Evaluating Forecasting Procedures for Predicting Pacific Herring (Clupea harengus pallasi) Recruitment in British Columbia

Abstract

The ability of four forecasting methods to generate one-step-ahead forecasts of Pacific herring (Clupea harengus pillasi) recruitment is considered in this paper. Recruitment time series for five coastal stocks and various environmental time series are employed in the analyses. Information up to and including time t is employed to estimate the parameters of each model used to forecast recruitment in year t + 1. Parameter estimates are then updated after each time step with a total of seven one-step-ahead forecasts being generated by each model for each stock. The forecast errors are compared using the five criteria: (1) root mean squared error, (2) mean absolute deviation, (3) mean absolute percent error, (4) median absolute deviation, and (5) median absolute percent error. The results of the study indicate that time series models may provide better forecasts of recruitment for the Strait of Georgia/Johnstone Strait stocks than the other competing procedures. A Ricker stock–recruitment model that takes into account environmental data appears to produce marginally better forecasts for the Central Coast and Queen Charlotte Island stocks, while all models produced equally good/bad forecasts for the Prince Rupert district stocks.