File(s) under permanent embargo
How much evidence is required for acceptance of productivity regime shifts in fish stock assessments: Are we letting managers off the hook?
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 07:53 authored by Klaer, NL, O'Boyle, RN, Deroba, JJ, Wayte, SE, Richard Little, Alade, LA, Rago, PJA difficult question often confronting fisheries assessment scientists and managers is whether or not to accept that a shift in stock productivity has occurred. This is particularly the case when a stock has remained at historically low biomass despite management intervention and when there is an expectation that there should have been a stock recovery. We outline a weight-of-evidence approach that provides a structured means to evaluate this question. The approach, which scores a range of attributes, was applied to five fisheries from the NW Atlantic and SE Australia, chosen to provide a range of supporting evidence, as well as different potential causal mechanisms for a productivity shift. Given the resulting scores for the example stocks, and whether a productivity shift has been accepted for those stocks, a score of between 7 and 12 indicated a level required for acceptance of a productivity shift. The approach has highlighted areas of future research that would improve individual species scores. It is hoped that the paper will encourage a more systematic examination of potential stock productivity shifts in assessments than has hereto been the case.
History
Publication title
Fisheries ResearchVolume
168Pagination
49-55ISSN
0165-7836Department/School
Institute for Marine and Antarctic StudiesPublisher
Elsevier Science BvPlace of publication
Po Box 211, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1000 AeRights statement
Copyright 2015 Crown CopyrightRepository Status
- Restricted