Collaboration type:  Adoption of the BlueBRIDGE services

About ICCAT: The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas is an inter-governmental fishery organiz ation responsible for the conservation of tunas and tuna-like species in the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas. ICCAT compiles fishery statistics from its members and from all entities fishing for these species in the Atlantic Ocean, coordinates research, including stock assessment, on behalf of its members, develops scientific-based management advice, provides a mechanism for Contracting Parties to agree on management measures, and produces relevant publications. Science underpins the management decisions made by ICCAT. Much of the information available on this site relates to scientific data, reports of scientific meetings and to scientific articles (from  ICCAT Website)”.

Short description of the collaboration & main achievements in the period: IRD has set up a dedicated VRE to work with ICCAT on stock assessment of eastern bluefin tuna (ICCAT BFT-E VRE). In this VRE, VPA stock assessment model can be executed from R codes (this work has been achieved by reusing a set of codes provided by ICCAT and Ifremer colleagues chairing the group). The VRE enables to reproduce work of previous meetings and to try new parameterizations of the model for future work. The VRE achievements have been presented and discussed with the working group during two meetings. Meeting objectives were i) to update the projections analysis of the Eastern bluefin tuna stock assessment which are used as a scientific advice to define the quota and ii) to review the old data and availability of new data and update the Eastern bluefin tuna stock assessment.

Plans for the future: the online approach offered by the VREs (to run stock assessment models using VPA) has been welcomed by ICCAT for eastern bluefin stock assessment. ICCAT is currently investigating new funding opportunities to continue using the BlueBRIDGE VREs.