Fishing for more data: Exploratory stock assessment of the data-limited brown crab (Cancer pagurus) stock in Norway

Formal stock assessment is a key step in managing fisheries sustainably and preventing overexploitation (Hilborn, 2011). However, the majority of the world’s exploited stocks are considered data-limited and lack formal stock assessments (Ovando et al., 2021). Several attempts to find simple, low-cost, and generic solutions for the assessment of data-limited stocks have been made, still, individual adjustments are required to provide useful information for management purposes (Dowling et al., 2019). To date, there has not been any systematic quantification of stock size of brown crab (Cancer pagurus) in Norway. The present study has therefore evaluated the applicability of data on brown crab…