Incorporating Uncertainty into Fishery Models

Evolving Methodologies: From Creation to Application

Jim Berkson, Lisa L. Kline, and Donald J. Orth

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569315.ch1

There are many challenges facing fisheries modelers and stock-assessment biologists today. The systems being modeled are complex, and yet our understanding of them is limited. Our workload is increasing, while our manpower and resources remain constant at best. The tools of our trade, the technology and methodology, continue to evolve and expand, while the rawmaterials of our trade, our data, are limited and of poor quality. Often times, the results of our work are not welcomed by the decision makers for whom they are intended. Much of the time, our work is misunderstood by stakeholders in the management process. As a result of some combination of limited understanding, limited resources, and political realities, we often fall short of our goal to help shape policy by providing the likely consequences of alternative management actions.

Fisheries modeling is entering a new era that could increase the effectiveness of both fisheries models and fisheries modelers. Our modeling methodologies are undergoing a major evolution, where the uncertainty of our systems is being acknowledged and dealt with. At the same time, the political landscape is changing, where decision-makers are acknowledging the relationship between uncertainty and risk in the development of management policies. Given these events, fisheries modelers will be in a position to play a more substantive role by providing information that incorporates uncertainty to policymakers who will be more likely to welcome it. Of course, this depends on whether the fisheries modelers are aware of the changes taking place and whether they are able to incorporate the changes into their daily work. The purpose of this book is to disseminate this information to the stock-assessment biologists and fisheries modelers who will benefit from it.

As a group, fishery modelers and stock-assessment biologists come from a wide range of backgrounds and accept a wide range of jobs. To illustrate the process of information dissemination, we will generalize and break the broader group of modelers and assessment biologists into two groups. The first group, which we’ll refer to as the Innovators, is composed of a small number of academic and federal fishery biologists whose job it is to develop new stock-assessment and modeling methodologies and approaches. These individuals have extremely strong, mathematical skills. In fact, many could be more accurately described as biological mathematicians, rather than mathematical biologists. Their job is not focused on the quantity of stock assessments produced or the range or number of species assessed, but rather, on pushing the envelope when it comes to methodology.