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Harvest control rules (HCRs) for sustainable fishery management have been developed for data-limited fish species for which stock assessments cannot be conducted. However, HCRs have largely not considered mixed-species catches, as when fishing-effort data are widely pooled for numerous minor species in a multispecies fishery. Presently, a feedback HCR has been successfully applied in Japanese fisheries management. By combining management strategy evaluation with a simulation to generate mixed-species data from a multispecies fishery that assume constant catchability (q) among species, we evaluated the performance of this feedback HCR and then compared its performance using species-specific data. In most cases, the biomass was controlled over that needed for maximum sustainable yield (MSY), and the fishing effort was under the fishing mortality consistent with achieving MSY (FMSY). However, for slow-growing species, the biomass might become lower than what is required to remain capable of producing MSY, even though fishing effort was controlled under FMSY. The results show that the feedback HCR is appropriate for multispecies fisheries management where only mixed-species data are available but with special monitoring for slow-growing minor species.

We developed a simple back-calculation model that includes the age effect in which otolith size increases continuously during no-growth periods. To evaluate the validity of our proposed model, we back-calculated the past fish lengths and growth rates using the new model and seven traditional back-calculation models (scale-proportional hypothesis (SPH), body-proportional hypothesis (BPH), Fraser–Lee, biological intercept, nonlinear SPH, nonlinear BPH, and modified Fry) using the otoliths of individually tag-recaptured white-spotted char (Salvelinus leucomaenis). The estimated fish lengths corresponded well to observed fish lengths for simple traditional (SPH, BPH, and Fraser–Lee) and the new models. However, the back-calculated growth rates did not correspond to observed growth rates except for the new model. All previous models had considerable bias; growth rates of slow-growing fish were overestimated. As our model incorporating the age effect did not show such bias, this bias would be attributed to the age effect. Our proposed back-calculation model incorporating the age effect should be useful to estimate past growth rates at the individual level.

Differences in egg number and egg size within a wild population of white-spotted char (Salvelinus leucomaenis) were examined from the perspective of maternal growth history by using a back-calculation method. Relatively greater egg size variation occurred among females (61.6%) than within females (38.4%). Larger females produced a larger number of eggs, which were also larger in size. To understand the causes of variation in egg number and egg size, several contributory factors determining maternal size were considered (initial size, growth rate for each age, total age). Egg number was not associated with maternal growth history. Contrary to egg number, egg size was strongly associated with maternal growth history; high growth in the first year was negatively associated with egg size, but high growth in the second year was positively associated with egg size. The results indicated that white-spotted char potentially exhibit phenotypic plasticity in egg size according to their growth history.