Download FAR 2015/62 Rationale for year-class strength priors

In five recent New Zealand assessment reports authors deviated from the conventional practice of assuming a lognormal prior for year-class strengths. From an evaluation of the information available for developing these priors we formulated a rationale for deciding when it was acceptable to use other than a lognormal prior. According to this rationale the use of non-lognormal priors was not acceptable in any of these recent reports.