Responses to Reservations Raised Concerning the GLM Analyses of and Inferences Drawn from the Results from the Island Closure Feasibility Study

This document provides responses to a number of reservations which have been raised locally over the past year to the GLM approach for analysis of the island closure feasibility study, and conclusions inferred from the results. The issues covered range from whether catch provides an index of local fish abundance, the Clark model of a relation between shoal size and predation, comparisons with what occurred in Namibia, the appropriate period for which islands need to be closed, an argued need to apply model selection methods when developing the basis for a power analysis, whether a step-function relationship is appropriate for describing the different results from closure vs non closure of an area around an island to fishing, and what the default conclusion about the impact of fishing near to penguin colonies should be.