Using movement data from electronic tags in fisheries stock assessment: A review of models, technology and experimental design

Abstract

Tag-recapture data have long been important data sources for fisheries management, with the capacity to inform abundance, mortality, growth and movement within stock assessments. Historically, this role has been fulfilled with low-tech conventional tags, but the relatively recent and rapid development of electronic tags has dramatically increased the potential to collect more high quality data. Stock assessment models have also been evolving in power and complexity recently, with the ability to integrate multiple data sources into unified spatially explicit frameworks. However, electronic tag technologies and stock assessment models have developed largely independently, and frameworks for incorporating these valuable data in contemporary stock assessments are nascent, at best. Movement dynamics of large pelagic species have been problematic to resolve in modern assessments, and electronic tags offer new opportunities to resolve some of these issues. Pragmatic ways of modeling movement are often not obvious, and basic research into discrete and continuous processes, for example, is ongoing. Experimental design of electronic tagging research has been driven mostly by ecological and biological questions, rather than optimized for stock assessment, and this is probably a complicating factor in integration of the data into assessment models. A holistic overview of the current state of assessment models, electronic tag technologies, and experimental design is provided here, with the aim to provide insight into how stock assessment and electronic tagging research can be conducted most effectively together.