Abstract

Pleuroncodes monodon is 1 of the 3 species sustaining the demersal crustacean fisheries in Chile, with landings that have had strong variations and a very slow recovery in the past decade. The southern fishing unit has been in the recovery status since 2017, following several years of intense overfishing, which affected the reproductive potential and the geographical distribution of the stock. In this study, fishing haul information from 14 direct evaluation surveys of P. monodon were used to estimate, by using geostatistics, the density of the reproductive potential of the female stock in central and southern Chile (32.0° S to 37.0° S) from 2005 to 2018. The annual mean potential eggs was estimated at 78,055.0 million potential eggs, with a mean density of 74.0 million eggs per square kilometer. Two areas of aggregation of the reproductive potential are recognized, one between 33.5° S and 34.5° S (northern zone) and the other between 35.5° S and 36.5° S (southern zone). The mean density of potential eggs was higher in the northern zone than in the southern zone, although in the southern zone there were foci with values close to 100 million eggs per square kilometer, which was not the case for the northern zone. The P. monodon population comes from a single breeding area located in the southern zone. In the 2008–2012 period, the female stock showed a net migration of 226.4 km northward (from 36°20ʹ52.5ʺ S to 34°18ʹ39.1ʺ S), although it was later reduced southward by the fishing pressure.