Multi-stock assessment with RTMB
MARS (Multi-stock Assessment with Regional Spatiotemporal dynamics) is a multi-stock, spatially-explicit age-structured model.
With explicit seasonal stock availability and movement, MARS is intended for use in mixed fisheries where stock composition can not be readily identified in fishery data alone, i.e., from catch and age/length composition. Models can also be fitted to genetic data, e.g., stock composition of catches and close-kin pairs.
Funding for development of MARS is provided by the NOAA Fisheries Bluefin Tuna Research Program (BTRP Grant NA23NMF4720184) in collaboration with the Ocean Foundation.
Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is the first intended case study.