Performance of a fisheries catch-at-age model (Stock Synthesis) in data-limited situations
Chantell R. Wetzel A B C and André E. Punt BA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, 2725 Montlake Boulevard East, Seattle, WA 98112, USA.
B School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-5020, USA.
C Corresponding author. Email: chantell.wetzel@noaa.gov
Marine and Freshwater Research 62(8) 927-936 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF11006
Submitted: 13 January 2011 Accepted: 23 April 2011 Published: 22 August 2011
Abstract
Limited data are a common challenge posed to fisheries stock assessment. A simulation framework was applied to examine the impact of limited data and data type on the performance of a widely used catch-at-age stock-assessment method (Stock Synthesis). The estimation method provided negatively biased estimates of current spawning-stock biomass (SSB) relative to the unfished level (final depletion) when only recent survey indices were available. Estimation of quantities of management interest (unfished SSB, virgin recruitment, target fishing mortality and final depletion) improved substantially even when only minimal-length-composition data from the survey were available. However, the estimates of some quantities (final depletion and unfished SSB) remained biased (either positively or negatively) even in the scenarios with the most data (length compositions, age compositions and survey indices). The probability of overestimating yield at the target SSB relative to the true such yield was ~50%, a risk-neutral result, for all the scenarios that included length-composition data. Our results highlight the importance of length-composition data for the performance of an age-structured assessment model, and are encouraging for the assessment of data-limited stocks.
Additional keywords: fisheries modelling, groundfish, US west coast.
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