[STAR Panel Rec.] Connectivity to non-assessed areas

[chantelwetzel-noaa]

The 2021 STAR panel recommended that the next assessment further consider population connectivity to non-assessed areas and rank this a medium priority for the next assessment:

"Investigate the Northern stock border and connectedness with Canadian/Alaskan stocks, including the Salish Sea. Also consider issues related to the southern border with Mexico in the southern model, albeit while recognizing robust data from Mexico do not currently exist."

Evaluating available data and assessments from Canada would be helpful in updating text for the assessment report. Additionally, the surveyjoin package could be used to see what data are available in Canada for lingcod. The Pacific Survey Explorer tool does not show any data available for lingcod from other regions, but this should be verified.

[iantaylor-NOAA]

@chantelwetzel-noaa, thanks for the link to the Pacific Survey Explorer, which I have never explored before. The absence of lingcod data from BC is surely an error based on all the data shown in the data synopsis for British Columbia groundfish: https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/library-bibliotheque/41301973.pdf

DFO also conducted a lingcod stock assessment in 2025 as reported in this Science Advisory Report:
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/mpo-dfo/fs70-6/Fs70-6-2025-054-eng.pdf. The results show a very health stock "Current stock status (B2025 / B0) is 1.120" thanks to a huge 2016 cohort. The assessment was based on an SS3 model which included age composition data (it looks like length comps were used in a sensitivity analysis).

We should reach out to Dana Haggarty to ask about the referenced research document:

Haggarty, D.R., Carruthers, T.R., Walker, L.C., English, P.A., Huynh, Q.C. In prep. Outside Lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus) Stock Assessment for British Columbia in 2024. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc.

[chantelwetzel-noaa]

After I posted this originally, I wondered if the exclusion was due to only using trawl data for the Pacific Survey Explorer. Reading the assessment should answer that question.

[brianlangseth-NOAA]

@iantaylor-NOAA I assume its because of the use of trawl data. My age presentation at Western Groundfish drew laughs from those in the know when I showed sablefish age data. Gulf of Alaska has no ages since 1999! That data just isn't the right sampling domain for some species.

[iantaylor-NOAA]

Again, I don't know anything about the survey explorer, but it says "no data for lingcod in the selected surveys" even on the biomass tab in spite of the DFO data synopsis showing lingcod indices from the Synoptic Bottom Trawl surveys (screenshot below) as well as length and age comps on the following page. The first GoA trawl survey report that Google found for me shows lingcod in the top 20 species by CPUE, but pretty close to the bottom of those lists: https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/72417/noaa_72417_DS1.pdf. So maybe the survey explorer has some threshold below which no data are included.

[MargaretSiple-NOAA]

I am probably straying off the road here but because of my involvement in the Pacific Survey Explorer I feel obligated to pipe up! I think this may just be an issue of them needing to update the species list in the data pipeline used for Pacific Survey Explorer. At least for the Gulf (where I know there are lingcod!) they're just not in the list of species used to pull the data to Pacific Survey Explorer via fishyplots. They're likewise not in the species list for the PBS species. So I am guessing that's why they're not in here. I wrote them an issue about it.

[seananderson]

To continue derailing further, I'll note that we now have a web version of the BC groundfish data synopsis report and it has the latest 2025 surveys included. Here's lingcod: https://gfsynopsis.ca/?species=lingcod Soon I'll have the 2026 data in the web version once it's available in our databases.