Catch-at-size analysis for Dosidicus gigas in the central Gulf of California, Mexico in 1996-2002

We analyzed the catch-at-size data for Dosidicus gigas from the fishing seasons 1996-1997 to 2001-2002. We were interested in alternative methods for stock assessment for this species because of the variability in recruitment and harvest rate. The catch-at-size model (CASA) could be fitted to the catch-at-size data for the different fishing seasons. The CASA model was able to mimic the different size-frequency distributions for jumbo squid. Our estimates of recruitment showed high variability. We estimated the highest recruitment in the time-series to be 8 × 107 recruits during 1996-1997. During the 1997-1998 fishing season, the recruitment fell to a low level during the 1997-1998 El Niño. We estimated the harvest rate-at-size to be between 0.2 and 0.6 for squid between 30 and 58 cm mantle length. The results show that the CASA model can be applied to the available fishery data for the jumbo squid.