El Niño will increase the chances of more frequent and extreme adverse weather events so you need to think about how you will manage your way through. Hope for the best but plan for the worst.

The rock lobster fishery is one of New Zealand’s most valuable fisheries.

Understanding larval settlement processes can greatly assist the management of this fishery because they may explain changes in recruitment to the fishery (i.e., reaching legal size), which takes between four and eleven years. This report aims to determine trends in puerulus settlement at selected key sites around New Zealand.

Annual patterns of red rock lobster settlement are described for North Island and South Island coastal areas, based on monthly monitoring of puerulus (the post-larval stage of red rock lobster) settlement collectors.

The monitoring data for 2022–23 are described in this report and used to provide indices of puerulus settlement for 2022–23, and thus extend the time series used to identify annual trends of settlement (since 1979).

Puerulus settlement during the 2022–23 fishing year was above the long-term mean at Gisborne, Castlepoint, and Halfmoon Bay and below the long-term mean at Napier, Kaikōura, Moeraki, and Jackson Bay.

In New Zealand there are significant correlations between the level of settlement and fishery catch per unit effort for most fishery areas.

Ling (Genypterus blacodes) is an important commercial fish species in New Zealand middle depths waters and is caught mainly by bottom trawls, bottom longlines, and increasingly by potting.

This report summarises the 2023 stock assessment of one of the five main ling stocks managed under the Quota Management System: the ling stock off the west coast of the South Island (LIN 7WC).

A stock assessment model was carried out, based on commercial catches, information from the west coast South Island Tangaroa trawl survey biomass series, the commercial longline standardised catch per unit effort (CPUE) from 1991, and the commercial trawl standardised CPUE from 1997.

The initial spawning stock biomass (B0) for both the base case model was estimated to be about 62 200 t and stock status in 2023 was estimated as 51% B0. An investigative model run provided a slightly lower initial biomass and stock status in 2023 of 52%.

Five-year projections were done using the base case model, resampling recruitment from the entire range of the model, and assuming future annual catch equal to the average catch in 2020–2022. Projected stock status in 2028 was expected to be 52% of B0.

The probability that the stock status in 2028 will be above 40% B0 was 97%, and that of being less than 20%, was zero. This assessment was used to inform Fisheries New Zealand’s management of this ling stock.