Shore‐based observers are increasingly being used in place of at‐sea observers to monitor and sample commercial fisheries catch. However, few evaluations assess whether these programs meet their stated goals or how to optimize them, and industry data are rarely tested for accuracy despite serving as the foundation for catch accounting. Using a high‐volume trawl fishery as a case study, we evaluated observer performance, assess...

Protected species bycatch can be rare, making it difficult for fishery managers to develop unbiased estimates of fishing-induced mortality. To address this problem, we use Bayesian time-series models to estimate the bycatch of humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ), which have been documented only twice since 2002 by fishery observers in the United States West Coast sablefish pot fishery, once in 2014 and once in 2016. Thi...