Home WORK AREAS Stock Assessment An improved version of the MULTIFAN-CL software
An improved version of the MULTIFAN-CL software
Wednesday, 29 February 2012 14:29

mutifan-clScientists at SPC have been using the MULTIFAN-CL software for over ten years to assess the status of tuna and tuna-related species in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. SPC scientist Nick Davies, along with the chief developer Dave Fournier of Otter Research Limited, has just released an updated version of the software that allows for faster and more efficient analysis of management options. The model also has new features so that it can include 300,000+ tags released in SPC’s highly successful Pacific Tuna Tagging Programme.

 

 

Nick Davies reported that, while the release of the TUMAS software had made evaluating ‘what-if’s’ for tuna management easier, the computational demands of running MULTIFAN-CL inside TUMAS were too high for some computers. With this new release we have now made that process much faster and less demanding.

Work continues towards the next release. One major development will be to model multiple populations together or to model the male and female parts of a population separately. Dr Simon Hoyle noted that “separating the sexes will give us a better picture of the spawning population, and will be particularly useful for albacore tuna, where recent research indicates that males and females have different growth rates.

Head of the Oceanic Fisheries Programme Dr John Hampton emphasized the importance of continuing to adapt and enhance the software, to meet the needs of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and reflect our improved understanding of the fish and the fisheries. “It is a particularly challenging process as we are not just trying to improve how MULTIFAN-CL reflects the fish and the fisheries – we also need to keep an eye open to computer innovations that can make real improvements to what can be done, such as advances in parallel processing”.

Full details of the features of the MULTIFAN-CL software can be found in the MULTIFAN-CL User Guide.

 
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