Using Oceanography for Fishery Stock Assessment and Management: Progress and Challenges?

There has been substantial research on the influence of oceanography on fish populations and methods to integrate oceanography into fisheries stock assessment and management; and fisheries scientists and managers are well aware of the influence of oceanographic processes on fish populations. However, there has been a lack of successfully implemented examples in the real world.  In most cases, statistically significant relationships between population dynamics and oceanographic processes break down when tested against new data.  Some fisheries scientists are therefore advocating for direct monitoring or developing management strategies that are robust to environmental variability rather than incorporating oceanographic processes directly into fisheries assessment and management. Successfully implemented examples have mainly related to predicting fish spatial distribution, so using oceanography to design spatiotemporal closures to reduce bycatch may be the most promising current research area. Availability of finer-scale oceanographic data, vessel monitoring systems, and electronic tags may allow research on more appropriate scales that may lead to future improvements. However, it would be wise for researchers and managers to be realistic about the near-term benefits of using oceanography in fisheries stock assessment and management so that the most benefit can be derived from limited resources.