Opportunities, Challenges, and Considerations for Large Scale Stock Assessment: Lessons Learned from the Micra Paddlefish Stock Assessment

The Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association (MICRA), a working group formed through voluntary cooperation among states, tribes, and federal agencies in the Mississippi River Basin, began a rangewide paddlefish stock assessment study in 1995 in response to concerns surrounding declining paddlefish populations.  This study set out to document movements, habitat, growth, mortality, harvest, and morphometric information of wild and hatchery origin paddlefish at a large spatial and temporal scale.   The MICRA paddlefish stock assessment database currently contains approximately 40,000 encounters with individually marked paddlefish, stocking records for >2 million marked hatchery reared paddlefish and is a result of >50,000 hours of gear deployment and >2,000 individual trips over the first 18 years this study.  As a result of tremendous effort by cooperating partners, this database is now a resource for freshwater migratory fishes that is unparalleled at a global scale and also presents a learning opportunity for other agencies interested in conducting large scale studies on Acipenserids and other long-lived, highly mobile fish.  We will provide a retrospective viewpoint on planning and conducting rangewide stock assessment studies and analysis including opportunities for informing biology and management in the study system and beyond, challenges in compiling information from multiple study partners over long time periods, and considerations for data management and analysis.