Abstract
Commercial and recreational fishing are important to the economy and culture of Hawaii. The deep-slope bottomfish commercial fishery preferentially targets seven high value "Deep-7" species (i.e, six snappers and one grouper, hereafter referred to as bottomfish). The NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Stock Assessment Program is responsible for regularly conducting assessments of bottomfish. To improve abundance estimates, Ralston et al. (2004) recommended development of a fishery-independent survey using available "advanced technologies". This goal of this technical report was to improve stock assessments through optimal design and implementation of a bottomfish fishery-independent survey for the Deep-7 bottomfish complex in the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) with three primary objectives: 1. Evaluate the most effective survey gears for obtaining species-specific spatial sizestructured abundance metrics of the Hawaiian bottomfish stock; 2. Conduct quantitative gears intercalibration studies to determine the relative fishing power of the multiple gears to be used in the survey; 3. Detail the required methodologies for efficient conduct of a multi-gear fisheryindependent survey of the MHI bottomfish stocks.