Abstract

 http://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.21103000

The workshop on optimization of biological sampling (WKBIOPTIM4) was the fourth meeting of a series of workshops aiming at collaborating on fish sampling optimisation processes across ICES Member States. It aimed primarily at providing an update on the development of the different simulation approaches presented and tested during the third workshop (WKBIOPTIM3), at working on shared indicators across these tools, and at creating an R package for end users.

Multiple simulation approaches were discussed during the first three workshops, developed as R scripts, and also contributed by separate projects (STREAM and FishPi2). The focus of WKPBIOPTIM4 was on the following tools: [1] two STREAM tools, BioSimTool and SDTool; [2] the Fishpi4WKBIOPTIM package; [3] SampleReferenceLevel (ADV); and [4] SampleOptim. While there is no current follow-up on the FishPi2 project that the group was made aware of, progress has been made on the other approaches aforementioned: a project called STREAMline is expected to build upon the outputs of STREAM; SampleOptim is being further developed and applied in Portugal; and the SampleReferenceLevel (ADV) approach was published (Wischnewski et al., 2020).

Over the week of the workshop, one subgroup focused on the development of an R-package for indicators, with the objective of making the outputs of simulations comparable across approaches and facilitating interpretation for end-users through documentation. A second subgroup worked on testing the comparativeness of these tools in order to feed into this process of comparison and interpretation across tools. Additionally, the effect of simulating sampling with and without replacement on model outputs was discussed and some investigation was conducted in two case studies: one using the SampleOptim tool with blue whiting data and the other using data from a simulated population. Finally, a third subgroup focused on a significant upcoming change which will affect the data input of the tools being developed, i.e. the move from the current Regional Database (RDB) to the new Regional Database and Estimation System (RDBES).

Future work on the WKBIOPTIM tools should include continuing development and testing, the R-package development, and adaptations to accommodate the sampling schemes from the different RDBES hierarchies.