A quantitative evaluation of a qualitative risk assessment framework: Examining the assumptions and predictions of the Productivity Susceptibility Analysis (PSA).

Qualitative risk assessment frameworks, such as the Productivity Susceptibility Analysis (PSA), have been developed to rapidly evaluate the risks of fishing to marine populations and prioritize management and research among species. Despite being applied to over 1,000 fish populations, and an ongoing debate about the most appropriate method to convert biological and fishery characteristics into an overall measure of risk, the assumptions and predictive capacity of these approaches have not been evaluated. Several interpretations of the PSA were mapped to a conventional age-structured fisheries dynamics model to evaluate the performance of the approach under a range of assumptions regarding exploitation rates and measures of biological risk.

An Evaluation of Rebuilding Policies for U.S. Fisheries.

Rebuilding depleted fish populations is a priority of modern fisheries management. In the U.S.

Spatial surplus production modeling of Atlantic tunas and billfish.

We formulate and simulation-test a spatial surplus production model that provides a basis with which to undertake multispecies, multi-area, stock assessment. Movement between areas is parameterized using a simple gravity model that includes a "residency" parameter that determines the degree of stock mixing among areas. The model is deliberately simple in order to (1) accommodate nontarget species that typically have fewer available data and (2) minimize computational demand to enable simulation evaluation of spatial management strategies.