Candidate empirical MPs for Indian Ocean skipjack tuna

The objective of this work is to develop a Management Procedure (MP) for Indian Ocean
Skipjack tuna (SKJ), which includes specification of the data inputs, harvest control rule (HCR)
and management outputs, and that has been fully tested using an appropriate simulation
framework. The MPs being developed are empirical, being based on abundance indices typically
used in the stock assessment. Simulation testing has demonstrated that when appropriately
tuned, such MPs can perform well. The current report presents the latest iteration of this
work, with a number of updates since TCMP 2022. Three tuned MPs are presented, along
with robustness testing of the potential implications of positive implementation error. Results
demonstrate that a conservative MP is more likely to achieve management goals given the
possibility of catches exceeding recommendations made by the MP.