ABSTRACT
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) jointly manage EBS snow crab. The national standards for fishery conservation and management in the reauthorized version of the Magnuson-Stevens Act guide the management decisions of the NPFMC. The population dynamics in the operating models are the same as those on which the assessment is based and determine the true state of the simulated population. The value of a regime-based harvest control rule (HCR) is most easily seen when it is applied to the regime-based operating model. Performance metrics are calculated over the last 40 years of the 50-year projection period to allow for two full cycles of recruitment in the regime-based operating model. Snow crab in the eastern Bering Sea (EBS) are distributed much of the eastern Bering Sea shelf to depths of 200 meters in a highly variable physical environment that has undergone regime shifts'.
