Terms of Reference

Data Synopsis Report for British Columbia Groundfish

Regional Peer Review – Pacific Region

November 22-23, 2018
Nanaimo, British Columbia

Chairperson: Mary Thiess

Context

The Canadian Sustainable Fisheries Framework (DFO 2009) lays the foundation for an ecosystem-based and precautionary approach to fisheries management in Canada to ensure continued health and productivity of Canada’s fisheries and healthy fish stocks. The application of the sustainable use policies is implemented through the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Integrated Fisheries Management Plan (IFMP), which requires knowledge of the status of fish stocks affected by a given fishery.

DFO groundfish stock assessments have focussed on single-species assessments, resulting in a subset of stocks with full stock assessments, while many stocks with minimal informative data remain unassessed. For example, the Pacific Region IFMP includes over 200 groundfish species (DFO 2017) of which approximately 100 are regularly caught by the British Columbia (BC) fisheries. Multi-species Individual Transferable Quotas are used to manage the BC groundfish fishery, and quotas assigned to rarely assessed or unassessed stocks can restrict harvesters’ opportunities to catch target species and can limit their ability to meet marine stewardship certification criteria. Consequently, DFO manages groundfish fishery and fishery-independent data; however, data availability, quality, and capacity challenges can preclude the development of annual stock assessments for all groundfish species currently targeted in active groundfish fisheries.

In 2016, DFO Science Branch initiated a ‘tiered approach’ to assign assessment tiers by species, based on data availability and quality (DFO 2016). Recent progress in computing and data-limited approaches has shifted the direction of the original tiered approach, resulting in DFO Science developing a data synopsis report as the first of a two-phase approach to explore assessment methodologies for groundfish stocks that can be robust to a range of data quality, information, and uncertainty. The first phase, the data synopsis, will provide a visual snapshot or ‘report card’ of long-term and recent population trends, fishing trends, and data availability for candidate BC groundfish stocks.

The second phase will be to develop a management procedure framework (initially begun as a ‘tiered approach’); that outlines a process by which DFO Science Branch can provide advice to the DFO Fisheries Management on the status of data-limited and data-moderate groundfish stocks in the Pacific Region that lack sufficient data for a full age-structured stock assessment, or lack existing assessment models.

The assessment and advice arising from this Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) regional peer review (RPR) is intended to support the management procedure framework by facilitating discussions about stock prioritization for the framework, the selection of candidate management procedures, and the development of tools to generate standardized data products and assessment models.

Objective

The following working paper will be reviewed and provide the basis for discussion and advice on the specific objectives outlined below.

Anderson, Sean C., Keppel, Elise A., and Edwards, Andrew M. A Data Synopsis Report for British Columbia Groundfish. CSAP Working Paper 2014GRF07b

The specific objectives of this review are to:

1. Review and assess the appropriateness of the approaches to extract, filter, and summarize data, and fit statistical models to fisheries dependent and independent data used in the report.
2. Assess the suitability of the structure and content (standardized datasets, biological model fits, and data visualizations) of the report examined in Objective #1 and comment on the report’s ability to achieve the following goals:
1. inform Science on the development of operating models and select candidate management procedures, and;
2. generate a reproducible report with consistent data visualizations across all major stocks to facilitate discussions between Science and resource managers on stock composition and stock assessment prioritization
3. Examine and identify uncertainties and caveats regarding the data and methods in the report.
4. Make recommendations for future uses and application of the report.

Expected Publications

• Proceedings
• Research Document

Expected Participation

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada (Science Branch, Fisheries Management)
• Academia
• Other Government Agencies (NOAA)
• Non-government organizations
• Aboriginal communities/organizations
• Commercial and recreational fishing industry

References

DFO 2009. Sustainable Fisheries Framework.

DFO 2016. Proceedings of the Pacific regional peer review on A Review of International Best Practices to Assigning Species to Tiers for the Purposes of Stock Assessment Based on Data Availability and Richness; May 30-31, 2016. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Proceed. Ser. 2016/051.

DFO 2017. Groundfish, Pacific Region 2017 Integrated Fisheries Management Plan Summary.