International Review Panel Report for the 2015 International Fisheries Stock Assessment workshop

The Panel recognised the very high quality of the research presented at the 2015 International Fisheries Stock Assessment Review Workshop. This included research on Southern African hake and sardine, the impact of area closures near islands on the pelagic fishing industry, and whether it is possible to detect the effects of these closures on penguin population growth rate. The Panel thanked the workshop participants for their hard work preparing and presenting the workshop papers, for the extra analyses undertaken during the workshop, and for the informative input provided during discussions.

This report starts with observations from the Panel on some general issues for the species/programmes reviewed, and then focuses on the more detailed technical review and recommendations concerning each. The current workshop differed somewhat from those in previous years in that a substantial amount of time was spent in “workshop mode”, considering model outputs and results, and given this, those discussions are recorded only to the extent that they led to broad conclusions or research recommendations. The recommendations are annotated by their priorities (H, M, L and conclusions are indicated by: *).