Interim Report of the Working Group on Recruitment Forecasting in a Variable Environment (WGRFE)

The Working Group on Recruitment Forecasting in a Variable Environment (WGRFE) met at the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science, University of Washington, Seattle (USA), on 22–26 June 2015, with fourteen participants and Dr. Liz Brooks (USA) and Dr. Sam Subbey (Norway) as Chairs.The formal mandate for this WG meeting was established in 2013/MA2/SSGSUE01. The overarching objective of the WG is to develop a framework for how to develop recruitment models with minimal prediction variance, based on incorporating both abundance indices and environmental drivers.The ToRs for the 2015 meeting included:a ) Developing prototype, statistical recruitment tools for selected stocks, based on stage-structured models, which include environmental drivers and multi-species considerationsThis report summarizes discussions and proposed further work by the WG on the above ToR. Specifically, this reports deals with:1 ) Progress in the development of forecast models that include environmental drivers, and also incorporate autocorrelation in the recruitment relationship.2 ) Advancing work outlined in the SG 2011 report by reviewing methods that are being used for recruitment forecasting in fisheries settings for broadly differ-ent stocks and areas, and developing guidelines for applications to fisheries management and assessments.3 ) The implementation of a procedure to evaluate ensemble forecasting methods, with focus on those that improve forecast accuracy or precision.4 ) Investigation of when environmental drivers make a difference in forecasts and the development of a simulation framework for further exploration.