Spain and Australia are conducting fishing research in the 58.4.1 Division from 2013 and 2017 respectively, in order to get data and biological samples which enable an assessment of Antarctic toothfish in this so called “data poor” area at the end of the whole experience. From the five surveys completed, the last two have been in coordination between the five proponents, namely Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea, France and Spain.
Spain and Australia are working on the ageing and growth estimates of Antarctic toothfish from 2015 and 2017 respectively. Previous work has been presented to the FSA-WGs where a von Bertalanffy growth function based on a least-square fitting approach from length-age pair values had been estimated for every season.
An intersessional exchange of 40 “bake and embed” otolith samples, mounted by Spain, has been made in order to compare consistency in ages estimated by different readers. Each otolith were read by 6 readers (4 Spanish and 2 Australian). As a result of these comparative analysis further work about coordination between experienced and new readers is needed.