June 24, 2024 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will hold the American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop at the UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science & Technology West building, 706 South Rodney French Boulevard, MA. 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.
The July Stock Assessment Workshop will be the first of two workshops that focus on evaluation of models developed to estimate stock status. The second Assessment Workshop, tentatively scheduled for October 2024, will focus on addressing the below stock assessment terms of reference. The final workshop will be the Peer Review Workshop in April 2025, where an independent panel of fishery scientists, will review the assessment for its appropriateness to advise future management of American lobster.
Relevant American Lobster 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
For more information about the assessment or attending the July workshop (space will be limited), please contact Caitlin Starks, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at cstarks@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.
* Each state and federal agency is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its data and deciding who has access to its confidential data. In the case of our stock assessments and peer reviews, all analysts and, if necessary, reviewers, have been granted permission by the appropriate agency to use and view confidential data. When the assessment team needs to show and discuss these data, observers to our stock assessment process are asked to leave the room to preserve confidentiality.