South Coast Rock Lobster: a new management target

Current spawning/exploitable biomass for the south coast rock lobster resource is estimated to be 41%/45% of K. The Reference Case (RC) MSY estimate is 420 MT at a Bsp/K of 0.35 (a Bexp/K of 0.42). Fmsy is estimated to be 0.11, though MSY-related estimates are heavily dependent on assumptions made about the stock-recruitment relationship. The RC model estimates that the resource is currently 19% above Bmsy in terms of spawning biomass. A new management target, based on Bmsy, for simulation testing new candidate OMPs is suggested.