Data up to 2015. Landings of Northern white shrimp in the US Gulf of Mexico represent approximately 97% of total landings in FAO Area 31. Commercial Catch Statistics - The Stock Synthesis assessment model was parameterized with white shrimp commercial catch data from statistical zones 7-21 from January 1984 through December 2015 including: directed fishing effort by year and month, i.e., effort for those trips where >90 percent of the catch were white shrimp, used to calculate monthly CPUE. In addition, model inputs included total catch by size, i.e., size composition data consisting of count of numbers of shrimp per pound. To calculate CPUE statistics the methods outlined in Nance et al. (2008) were used. Beginning with pilot studies in 1999, an electronic logbook program (ELB) was initiated to augment shrimp fishing effort measurements. Gallaway et al. (2003a, 2003b) provides an in-depth description of this ELB data collection program and data collection procedures. These ELB data have been used to supplement the effort and location data collected by NMFS port agents and state trip tickets since 2006. Total catch in pounds of shrimp tails by month from January 1984 through December 2015 was a primary input in the model. Beginning in 1984 shrimp catch data for the smallest sized shrimp, >67 count, were recorded at a finer scale, thus allowing the partitioning of this size category into four additional count categories, therefore having finer resolution for the smaller sized shrimp in the catch. This resulted in a total of 11 count categories for the data collected from 1984 to present; <15, 15-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-67, 68-80, 81-100,101-115, and >115 (Hart and Nance 2010). These data are entered into the model as monthly catch in pounds in each of the eleven size bins for the years 1984-2015.