nearly universal acceptance in the international community.' ' 



Stock assessment, then, has traditionally served two purposes: pro- 

 vision of information and data for the development of new fisheries, and 

 provision of information to maintain or restore depleted fisheries. These 

 may be objectives with different consequences. They certainly serve to 

 complicate a highly complicated matter. There exist a large number of un- 

 certainties with existing stock assessment science: problems with the data 

 generated by that' science, as well as, more importantly, problems concerning 

 the u£e of that data.** 



Of paramount importance is the fact that offshore marine fisheries, 

 particularly ground fish (demersal species), constitute populations that 

 are nearly impossible to obse.ve until harvested. As a result, assessment 

 must depend upon inference, statistical probabilities, and the measures 



* In 1950 the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fish- 

 eries (ICNAF) was created, with the express purpose of maintaining and 

 enhancing the stocks of fish under its jurisdiction. With authority over 

 international fisheries, ICNAF initially operated as a central clearing 

 house for the development of new fisheries as distant-water fleets ex- 

 panded. Funded by and large by American and Canadian money, ICNAF was 

 forced in the mid-1960s to develop and attempt to enforce management 

 regulations to preserve threatened stocks of fish. Needless to say, the 

 pace of international negotiations was far behind the technological 

 capacity of fleets to exhaust robust stocks. Thus, underfunded, under- 

 manned, and depending on American assessment information that was itself 

 vastly underfunded, ICNAF was caught playing "catch-up" assessments as 

 one species after another declined. 



** The sudden and massive introduction of increasingly efficient fishing 

 technologies on Georges Bank during the 1960s only served to make more 

 critical these uncertainties. Assessment scientists were forced to deal 

 with a dynamic situation that constantly changed. The amount of data re- 

 quired was massive and yet often doubtful. Because threatened stocks 

 were in international waters, enforcement of regulations was not possible, 

 and consequently the feedback to the assessment community of decision re- 

 sults was difficult to analyze. 



