Stock Assessment Software Catalogue
Stock assessments underpin the scientific advice for management that is provided by the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics to the Commission. In recent years, the SCRS has implemented a number of activities whose purpose is to improve the quality of this advice. Part of this effort is the so-called "software catalogue". The aim of the catalogue is to document the procedures taken to validate some of the stock assessment programs that are commonly used by the various working groups.
Inclusion of a particular computer program in the ICCAT software catalogue does not guarantee that the software is free of bugs, nor does it imply any sort of institutional endorsement for its use. Inclusion in the catalog is simply a way of documenting what steps, if any, the programmer has taken to ensure that the program does what it purports to do.
| SOFTWARE | Date Catalogued | Purpose |
| Production Models | ||
| PRODFIT (U1) (  ,0.25 Mb) |
10/2000 |
Fits the generalized stock production model of Pella and Tomlinson (1969) by least-squares and equilibrium approximation. |
| ASPIC (3.82) ( , 0.75 Mb) |
07/2000 |
Fits a logistic (Schaefer-form) stock production model to catch and effort data without making an equilibrium approximation; uses observation-error estimator with weighted least-squares. |
|
ASPIC (5.05) ( , 0.29 Mb) |
08/2004 |
Fits a several forms of surplus-production model to catch and relative abundance (or effort) data. The program does not use the equilibrium approximation. It uses an observation-error estimator. Production model forms available include the logistic (Schaefer), exponential-yield (Fox), and generalized (Pella-Tomlinson in parameterization of Fletcher) models. ASPIC uses bootstrapping to provide estimates of precision |
| BSP (3.0) ( , 2.25 Mb) |
12/2003 |
Fits either a Schaefer or a generalized surplus production model to CPUE data assuming observation error only. Uses Bayesian priors, integrates the posterior distribution using the Sampling-Importance Resampling (SIR) algorithm, and performs projections and decision analysis for either constant catch or constant harvest rate management policies. |
| Virtual Population Analysis (VPA) | ||
| VPA-2Box (3.01) ( , 1.66 Mb) |
06/2003 |
Assesses the abundance and mortality of animal populations by fitting age-structured population equations to catch, effort, abundance and tag-recapture data. An observation-error estimator is used with numerous options available. Accommodates two intermixing populations and sex-specific analyses. |
| PRO-2Box (2.01) ( , 0.85 Mb) |
06/2003 |
Projects the future abundance and mortality of animal populations from historical levels assuming several possible relationships between recruitment and spawning stock biomass and a prescribed vector of future vulnerability at age. Accommodates two intermixing populations, sex-specific analyses and multiple fleets. Includes equilibrium yield per recruit and spawner per recruit computations. |
| Simulation | ||
| FSIM (3.0) ( , 4.47 Mb) |
12/2003 |
A general purpose fish population simulator designed to simulate many forms of fisheries data routinely collected from real fisheries. Analyses of these “known” simulated datasets facilitate studies of the robustness of alternative assessment methodologies. The model is also useful for exploring the implications of uncertainty about the dynamics of fish populations, forecasting consequences of management alternatives, and predicting future trends in population sizes and catches for a wide assortment of possible biological attributes under different management alternatives. |
| SEEPA (3.0) (  , 0.25 Mb) |
11/2004 |
Simulates longline catch and effort data to test the robustness of the habitat approach to cpue standardization. It could also be used to develop simulated datasets to test other approaches to summarizing and standardizing longline cpue. |
