144th Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society

August 17 - 21, 2014

Fish stock assessments serve as the scientific basis on which fishery management decisions are made. In the United States, federally managed fisheries are beholden to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which dictates fishery management decisions be based on the best scientific information available. Thus, the obligation to conduct high-quality fish stock assessments is clear. Over time, stock assessment science has evolved, starting from relatively simplistic approaches based on limited input data, to more comprehensive analyses that incorporate multiple sources of fishery and survey data. Today, known occurrences of overfishing have been essentially eliminated in many parts of the world, and accumulating evidence points to important ecosystem and climate effects on many stocks. More holistic fishery assessment approaches are needed to incorporate a diversity of calibration data and enable greater responsiveness to changing ecosystems.  To do so, there are numerous aspects of stock assessments that need attention, including the ability to forecast stock dynamics and sustainable harvest levels; best practices for data- and information-limited stocks; socioeconomic impacts of various harvest strategies; spatial and temporal heterogeneity in stock dynamics; accounting for ecological interactions, ecosystem productivity, and climate and regime shifts; quantification and communication of uncertainty, and many others. Recognizing that these factors are simultaneously occurring in each assessment setting, this symposium will assemble stock assessment experts from various institutions to address these issues from multiple angles. The main objective of the symposium is to integrate across these perspectives to help guide and prioritize future research and development, and paint a picture of what next and future generations of stock assessments can and should look like. This symposium will cover the core features of fisheries science, from research to management, and therefore will appeal broadly to AFS members, meeting participants, and anyone interested in fisheries as natural resources.