Status of activities and outcomes in the MEESO project's work package 5 from 1 September 2019 to 28 February 2021.
Summary
In work package 5, Estimating mesopelagic resources and their resilience to harvesting and environmental change, the focus of the work in the first reporting period has been in collating and reviewing demographic data on two target species Benthosema glaciale and Maurolicus muelleri, implementing a data poor stock assessment model on existing data, and model development of the StrathSPACE spatial population model, the mesopelagic fish IBM module for the NORWECOM.E2E ecosystem model, configuration of the global SEAPODYM Low- and Mid-Trophic Level (LMTL) model for mesopelagic fish, and the development of the 1D coupled SEAPODYM-LMTL/PICES model.
Highlights
- A workshop on model data requirements and an associated workshop report.
- An extensive literature review summarizing and tabulating population dynamic parameters of M. muelleri and B. glaciale.
- An analysis of historical length-frequency data of M. muelleri from a Norwegian fjord using the TropFishR model, providing new independent estimates of growth rates, mortality rates, and yield and biomass per recruit.
- Initial results from the StrathSPACE B. glaciale model, showing recruitment and stock biomass decline in the model driven by climate change (IPCC RCP 8.5 scenario) projected to 2050 without fishing.
- Initial results from the NORWECOM.E2E model with coupled B. glaciale IBM showing large spatial and temporal variations in biomass, growth rates, and vertical migration.
- Initial implementation of the SEAPODYM-LMTL 1D, and inter-comparison with SEAPODYM-LMTL 3D.