| Concern has been raised that the widely used spawning stock biomass might not be a sensitive index of the reproductive potential of fish populations. On the other hand, there is increasing evidence that fishing affects life history traits of fish. Fish compensate for fishing mortality by faster growth, earlier maturity and increased fecundity. Because life history traits are affected by fishing and are also critical in determining the population growth rate, they may be used as indices of population viability. In this paper, the traits that meet both criteria are investigated among age-at-maturity, fecundity and growth. In the framework of matrix population models, the life table response experiments (LTRE) method is used to quantify the effects of fishing... |
