Stock Evaluation of the Data-Limited Fisheries: A Case Study of Five Major Commercially Important Fishes from the Western Indian Ocean, Pakistan Hasnain Raza 1,2 , Qun Liu 1 *, Muhammad Tariq Hanif 2 and Yanan Han 1 1 College of Fisheries, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China 2 Marine Fisheries Department, Government of Pakistan, Karachi 74000, Pakistan Article Information Received 08 November 2021 Revised 23 December 2021 Accepted 11 January 2022 Available online 12 May 2022 (early access) Published 25 February 2023 Authors’ Contribution HR was responsible for collecting and processing the data and completed the frst draft under the supervision of QL. MTH guided on data analysis and contributed to the editing of the submitted manuscript along with YH. Key words Western Indian Ocean (WIO) Pakistan, data-limited stock evaluation, CMSY, BSM Evaluating the stock status is one of the most fundamental part of the dynamic cycle of fsheries management intended to secure our aquatic resources. Indeed the stock assessments not only provide a technical foundation for setting up yearly fsheries harvest levels but also ofers a wide variety of other fshery-related measures for management purposes. To do so, we used two newly developed Catch-based Monte Carlo method of estimating MSY (CMSY) and the Bayesian state-space Schaefer production model (BSM) based on the catch and efort time series data from (1993-2017) from the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), Pakistan. The fve major fsh species of commercial importance exploited by heterogeneous fshing feets in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of Pakistan have been undertaken as a case study for the stock evaluation. Altogether, both the models estimated largely similar results. The stock status results indicate that Euthynnus afnis and Rachycentron canadum were healthy, while Scomberomorus commerson and Parastromateus niger were overfshed and Lutjanus argentimaculatus was strongly overfshed. However, all the stocks were subjected to overfshing. Therefore, the parameters estimated from our study may be used as indicators for the sustainable management of the fsheries in the country. INTRODUCTION T he world’s fsheries have been threatened by stock depletion. Despite massive eforts to improve fsheries management, the success rate is still limited (Beddington et al., 2007). Evaluating and reporting stock status requires comprehensive data. Conversely, most global fsheries were data-poor or data-limited in reality, and the tendency against estimating data-limited stock status for efcient management decisions is rising (Dowling et al., 2019). The worldwide fsheries dilemma has been driven by unsustainable resource exploitation for decades. Eventually, this would cause the collapse of world fsheries (Pauly et al., 1998). The rapid reduction in major fsh stocks has raised serious concerns about the efects of overfshing on aquatic resources (Myers and Worm, 2003). * Corresponding author: qunliu@ouc.edu.cn 0030-9923/2023/0003-1099 $ 9.00/0 Copyright 2023 by the authors. Licensee Zoological Society of Pakistan. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). In particular, overfshing has been considered for the collapse of the world’s fsheries stocks, albeit the fact that 63% of the assessed fsh stocks require rebuilding and lower exploitation rates to reverse the global depletion process (Worm et al., 2009). Pakistan has a coastline of 990 km long, split into two parts, i.e., Sindh and Balochistan coast. However, the maritime zones covered an area of 240,000 square km with the extension of 350 square nautical miles (nmi) of the continental area from the coast (Pakistan, 2016) (Fig. 1). The fsheries sector of the country accounted for less than 0.4% of the Gross Domestic Production (GDP). Yet, the marine sector plays a pivotal role in the economic upsurge for the peoples along the coastal belt of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces. Notably, the marine capture production was reported to be 360,000 tons in 2015, although the fsh production was peaked in the early 90’s and declined after 2000. In fact, most of the fsh stock has been overfshed, apart from a few stocks indicating low fshing mortality and signs of producing sustainable catches in the future (Patil et al., 2018). The focal objective of this study is to produce robust and reliable estimates by applying a data-limited approach to assess the stock status of selected fsh stocks of commercial importance. To do so, the Catch-based Monte ABSTRACT Pakistan J. Zool., vol. 55(3), pp 1099-1108, 2023 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.pjz/20211108201136