SSC Workshop on Risk Tables

The SSC convened a workshop on ‘Risk Tables for ABC advice to the Council’. The workshop was motivated by the need to provide feedback to stock assessment authors and Plan Teams, as well as the SSC’s plan to assess risk table performance after they had been presented for groundfish stocks. The Council originally outlined its purposes for the risk tables in December 2019, as an opportunity to increase transparency and consistency for incorporate uncertainty into the harvest specifications process from factors that are not already addressed in the stock assessment. It was intended that the risk tables would evolve over time, and the primary goals of this SSC workshop were to: 1) Evaluate how the risk table process is working; 2) Address consistency issues with the risk tables as identified by the Groundfish Plan Teams, assessment authors, and SSC; and 3) Provide guidance for moving forward through an open discussion between stock  assessment authors, Plan Teams and SSC members. The workshop included a number of presentations from different AFSC scientists and two breakout groups discussed the necessary steps towards quantifying the following: the importance of external changes in fishery performance in stock assessments; the importance of assessment risk; and the risk of external changes in population and ecosystem conditions. The SSC will prepare a report of the workshop discussions and findings, and address a number of additional discussion topics outlined in the SSC minutes, such as the consideration of LK/TK information in cases of data lags or missing surveys and a working definition of ‘risk’. The Council has asked to review SSC advice on the risk table before it is applied for Council action.  Staff contact is Diana Stram