| Summary: | Ichthyoplankton surveys have been used to provide an independent estimate of adult spawning biomass of commercially exploited species and to further our understanding of the recruitment processes in the early life stages. However, predicting recruitment has been difficult because of the complex interaction of physicaland biological processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales that can occur at the different life stages. A model of first-year life-stage recruitment was applied to Georges Bank Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) stocks over the years 1977–2004 by using environmental and densitydependentrelationships. The best lifestage mortality relationships for eggs, larvae, pelagic juveniles, and demersal juveniles were first determined by hindcasting recruitment estimatesbased on egg and larval abundance and mortality rates derived from two intensive sampling periods, 1977–87 and 1995–99. A wind-driven egg mortality relationship was used to estimate losses due to transport off the bank, and a wind-stress larval mortality relationship was derived from feeding and survival studies. A simple metric for the density-dependent effects of Atlantic cod was used for both Atlantic cod and haddock. These life stage proxies were thenapplied to the virtual population analysis (VPA) derived annual egg abundances to predict age-1 recruitment. Best models were determined from the correlation of predicted andVPA-derived age-1 abundance. The larval stage was the most quantifiable of any stage from surveys, whereas abundance estimates of the demersal juvenile stage were not availablebecause of undersampling. Attempts to forecast recruitment from spawning stock biomass or egg abundance, however, will always be poor because of variable egg survival.
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