Big Old Fat Fertile Female Fish, sustainable fish stocks?

Big Old Fat Fertile Female Fish (BOFFFF), quite a mouthful huh?
For fish lovers, this is probably some "god-sent" fish. It has everything a fish lover could want!

Photo credit: Karna McKinney, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries Service

I mean look at that, all the meat in one fish! But should we be harvesting these fishes as food?

BOFFFF hypothesis

Traditionally, fisheries treat all fish spawners equally, thinking that all fishes reproduce equally. With that conception, they manage their stock. But the BOFFFF hypothesis contradicts that. The BOFFFF hypothesis believes that there should be a reserve of Old Fertile Females to buffer against unfavorable environmental conditions (Mullon et al., 2012). 

The diagram below shows the exponential increase of fish spawn from bigger fishes.

Photo credit: Love et. al (1990) NOAA Technical Report

Advantages of BOFFFF

1. More eggs
2. Better quality eggs, fitter off-springs
3. Spawn at different times and places as younger females, less competition
4. Outlive periods unfavorable for reproduction

Message of the day
Please do not use BOFFFF as food. Encourage fisheries to nurture them to ensure sustainable food supply.

Literature cited:

Mullon, C., Field, J. G., Thebaud, O., Cury, P., & Chaboud, C. (2012). Keeping the big fish: Economic and ecological tradeoffs in size-based fisheries management. Journal of Bioeconomics, 14(3), 267-285.

References:

University of Hawaii at Manoa. (2014, October 21). BOFFFFs (big, old, fat, fertile, female fish) sustain fisheries. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 28, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141021101612.htm