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Historical biomass and sustainable harvest of Great Lakes lake sturgeon ( Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque, 1817)
Author(s) -
Haxton T.,
Whelan G.,
Bruch R.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied ichthyology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.392
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1439-0426
pISSN - 0175-8659
DOI - 10.1111/jai.12569
Subject(s) - acipenser , lake sturgeon , biomass (ecology) , fishery , sturgeon , biology , population , ecology , environmental science , fish <actinopterygii> , demography , sociology
Summary Historical abundance and biomasss of lake sturgeon ( Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque, 1817) in the Great Lakes were estimated from historical commercial harvest data from 1879 to 1920 using two modeling techniques: a surplus production model with a Bayesian approach, and a depletion model. In addition, theoretical sustainable levels of exploitation and temporal recovery periods were estimated based on the surplus production model. The historical biomass of Lake Sturgeon in the Great Lakes during the period from 1879 to 1885 varied for each model and ranged from 313 900 to 6 473 000 kg (0.5–16.7 kg ha −1 ) using the surplus production model to 968 000 to 25 414 000 kg (2.4–31.7 kg ha −1 ) using the depletion model. The intrinsic population growth rate as determined from the surplus production model ranged from 0.079 to 0.123, and the theoretical sustainable exploitation rate ranged from 2.0 to 3.1%. The predicted recovery period for the overexploited populations was in excess of 60 years given recruitment assuming all other impediments to population recovery were removed.