Spatially explicit estimates of stock size, structure and biomass of North Atlantic albacore tuna (Thunnus alalunga)

The development of the ecosystem approach and models for the management of ocean marine resources requires easy access to standard validated data sets of historical catch data for the main exploited species. They are used to measure the impact of biomass removal by fisheries and to evaluate the models outputs, while the use of a standard data set facilitates models inter-comparison. Unlike standard stock assessment models, new state-of-the-art ecosystem models require geo-referenced fishing data with the highest possible spatial resolution. This study presents an application to the North Atlantic albacore tuna stock with a careful definition and validation of a spatially explicit fishing data set prepared from publicly available sources (ICCAT) for its use in a spatial ecosystem and population dynamics model (SEAPODYM) to provide the first spatially explicit estimate of albacore density in the North Atlantic by life stage. Density distributions together with the fishing data used for the estimates are provided at http://doi.pangaea.de/