Abundance of Patagonian toothfish (D. eleginoides) at Macquarie Island estimated from tagging studies during 1995/96 fishing season

This note describes a successful method for tagging Dissostichus eleginoides and presents an analysis of a tag-recapture experiment carried during the Macquarie Island fishery for this species during the 1995-96 season. Simple population and tag accumulation models are used to account for the tags being released at various times throughout the season, and the effects of the removals by fishing. By assuming that recaptures have a Poisson distribution, maximum likelihood estimates are obtained for the pre-fishing abundance of the population in the season of 996 000 fish. However, this is adjusted to 901 000 fish if a small number of recovered but unreported tags are taken into account.