Last week, Punt lab members Maia Kapur and Caitlin Allen Akselrud in addition to André himself attended the Center for the Advancement of Population Assessment and Modeling (CAPAM) workshop at the SW Fisheries Science Center. The workshop was focused on spatial methods in stock assessment and fisheries population modeling. André delivered a keynote speech providing an overview of cases where including spatial structure in an assessment model improved precision and/or reduced bias — but results are case-dependent. Panelists agreed that the general ‘fleet-as-area’ approach, presented by Punt lab researchers here, is a workable alternative assuming that the areas are consistent with indices of abundance.

Several SAFS alumni, including Dr. Juan Valero (Hilborn lab, now at IATTC) presented ongoing work contributing to the upcoming Bigeye Tuna (BET) assessment.

The workshop generated much discussion, especially regarding the issue of accurately including movement from tagging data into stock assessments and the importance of defining stock structure at a scale useful for management. We look forward to the special issue of Fisheries Research dedicated to this workshop!