composition of sablefish samples in OR

[kellijohnson-NOAA]

Species composition in a market category was previously documented such that a sample_no in OR that was primarily of sablefish could have included other species. I was recently informed at the Pre-Assessment workshop that composition information may no longer be being recorded. For example, if a sablefish had a thornyhead in its mouth, this thornyhead would be recorded as a thornyhead and removed from the sample weight of sablefish and the landing weight, which was reflected in the EXP_WT column. Now, they are no longer bothering to record this information because the fish processing plants don't want to pay for the thornyhead so they are backing that weight out of the fish ticket. More information to come later today.

[kellijohnson-NOAA]

FIXED:
I have been working with Craig to ensure that all samples from Oregon that are given a sample number only include a single species. This appears to be correct as of 2019-04-04. I think the mixed species samples I was seeing in PacFIN were maybe from SP samples and not OR samples? I can no longer find a single instance where a unique sample contains more than one species.
Expanded weight (EXP_WT) will be less than total or round weight (TOTAL_WGT or RWT_LBS) when grading occurs. The total weight from a fish ticket (FTID) is partitioned between each of the samples using the composition of the grades. If you sum the EXP_WT for all grades that can be attributed to a given fish ticket it will equal TOTAL_WGT.

I also checked why the OR EXP_WT would be less than the total or round weight when samples are from ocean run, round specimens. The conclusion was that sometimes when ocean run are sampled there will be additional samples that are graded. The EXP_WT will reflect that some fish were removed and attributed to a different sample. For example, if the total weight of a fish ticket that has multiple species is first divided between species then divided between the grades the sample weight for a given sample number should be less than or equal to the exp_wt because not all fish would be sampled for a given grade.

• Check that the weight of the graded sampled fish are less than or equal to the difference between TOTAL_WGT and EXP_WT for the ocean run fish.
• Note that ocean run might not really be ocean run, but rather a mix of lots of grades where one or more other grade has been removed. For example, all large fish are separated and samples are taken from them while another sampler looks at all the remaining fish and samples from them thinking they are ocean run, but really, the second sample is ocean run - large fish.
• It appears as though OR has done a good job documenting this, and in the new comprehensive bds table there is a comment field that notes other grades were taken, or something along those lines.