The promises and pitfalls of including decadal- scale climate forcing of recruitment in groundfish stock assessment

Concurrent declines in demersal fish stock abundances and shifts in long-term average environmental conditions have been well documented in the Pacific. Management advice ignoring environmental forcing of recruitment may cause stocks to be over- or under-harvested, so it is important to consider including environmental forcing on recruitment in stock assessment models. Simulation testing is used to determine the statistical power of stock assessments to identify long-term, decadal-scale environmental forcing of recruitment and the ability to estimate management reference points when the dura- tion of the fisheries time series is equal to or less than the period of the environmental cycle. Commonly used assessment methods generally lead to lower total type I (incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis of no environmental impact) and type II (failing to detect an environmental impact when such a relationship exists) error rates. The promise of integrating environ- mental data with decadal-scale variability directly into stock assessments via the stock-recruitment relationship is out- weighed by the pitfall of high type I error rates that are due to fishing-induced stock declines that coincide with directional environmental change. However, the impact of type I errors can be minimized by choosing an appropriate combination of assessment method and reference point estimators. Resume : On a bien etudie les declins des stocks de poissons demersaux et les changements concurrents dans les moyennes a long terme des conditions environnementales dans le Pacifique. Les avis de gestion qui ne tiennent pas compte du forcage environnemental du recrutement peuvent causer une surexploitation ou une sous-exploitation des stocks; il est donc impor- tant de considerer l'inclusion du forcage environnemental dans les modeles d'evaluation des stocks. Des tests de simulation nous servent a determiner la puissance statistique des evaluations de stocks a identifier le forcage environnemental du recru- tement a long terme a l'echelle des decennies, ainsi qu'a estimer les points de reference de gestion, lorsque la duree de la se- rie chronologique des peches est egale ou inferieure a la periode du cycle environnemental. Les methodes d'evaluation couramment utilisees menent generalement a des taux globaux reduits d'erreurs de type I (le rejet incorrect de l'hypothese nulle d'absence d'impact environnemental) et de type II (non detection d'un impact environnemental existant). La possibilite d'integration des donnees environnementales avec une variabilite a l'echelle des decennies directement dans les evaluations de stocks a travers la relation stock-recrutement est contrebalancee par le piege de forts taux d'erreurs de type I qui sont dus aux declins des stocks causes par la peche qui coincident avec des changements environnementaux directionnels. Cepen- dant, l'impact des erreurs de type I peut etre minimise en choisissant une combinaison appropriee de methode d'evaluation et d'estimateurs des points de reference. (Traduit par la Redaction)

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