Marine Fisheries Stock Assessment Improvement Plan Report of the National Marine Fisheries Service National Task Force for Improving Fish Stock Assessments

Beyond assessment scientists

A wide diversity of staff is required to produce a stock assessment. In fact, stock assessment scientists just represent the "tip of the iceberg" (Figure 6). Far greater numbers of staff are deployed in critical data collection activities, such as commercial or recreational catch and effort data, port sampling for biological data, observer programs, and fishery-independent resource surveys. Additional staff are required to process biological samples (e.g. to determine fish ages from hard structures, construct age-length keys, develop growth curves, construct maturity ogives, and possibly to identify and count eggs and larval fish from ichthyoplankton surveys and examine stomach contents), and to enter, audit, integrate, and preprocess data from the myriad of data collection activities. Support staff such as secretaries, administrators, and human resource personnel are required to support the data collection and stock assessment staff and their activities. Assessment scientists themselves are involved in three primary assessment-related activities: conducting assessments (using assessment models), methods research (developing assessment models), and analyzing management alternatives and providing advice to managers and constituents based on assessment results (management strategy evaluations). Relative staffing requirements for assessment-related responsibilities can be roughly represented by a pyramid, with data collection activities forming the base of the pyramid, and the assessments themselves at the apex using information from all lower levels (Figure 6).

Thus, when a new species needs to be assessed, the entire pyramid of activities needs to be considered. If the existing infrastructure can be used to collect the basic data for the new species (or basic data are already being collected but have never been processed), it may only be necessary to expand slightly on data collection and data management activities. However, the higher up the pyramid, the less the ability of the existing infrastructure to absorb new responsibilities (Figure 7). If an entirely new program or infrastructure is needed to provide the basic data for the new species, one or more levels of the pyramid may require substantial expansion.