The stock structure of petrale sole off the coast of the US and Canada is still insufficiently understood, and there is no evidence suggesting distinct biological stocks of petrale sole off the U.S. coast (Hautch et al. 2011; Stawitz et al. 2016). While the coast-wide population is modeled as a single stock, some effort is made to address underlying structure through geographical separation of data sources and fleets where possible, and consideration residual patterns (Stawitz et al. 2016).