Exploitation models and catch statistics of the Victorian fishery for abalone Haliotis rubra

Catch and effort data for the abalone Haliotis rubra fishery off Victoria, Australia, revealed that catches were allied to incentive (price); annual catch was proportional to effort. The robustness of the fishery can be attributed to low fishing mortality (F around 0.1) and a relatively high minimum length of capture (120 mm). Exploitation models showed that egg production was at least 50% that of unfished stocks. The analyses also showed that egg production was sensitive to variation in the growth parameters; fast-growing populations were more vulnerable to recruitment overfishing than slow-growing populations. For slow-growing populations, yields could be considerably increased without endangering recruitment. It is suggested, from the available evidence, that overfishing has been overemphasized in the collapse of abalone fisheries.