As discussed at Step 6, the selection of Performance Indicators (PIs) and identification of appropriate Reference Points (RPs) is somewhat more complex in a multispecies fishery where management baskets are being used. In these cases, managers must ask themselves if PIs and RPs selected for the representative species for each basket will accurately represent trends and changes for the other species in the basket(s).
In some cases, a given PI may be suitable for all species in a basket, but different RPs may be appropriate for some species. For example, if Spawning Potential Ratio (SPR) is the selected PI, the appropriate target RP is 0.20 for fast growing species, and 0.40 for slow growing species. Thus, if a given management basket contains species with a wide range of growth rates managers must be careful to choose an RP for analysis that doesn’t put the slower growing species at risk, even if the representative species has a faster growth rate. In this example, an RP of 0.40 can be selected (regardless of the growth rate of the representative species) to be precautionary, or if managers have a slightly higher risk-tolerance, an RP of 0.30 could be selected as a mid-point between the fast and slow growing species’ SPR targets.