There is a widespread need among stock assessment practitioners in Australia to have a more engaged and collaborative community. Australia lacks specialist tertiary level courses, as well as national-level on-the-job training dedicated to fishery stock assessment. We also have a geographically disparate stock assessment community that largely collaborates within, rather than between, agencies and jurisdictions, and some key Australian experts are on the verge of retirement. Across the early and mid-career scientists, there is an urgent need to build capacity and ensure succession planning, as well as ensure a pipeline of new stock assessment scientists.

There are several national initiatives that will be well served by a CoP. The assessments that underpin the Status of Australian Fish Stocks (SAFS) reports, which inform Australia's progress against UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.4.1 (proportion of fish stocks within biologically sustainable levels), will benefit improved and sustained capacity, and by having a more cohesive community of practitioners. Furthermore, there is strong alignment between the goals of SAFS and those of the CoP, in terms of encouraging collaboration, undertaking best practice stock assessments, and building stock assessment capacity. This project will provide the opportunity and a forum to explore these synergies and potential associated opportunities to support the SAFS process.

There will be strong need for training and local support around the transition from Stock Synthesis as the gold standard stock assessment package, to the soon-to-be-launched Fisheries Integrated Modeling System (FIMS). Additionally, the same capability as will be developed under the CoP is used in Models of Intermediate Complexity (MICE) and similar modelling tools that are increasingly needed, for example, to account for climate impacts (per current project FRDC 2023-062).

Fisheries stock assessment capacity in Australia, as in most countries, is also overstretched in terms of people, their workload and available resources. Stock assessment science can be stressful, and often undertaken with short timelines while assessment outcomes can directly impact livelihoods and be publicly criticised. Stock assessment scientists often undertake multiple assessments each year, so time is limited. This has led to an environment in which finding time, beyond that associated with undertaking core business, to invest in oneself or an organisation’s stock assessment scientists is challenging, and attracting scientists to the field is difficult.

In essence, there is no place to bring the stock assessment science community together to
• seek solidarity
• help each other (learn or improve skills, or review assessments)
• build our colleague base
• raise our community’s profile
• identify and jointly address common issues
• accelerate assessment research and development by enhanced cooperation

This project aims to develop a strengthened and sustained community of fisheries stock assessment practitioners providing a safe operating space for capacity and capability building throughout Australia. We seek to improve connectivity, communication and efficiency, through access to a broader base of experts, and broadening the connectivity and base of expertise across the community. We will deliver this using an online communication and resource sharing platform, and via an annual workshop. By connecting stock assessment scientists throughout the nation to build a community support network the CoP will enable the pool of experts to grow in a safe, enjoyable and informative environment. This will ultimately ensure that all jurisdictions are undertaking best practice stock assessment, comparable to leading agencies globally. A key aspect is supporting early career scientists within a comfortable working environment wherein they can build confidence and grow their skillset. Presently, “learning on the job” is extremely hard and, for some in smaller agencies, isolating, and there are few opportunities for cross-institutional learning and collaboration. The goal is to develop a more capable workforces by focusing on building capacity and collaboration, and transforming behaviours and opening practices within the Australian stock assessment workforce. The project will also directly address the need for succession planning and a continued pipeline of stock assessment practitioners, via mid-level formal trainings, by connecting scientists with experts beyond their own organisation, and by providing a raised, nationally unified, community profile. See Figure 1 in the attached “Soft Launch Meeting Report” for a concept diagram of the CoP.