SAFMC King Mackerel Comitte Meeting at St. Simmons Island

This is from the Mackeral committee meeting being held at St Simons Island. Hopefully they will not take any action based on this report but beware.
The SAFMC SSC has not provided recommendations of OFL or ABC for Atlantic migratory group king mackerel based on SEDAR 16; however, they plan to begin at their June 2009 meeting. Table 4 shows potential yields at various benchmarks for the years 2007 through 2016 that could be chosen for these parameters. The current annual TAC for Atlantic group king mackerel (10.0 million pounds) is above the estimated yield at F30%SPR for 2010 (9.2 million pounds); however, catches in recent years have only been approximately 6.0 million pounds. Additionally, the current SSB is approximately 1.3 times MSST, and the current fishing mortality rate is only approximately equal to the MFMT (Table 2). Consequently, the Atlantic migratory group of king mackerel is not overfished, and it is unlikely that overfishing is occurring.