Tag Archives: stock assessment estimates

Perfectly good fisheries data being ignored – Harvey Jarvis, concerned citizen

DFO is currently under fire, from several different fronts, about recent science stock assessment estimates and the subsequent management decisions. Someone not familiar with the science assessment process might believe the federal Fisheries minister’s recent announcement to conduct cod assessments every year is way of addressing current deficiencies. It is not! Conducting full, peer-reviewed, annual assessments used to be a normal occurrence until Ottawa gutted DFO science and management at the regional level. Those annual assessments failed to prevent the cod moratorium in 1992. Simply reverting to an annual assessment process will in no way address current deficiencies. Critical to the assessment process is the mathematical model that computes biomass. Critical inputs to that model are survey indices and commercial catch. If the model is flawed or if critical inputs are not included, the assessment results will be flawed. click here to read the letter 09:37