Stock assessment session at ICES Annual Science Conference 2017. Submit abstracts by 30 April!

The REDUS encourages all with an interest in stock assessments, and the uncertainty around these to submit an abstract by 30th April for Theme session S " Stock assessment methods, model complexity and uncertainty" to be held during the 2017 ICES Annual Science Conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA between 18-21 September 2017. 

The session will be organized around three themes:

State of the art in stock assessment methods

• improvements in stock assessment methods, implementation of random effects in time and space, analytical methods for  data-limited situations;
• performance evaluation (e.g. MSE) of assessment methods and harvest policies; and
• multispecies and environmental processes in stock assessment, ecosystem and economic factors in harvest policy evaluation

Stock assessment model complexity and model ensemble techniques

• appropriate complexity of an assessment model for a given stock, basis of choosing a model, implications for data collection;
• application of model ensemble techniques in stock assessment; and
• performance of model ensemble, when applied to historical datasets
• and simulated data

Quantifying and communicating uncertainties in stock assessment

• quantifying uncertainties in fisheries catch statistics and survey data, assessment model choices and assumptions;
• developing harvest control rules, evaluating management strategies;
• quantifying overall uncertainty at the advice level, communication of uncertainties, interpretation of advice

For each theme there will be an invited keynote presentation, followed by submitted presentations. Poster authors will be asked to give speed-presentations of their posters. Group discussions from each theme will be presented in a plenary final discussion.