Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission

American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop

Starts February 11, 2025 9:00 am

Ends February 13, 2025 4:00 pm

Location Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and Discovery Center, 89 Depot Road, Greenland, NH

Information:Email: cstarks@asmfc.org

Description

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will hold the American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop at the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and Discovery Center, 89 Depot Road, Greenland, NH. The stock assessment will evaluate the health of American lobster stocks and inform management of this species. The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data*, when the public will be asked to leave the room. 

Draft Agenda

The February Stock Assessment Workshop will focus on evaluation of models and analyses developed to estimate stock status. The Commission welcomes the submission of models from the public that will improve the stock assessment. The deadline for submission of alternate models is Friday, January 31, 2025. For alternate models to be considered, the model description, inputs, and complete source code must be provided to Jeff Kipp, Senior Stock Assessment Scientist, at jkipp@asmfc.org by January 31, 2025. Any models submitted without complete, editable source code and input files will not be considered.

Specifically, the workshop will focus on addressing the following stock assessment terms of reference:

  • Evaluate new information on life history such as growth rates, size at maturation, natural mortality rate, and migrations
  • Identify, describe, and, if possible, quantify the effect of environmental/climatic drivers on stock abundance considering annual to decadal scales
  • Use length-based model(s) to estimate population parameters (e.g., effective exploitation rate, abundance) for each stock unit and analyze model performance
  • Update simple, empirical, indicator-based trend analyses of abundance, exploitation, fishery performance, and environmental stress for stock or sub-stock areas
  • Evaluate the current regime-based exploitation and abundance reference points (i.e., targets and thresholds) and modify if necessary

The final workshop of the stock assessment process will be the Peer Review Workshop, where an independent panel of fishery scientists will review the assessment for its appropriateness to advise future management of American lobster. The Peer Review Workshop is expected to take place in August 2025.

« Back to Calendar