144th Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society

August 17 - 21, 2014

Conserving a stock’s future productivity is a fundamental goal of marine fisheries management. Traditional stock assessments use spawning stock biomass (SSB) as a proxy for reproductive potential and predict resilience to fishing and future productivity with a stock-recruitment relationship. This model is based on two underlying assumptions: (1) that egg production can be predicted based on SSB and (2) that egg production drives reproductive success. However, highly fecund marine species typically exhibit poor stock-recruitment relationships and recent research suggests spatio-temporal reproductive behavior may impact productivity as much, or more, than adult stock size. This is because most exploited marine species are pelagic spawners, releasing huge numbers of small buoyant eggs.  Thus, where and when they spawn determines the environment eggs first encounter, including the predator field, environmental factors, and current regime—all of which can impact recruitment success.

Our knowledge of reproductive and recruitment processes has greatly improved in recent years. Technological advances in tagging, otolith microchemistry, and acoustic monitoring have lead to an increased understanding of spawning migrations and spawning site selection and fidelity. Similarly, a number of recent advances in hydrodynamic ocean models and in biophysical modeling approaches – and in the computational power to link the two – allow simulation of actual recruitment events, which can give us a more complete understanding of how environmental processes drive recruitment strength.

Objectives of this symposium will address the theme: “From Fisheries Research to Management: Think and Act Locally and Globally” by: (1) bringing together a group of international scientists working on different species and aspects of the stock recruitment paradigm; (2) improving our understanding of reproductive dynamics; and (3) developing a more comprehensive view of the factors that drive stock productivity in marine fishes, with the goal of incorporating these findings into management.