Preliminary analysis of yellowfin tuna catch, effort, size and tagging data using an integrated age-structured model

This paper presents a progress report on the application of a length-based age-structured model (Fournier et al. in press) to the integrated analysis of western and central Pacific yellowfin tuna catch, effort, size and tagging data. This project was developed by a small working group of the Western Pacific Yellowfin Research Group (WPYRG), and has been funded by the University of Hawaii Pelagic Fisheries Research Program. The results presented below are from the early stages of the development of the analysis and should not be interpreted for stock assessment purposes. Many more fits to the data will be required before the results can be used for this purpose. At this point, the intention is to describe the structure of the analysis, examine the overall consistency of the results, identify any problem areas, and suggest how the analysis can be improved.