishery and the stratified distribution of menhaden by age along the coast (Atlantic). Our results indicate that reducing the number of fish that is sampled per trip from the current target of 10 to as few as four would have a minimal effect on estimates of mean size and proportions at age in the catch. Increasing the number of sampled trips will not greatly improve the characterization of catch size or age composition.

中文翻译：

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基于模拟的墨西哥湾和大西洋鲱鱼渔业商业港口采样计划的评估

中收集的商埠采样方案生物学数据海湾鲱鱼的评估和管理的重要组成部分Brevoortia守护神和大西洋鲱Brevoortia泰兰努斯。人工海港采样计划是美国最长的持续商业采样工作之一；但是，尽管最近三十年来渔业的空间范围和规模发生了重大变化，但该采样程序最近尚未进行评估，无法确定该程序是否能够充分表征渔获物的大小和年龄结构。我们进行了一项模拟研究，以评估目前的鱼类捕捞渔业抽样目标，并检验一系列替代目标的相对绩效。为了模拟数据收集，我们对观察到的端口采样数据进行了引导分析。对这些观测值进行重新采样，并在一系列行程和每次行程的鱼类采样的当前和替代组合范围内进行替换。在当前的采样强度和分配目标下，在海湾和大西洋捕捞渔业中，对2岁和3岁年龄段的平均样本重量和比例具有很好的特征。渔获量中的成年1鱼的比例因种群和地区而异，来自北大西洋地区的样本总体上显示出最大的不确定性。两种渔业中4岁及以上年龄鱼类的比例特征不佳，这很可能是由于它们在种群中的稀缺性（海湾）以及渔业之间缺乏空间重叠以及沿海地区按年龄划分的鲱鱼的分层分布（大西洋）。我们的结果表明，将每次旅行中采样的鱼的数量从当前的10个减少到4个，将对捕捞时年龄的平均大小和比例的估计影响最小。