Assessing the Utility of In-season Salmon Assessment Projects on the Kuskokwim River

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 7 intends to award a single source financial assistance agreement as authorized by 505 DM 2.14 (B) to Auburn University. This notice is not a request for proposals and the Government does not intend to accept proposals. This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Network. The CESU network provides research, technical assistance, and education to federal land management, environmental, and research agencies and their partners. The partners serve the biological, physical, social, cultural, and engineering disciplines needed to address natural and cultural resource management issues at multiple scales and in an ecosystem context. The research team will use management strategy evaluation (MSE) methodology to evaluate the relative utility of in-season assessment projects with different characteristics related to the temporal and geographic proximity to major salmon harvest fisheries. The assessment projects will be subject to different levels of observation error and will index various portions of the run from less than one percent simulating the current test fishery, to 5 percent simulating a robust in-season fishery dependent survey, to greater than 90 percent simulating a well sited sonar project. The projects will simulate error in species and age composition similar to what is encountered in similar projects observing salmon runs. The purpose of the study will be to evaluate the relative utility of a proposed sonar project versus other types of in-season assessment projects to inform inseason management decisions. A key element of the MSE will be to use probabilistic control rules based on contemporary pstar methodology.