Recruitment forecasting using indices of young-of-the-year Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) abundance in the Strait of Georgia (BC)

Within the Strait of Georgia (BC, Canada), recruitment of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) to the spawning stock at age 3 can be highly variable, and this component may compose a major portion of the spawning-stock biomass. Therefore, a reliable method of forecasting recruitment strength would be useful for determining total allowable catches for the fishery. We developed an empirical approach to forecasting recruitment from young-of-the-year (YOY) surveys using purse-seine sampling in late September and evaluate its predictive capability for estimating the relative size of a year class before it enters the fishery. For each year, we compared YOY catches-by-weight with the number of age-3 recruits derived from subsequent catch-at-age analyses. The relationship is positive but not statistically significant because of considerable annual variation in the estimates. However, it is worth noting that in years when YOY herring were least abundant, the resulting cohort also was low. Consequently, although the relationship may not be sufficiently precise for accurate recruitment forecasting, it can be used by fishery management for the qualitative evaluation of the likelihood of strong or weak returns in future seasons when setting quotas for the fishery.