Catch and resource trends were obtained from stock assessment documents produced by international and domestic scientific advisory agencies (Appendix Table 3).
Most of the stock assessments used were conducted in 1992 and thus the last year of data in these was 1991.
The last year of data used in the actual comparisons in this review is 1988, thus making the comparisons insensitive to the input parameters used in sequential population analyses.
Stock assessments were accepted as they stood, the only innovations introduced by the present authors being the joining up of data series from earlier reports with those of the
most recent ones, when this was necessary to extend stock parameter estimates back to the 1960s.