REPORT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESEARCH ... - Iccat

ICCAT REPORT 2008-2009 (I)Western Bluefin tuna 20082201. Species and stocks covered under the data review and preparation work.a. WBFT2. Please identify a recent data workshop or data preparation task for an assessment evaluation. (location,work time schedule, number of scientific participants)a. Madrid, June 23-July 4, 363. Please detail the task performed during the data workshop with regard to catch and effort dataa. Update and verification of landings, dead discards by? Flag, fishery, area, quarter, semester,etc. yesb. Update and verification of fishing effort yesc. Update and verification of gear/fleets distribution of catches. yesd. Revision of historical gaps or update of historical series yese. Others (describe).4. Other tasks done during the workshopa. CPUE series update yesb. Size, age conversions of catch data yesc. Review and update of biological information. yesd. Others (describe). Review, update tagging data, VPA models, many other supporting analyses5. What were the main problems/difficulties associated with the catch and effort data. Please provide abrief summary if applicable.a. Incomplete series data very incomplete for all nations prior to 1970b. Lack of information from main flags/fleets for recent years no 2007 data for EBFT (affectedmixing analyses)c. Under-reporting EBFT (affected mixing analyses)d. Others.6. What other limitations of data were identified. Please provide a brief summary and their consequences.a. No size data available for important flags/fleetsb. No area/ time of year of capture informationc. Others final catch at size was not completed until the last few days of the meeting. This ispartly a result of an overwhelmed secretariat and partly the result of at least two CPCs whofound errors in the catch at size for their respective countries just a few days before the end ofthe meeting.What were the conclusions/recommendations from the scientific group with regards to the data available andlikely assessment analysis to be performed?The Group recommended that alternate assessment approaches, such as CATCHEM (Porch et al., 2001a),MULTIFAN-CL or MAST that allow for errors in the catch at age, be further developed for more extensive useat meetings in the near future. This has broad implications (not just for assessment results) in the way data arereported by national scientists and retained by ICCAT and this should be addressed (e.g., the actual sizefrequency observations used to estimate the catch at size for the various fleets).7. For each stock, please chose and describe the recommendations of the scientific group for theassessment analysesa. Incomplete data, the group doesn’t recommend any further analysis with it.b. Highly deficient data of catch and effort need to restrict analyses to simple aggregated models.c. Sufficient data to carry out age/or group aggregated analysis yesd. Sufficient data to perform size base evaluations yes8. What were the priorities identified by the scientific working group in order to improve data input forfuture assessment analysis (one per stock, in priority order)It is essential that representative samples of otoliths be collected from all major fisheries, in all areas3. Addedvalue would be obtained if genetic samples were also collected from the same fish, which could potentially resultin more accurate and less expensive tests for stock origin.