Better estimates of fish status with spatial fish models
Fisheries stock assessments commonly ignore space when assessing the status of small pelagic fish species like herring, anchovy, and sardines, because including multiple areas adds a large of number of parameters to the models. Results from a new simulation framework based on herring in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, now suggest that stock assessment estimates of spawning fish is improved when the models matched the true underlying changes in fish across areas, and therefore that future stock assessments should always include spatial structure when the fish population can be assigned to subpopulations. The work by SAFS director André Punt and 20 coauthors appears in the journal Fisheries Research.