Dr. Jim Berkson, Unit Leader and Associate Professor, NMFS Recruiting, Training, and Research Unit at Virginia Tech.

"An Overview of NMFS RTR Unit Research"

Abstract

Research at the NMFS RTR Unit tackles critical scientific issues relevant to the agency’s management of living marine resources.  Recent research projects have developed the following:  1) a new approach to incorporate time-varying catchability into fisheries stock assessments, 2) a simulation model to compare alternate methods for estimating the bycatch of protected resources in the pelagic longline fishery, 3) a multistate model to improve estimates of loggerhead sea turtle adult survival, and 4) a simulation model to assess the impacts of bias in length frequency data on age-structured stock assessments.  This presentation will highlight recent student work.  The disciplines of stock assessment, population dynamics, and simulation modeling are common threads within the Unit’s research.