Management of Invertebrate Fisheries in the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea

An assessment of the invertebrate fisheries (shrimp, crab and cephalopod) in the gulf of suez was made using the catch and effort data from the trawl fishery during the fishing seasons from 1979/1980 to 2003/04. a biomass - based model was fitted to the catch per unit effort (cpue) indices and the maximum sustainable yield (msy) and the optimum level of fishing effort ( f p | ) for large shrimp, small shrimp, cuttlefish, squid and crab fisheries were estimated. the two thirds of f pt as a target reference point revealed that all the five invertebrate stocks are heavily exploited and their msy can be obtained through effort reduction by about 53.7, 53.6, 46.6, 55.2 and 48.5 % for large shrimp, small shrimp, cuttlefish, squid and crab fisheries respectively. as direct reduction of fishing effort is impossible for socio-economic reasons, decreasing the number of fishing days, defining closed areas and regulating mesh sizes of nets are advised