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  • Effective use of ecosystem and biological knowledge in fisheries

    Rivot, E.; Massiot-Granier, F.; Pulkkinen, H.; Chaput, C.; Mäntyniemi, S.; Pakarinen, T.; Prévost, E.; White, J.; Romakkaniemi, A. (2013)
    North Atlantic (NA) stock assessments address the marine phase, estimating returns to home waters, with Pre-Fishery Abundance (PFA) estimated through raising of national (or regional) annual catches by exploitation rates and attributing unreported catch and natural mortality ranges in Monte Carlo simulations. Baltic stocks in contrast, are estimated through integrated Bayesian life cycle state-space models including riverine and sea phases (Michielsens et al., 2008). There is presently no interaction between the two methodologies.We detail the two approaches specifying similarities in biology, as a prerequisite to their harmonization for parallel inference and risk analysis, independent of scales, available data and management objectives. Through aggregations of scale and availability, assimilations of data differ. For the Baltic much is performed within the forecasting framework, and while aggregations in the NA case are disparate, finer scale details are available. In the Baltic a scale of “river” is used as the geographical unit, while in the NA, 3 geo-regions are treated independently, each operating at arbitrary regional scales. To harmonize NA and Baltic approaches, a multi-scale integrated life cycle model in a Hierarchical Bayesian Modelling (HBM) framework is proposed for the NA to capture inherent complexities from mixing of life cycle age and stage cohorts, which is currently not addressed. A stage-structured life cycle approach is proposed, incorporating freshwater and marine phase variability of life histories (survival and life history choices) and auto-regenerated cohort dynamics. This represents a large change in both the modelling and statistical inference framework.Key structural hypotheses and common informative prior distributions for modelling demographic processes, for both NA and Baltic models are developed. Together with the Bayesian methodology these form the core of the harmonization process. To harmonize modelling of the demographic process the following items are necessary:  State-space representation of all life stages including those not directly observed to explicitly separate out modeling of the demographic and observation processes, so as the harmonization of the models for the core ecological process can be thought independently from the data availability.  Age/stage-based demographic models to integrate biological and ecological knowledge of population dynamics, characterized by seaward migrations of smolts and spawning migration of adults back to freshwater, accommodating intra- and inter-population variability in life history traits.  Probabilistic demographic transitions and between-years variability of certain parameters to capture both environmental and demographic stochasticity.  Variable egg to juvenile density-dependent average survival, of classical survival functions.  Common approach to forecast yearly variations of marine post-smolts survival.
  • A Draft Marine Research Plan for the European Atlantic Sea Basin: Discussion Document

    Marine Institute; Marine Board-ESF (Marine Institute & Marine Board-ESF, 2011)
    A key deliverable of Work Package 6.1 of the FP7 SEAS-ERA Project (May 2010 – April 2014) is to develop a draft Marine Research Plan as an input to the preparation of a Strategic Marine Research Agenda for the European Atlantic Sea Basin. This Discussion Document is designed to engage European Atlantic stakeholders in a wide ranging debate on the content and priorities to be addressed by such a draft Research Plan and will be used by the SEAS-ERA Atlantic partners to inform a series of Consultative Stakeholder Workshops scheduled to take place in 2012 (www.seas-era.eu/np4/events).
  • Irish participation in EU FP7 (2007 - 2013) funded competitive marine research projects. 2009 Supplement

    O'Sullivan, G; Twomey, S (Marine Institute, 2010)
    The EU Framework Research Programme (FP), and in the current context the 7th Framework Programme (FP7: 2007-2013), continues to be a major source of competitive R & D funding for Irish marine researchers. The 2009 Supplement provides information on new FP7 research awards granted in 2009 to Irish marine researchers and up-dates the 2007-2008 Report published in June 2009. Seventeen research projects are profiled including three 2008 awards (STANDPOINT, WAVETRAIN II and AIRSEA) and fourteen 2009 awards bringing total participation in FP7 over the period 2007 to 2009 to 43 projects worth over €17.5 million in grant-aid. This figure is already in excess of the €10.6m (59) projects won in the FP6 (2002-2006) Programme and represents 11.5% of the total Irish drawdown to-date (FP7: 2007-2009) of €152.7million.
  • Irish participation in EU FP7 funded competitive marine research projects during the period 2007 - 2008

    O'Sullivan, G; McDonough, N; Pedreschi, D (Marine Institute, 2009)
    The EU Framework Research Programme (FP) is a major source of competitive marine R & D funding for Irish Researchers. This report describes Irish marine research successes in the first two years (2007-2008) of the seven year 7th Framework Programme (FP7: 2007-2013). Irish researchers are currently participating in 22 collaborative marine research projects worth over €163 million of which €8.8 million goes to Irish researchers by way of grant-aid. This European grant-aid in turn contributes to the implementation of research priorities identified in the national Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation (SSTI: 2006- 2013) and its marine component, the Sea Change Strategy(2007-2013). The Irish drawdown of EU grant-aid for marine research represents an impressive 10% of the Irish total drawdown over the period 2007-2008.
  • Oceans of Opportunity II: Exploring Ireland's International Marine Research Partnerships

    Cronin, Y; McDonough, N; O'Sullivan, G (Marine Institute, 2007)
    This report is a review of Ireland's participitation in EU Framework Programme 6 (EU FP6) Marine Research Projects 2002-2006