Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Volume 3 Number 10: Scottish Scallop Stocks - Results of 2011 Assessments

6. Glossary

Fishing mortality: describes the rate of removal of fish from the stock due to fishing activities using any fishing gear. Technically it is defined as the proportion of the stock removed in a small unit of time (instantaneous) or the fraction of the average population removed by fishing. Abbreviated to F.

Fortran: a computer programming language used particularly for computationally intensive jobs.

ICES: The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea promotes marine research on oceanography, the marine environment and marine resources in the North Atlantic. A global network of scientists work through ICES to provide unbiased, non-political advice on the marine environment, including the exploitation of fish stocks.

Kalman filter: An algorithm that makes use of a series of noisy observations to obtain an estimate of an unknown variable.

R: An open source programming language and software environmental for statistical computing and graphics.

Spawning stock biomass: The total weight of the fish in a stock that are old enough to spawn; the biomass of all fish beyond the age or size class in which 50% of the individuals are mature. Abbreviated to SSB.

Virtual Population Analysis: A method commonly used for stock assessment by fisheries scientists to reconstruct historical fish numbers at age using information on the removal of individuals each year due to fishing and natural mortality. Abbreviated to VPA.