YELLOW

Context

The assessment of three Indian Ocean tropical tuna stocks faces common problems and complexities, ranging from uncertainty in the data (observation errors) and model specification (process errors) to reliable estimation of parameters (estimation errors), that are increasingly affecting the capacity of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Scientific Committee (SC) to provide robust management advice.

Objectives

In order to address the detected shortfalls, the scope of the study is to contribute to strengthening the scientific basis and management advice for sustainable fishing of tropical tunas, namely yellowfin (YFT), skipjack (SKJ) and bigeye (BET), in the Indian Ocean.

To this end, the study will review the tropical tunas data sets, to refine and improve the current stock assessment approaches and outcome of tropical stocks. First, previous YFT assessment will be reviewed and revised. Second, the overall process of stock assessment of these stocks will be reviewed, including the main sources of data used, model structure, model specifications and overall methodology and functioning of the Working Party on Tropical Tunas.

This project will be a desk-based collaborative effort and will gather scientists from the FWC and experts outside the FWC (both from EU and outside EU).