On a Proposed Stock Assessment Method and its Application at the International Whaling Commission

• Main Authors: David Poole, Geof H. Givens, Adrian E. Raftery
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chukchi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.52.2955; http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~geof/documents/restrepo6.ps

The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has engaged in considerable debate over various methods of assessment for the Bering-Chuckchi-Beaufort Seas stock of bowhead whales. At the 1996 meeting of the Committee, it was proposed that a method developed by Restrepo et al. (1991; 1992) for fish stocks be extended and applied to bowheads. The idea behind the method is to quantify the uncertainty in the results of a population analysis via Monte Carlo simulation from distributions on the inputs to the assessment model and to combine this with estimation based on observed data. This underlying strategy, while intuitively appealing and easily applied to many fisheries management problems, can unfortunately lead to inaccurate results. As such, it appears to be unsuited to the bowhead application or more general fisheries management problems. 1 Introduction Over the past 6 years, various assessment methods for the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort stock of bowhead whales .