Fishing Mortality - Total harvest rate (total numbers killed divided by total exploitable numbers, age-1+) for the entire stock and fishing mortality by fleet (continuous rates) are provided in Figure 15 and Table 17. As the stock became exploited in the early 1960s and moved away from virgin conditions, the harvest rate remained at relatively low levels and slowly climbed until the 1980s when all three fisheries and the shrimp bycatch fleet became simultaneously active. Exploitation continued to climb until the mid-1990s when harvest rate peaked around 20%. Since that time, exploitation rate has seen a relatively steady decline to a 2014 value (.08) that is equivalent to values in the early 1980s when the recreational fleet first became active. Much of the decline is attributed to a precipitous drop in shrimp bycatch fishing mortality, which was the dominant source of removals for the entire timeseries up until the mid-2000s. Since that time, the commercial east fleet has been the dominant component with the commercial west fleet exhibiting similar, but typically lower fishing mortality. The recreational fleet is often the smallest component of fishing mortality, but has seen a sharp increase since 2010 and was actually the dominant component in the terminal year. All of the directed fleets have shown a generally increasing trend in fishing mortality since the 1980s. However, the commercial west fleet then showed a declining trend from the mid-2000s to the terminal year. The commercial east fishery showed two large peaks (timeseries highs) in 2009 and 2011, but has been declining from 2012-2014. Terminal year fishing mortality rates for the commercial east, commercial west, recreational, and shrimp bycatch fleets were 0.05, 0.06, 0.08, and 0.06, respectively. - Biomass and Abundance Trajectories - Spawning stock biomass (number of eggs) and total biomass (metric tons) have followed similar trends over the entire timeseries (Figures 22 and 23; Table 18). Steady declines occurred as the stock moved away from virgin conditions and was lightly exploited by the commercial fisheries up until the early 1980s, but simultaneously experience comparatively high shrimp bycatch mortality. In the early 1980s the recreational fleet began to exploit the resource and commercial mortality concomitantly increased causing a rapid decline in biomass until the late 1990s. Timeseries lows were reached in the late 1990s corresponding to the maximum bycatch mortality rates. With the reduction in shrimp effort and bycatch mortality in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the stock rebounded slightly and has seen a gradually increasing trend over the last two decades. Despite the decline in shrimp mortality being partially replaced by higher directed fishing mortality (compared to levels seen in the 1980s), the terminal biomass (10,952mt) is estimated to be at its highest point since 1995 and the same is true for terminal SSB (2.06E+14 eggs). Depletion levels (SSB/SSB0) reached a low point of 26% in 1999 and 2000 and fluctuated around 30% for all of the 2000s. In the last few years depletion has decreased and in 2014 was at 31%, the highest level since 1996. Similarly, total abundance has shown similar trends as biomass and SSB, but is slightly more volatile because of its sensitivity to recruitment values (Figure 23; Table 18). From timeseries lows in the late 1990s, abundance has shown a stronger increasing trend than biomass and reached its highest level since 1994 in 2013 and 2014 (terminal year estimate of 45 million fish). Abundance trends are characterized by periodic troughs due to below average recruitment events, but age structure has been steadily rebuilding since the late 1990s due to strong cohorts over the last decade and a half (Figure 23). Average age in the stock at virgin conditions was between 3 and 4 years of age. Average age is now around age-2. - Discussion - The model generally fit each of the data sources well with limited residual patterns, but did not tightly fit annual values for each of the indices. However, the trends among observed and predicted indices were in general agreement. Landings and age composition showed acceptable fits with no strong residual patterns. Length composition data from the video and groundfish survey were not as well fit as the age composition data, but this is not unexpected when fitting length data within an age structure model, particularly with a fast growing fish like vermilion snapper. There was some strong parameter correlation, particularly in domed selectivity parameters and between steepness and the stock-recruit variance (σR) term, which may be the cause of slight model instability. However, the bootstrap and jitter analysis indicated that these correlations were not causing excessive model instability as most runs converged to the same solution space. No retrospective trends were present indicating internal consistency within the model. In general, the model appears to be performing well with no convergence issues or any major instability. This is not to say it is the best possible model or the most accurate, but, given the available data and the results of a suite of diagnostic analyses, no pathological faults have been found. - Stock Status - Using SPR 30% as the basis for defining MSST and MFMT, stock status appears to be healthy. In 2014, the stock was around 73% of MFMT, 140% of MSST, and 105% of SSBSPR30% with an SSB2014/SSB0 of 32% (Tables 21 and 22). The Kobe plot (Figure 51) indicates that over the course of its history, overfishing occurred on vermilion snapper from 1986-2006, but this mostly corresponded to fishing down from equilibrium conditions (e.g., towards SPR 30%). Over the last decade, overfishing has generally not occurred except in a few years. On the other hand, vermilion has never been overfished. After the intense fishing pressure of the late 1980s and early 1990s, SSB did decline below that at SPR 30%, but never went below the MSST. With the recent decline in fishing mortality and the increase in SSB, vermilion snapper is currently not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.