Abstract: The status of the hairtail (Trichiurus haumela) fishery in the East China Sea has not been quantitatively determined using biological reference points, despite its commercial importance and declining stock abundances since the mid 1990s. This is an attempt to incorporate uncertainty into the estimation of F_0.1 and F_max using Monte Carlo method and make use of the results in the fishery management. We incorporated random variation to simulate uncertainties in the fishery data. The results showed that high levels of uncertainty increased variations in F_0.1 and F_max estimation, which led to a decrease in the probability that the fishery was defined as overfished. We then compared current fishing mortality F_cur with F_0.1 and F_max and found that the hairtail fishery is being overexploited. The changes of CPUE at various t_c revealed that increasing t_c reduced the probability that F_cur is greater than F_BRP, for which we concluded that increasing t_c can improve the stock status of the hairtail fishery.