Assessing the green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis) stock in Maine, USA

The green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis) fishery is of great importance to Maine’s economy. The fishery took off in the late 1980s as a result of expanding export markets, but has experienced substantial decline in landings since 1992 because of large decreases in urchin stock abundance. Fishery-independent surveys have not been conducted, and no formal stock assessment has been done prior to this study. Using the data collected from the fishery and urchin life history parameters derived from scientific studies, we conducted a formal stock assessment for the urchin stock. A stochastic observation-error length-structured model is used to describe the dynamics of the sea urchin population. A robust Bayesian approach is used for estimating fishery parameters because of concerns of possible outliers in fisheries data and mis-specification of priors. This study shows that the current stock is only 10% of the virgin stock biomass and that the exploitation rate is close to 40% suggesting that a large reduction in exploitation rate is necessary.