2026 Fisheries Assessment Process: A Conversation with Acting Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director Dr. Jamal Moss

Can you tell us about yourself and your background?

I began my career with NOAA at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center 's Auke Bay Laboratories in 2003. At that time, I was wrapping up my doctoral work focused on the early ocean ecology of pink salmon, which was a partnership between University of Washington, the National Science Foundation, and NOAA Fisheries. I spent the first 20 years of my career as a research fisheries biologist and the Deputy Division Director at Auke Bay Laboratories. Over the course of my time at the lab, I developed expertise in salmon ocean ecology, juvenile marine fish biology, and ecosystem assessment. In 2023, I moved to the Alaska Regional Office to serve as the Deputy Regional Administrator. This move provided an opportunity to immerse myself in fisheries management, protected marine resource issues, habitat conservation, and permitting.

My experiences in both fisheries science and management in Alaska have given me a holistic perspective that I look forward to bringing to my role as acting director. While we certainly face challenges in our region, there are also many opportunities we can leverage.

As acting director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, what are your current priorities?

As acting director, my number one priority is expanding our stakeholder and community engagement. Fishing communities, Alaska Natives, and scientists possess different types of knowledge. Our collective understanding of marine resources and the environment is deepened when we listen to one another and work together. Specifically, I'd like to increase the amount of cooperative research we do and broaden our view of it. A first step toward this goal is a cooperative research workshop to be held in Spring 2027 that we are just beginning to plan. It will bring industry, fishers, scientists, and coastal community members to hone in on and plan specific cooperative research projects to get on the water in fiscal year 2028.

I am excited and eager to work with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council while serving in this role-listening to their needs and addressing any concerns they may have. Alaska produces more than half the seafood caught in waters off the coast of the United States, with an average wholesale value of nearly $4.75 billion a year from 2020 through 2024. It's my job to make sure the Alaska Fisheries Science Center continues to deliver the information and advice needed to manage some of the most productive and economically important fisheries in the nation.

I'm also focused on maintaining a balanced science portfolio: ecosystem assessments, marine mammals, socioeconomics, genetics, and more. Everything we do at the center plays a key role in supporting fisheries management, and we must preserve that balance in order to provide the best available science and information for managing fisheries.

What role does the Alaska Fisheries Science Center play in providing the information necessary to set annual harvest limits for Alaska's federally managed species?

The Alaska Fisheries Science Center plays a key role in providing the information needed to manage Alaska's fisheries. Staff work year-round to collect huge volumes of data using a variety of approaches and tools. Our scientists collect biological, ecosystem, and fish catch data during fishery-independent surveys. We use information collected by observers and commercial fish landings, known as fishery-dependent data, as well as socioeconomic data.

After the data are collected, they undergo a strict quality assurance and quality control process. The data are then released to stock assessment authors, who perform a second quality assurance and validation process. This multi-layered approach ensures that fisheries data are accurate, consistent, and standardized before they're incorporated into mathematical assessment models. Now is an especially busy time for us as we transition from field survey-heavy summertime into the fall. We're working to complete stock assessments ahead of early winter so that fishery managers have the information they need to set catch limits.

I really want to stress that our data come from both fishery-independent sources, like our surveys, and fishery-dependent sources, like fishery observers . NOAA Fisheries is mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act to use the best available data, and we get those data from numerous sources to give us a comprehensive understanding of our fisheries.

We have robust internal processes within our science center and NOAA Fisheries to allocate our resources where they are most impactful, and we're actively investing in new technologies that expedite and improve data flows. The more data we have, the better the information we can provide to stakeholders, which is always one of our top priorities.

How do we know that the scientific products and advice produced by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center are unbiased and use the best available science?

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has advisory bodies (known as " Plan Teams ") made up of scientists and managers who rigorously and independently review models and indices to ensure catch limits are accurate, ecologically sound, and legally defensible. This upholds the strict standard of best available science.

Stock assessment authors, ecosystem scientists, industry, and other subject matter experts come together to review how ecosystem information is incorporated into the assessment. We recently completed our September Groundfish and Crab Plan Team meetings, which requires a ton of work from our scientists. I'm extremely proud of them. They bring a lot of brain power, professionalism, and heart to this process. Plan Team and Scientific and Statistical Committee meetings are also open to the public, and we encourage the community to participate in those and make their voices heard.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council's Science and Statistical Committee reviews stock assessments. The Committee is a body of independent experts in population dynamics, biology, statistics, resource economics, and social sciences. The Committee's advice is advanced to the Council and used for setting annual harvest specifications. It is a truly robust and independent process that ensures scientific data products and stock assessments are based solely on the best available science. It's the bedrock of sustainable fisheries that provides fisheries managers with the information necessary to make sound decisions.

How do we incorporate information about changing marine ecosystems into fish and crab population assessments?

Alaska fishermen are seeing rapidly occurring changes in our ecosystems, which are in turn affecting our fisheries. To proactively address this changing environment, we need to incorporate ecosystem information into fisheries management. The Alaska Fisheries Science Center is at the forefront of this movement. Working in tandem with our partners, such as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, we're really pushing the envelope on what it means to deliver actionable ecosystem-informed management advice.

Stock assessment authors use fish and crab abundance estimates and biological data (which includes information such as fish size, age, and reproductive rates) in their models. They also use ecosystem information that can be incorporated directly into a stock assessment or considered on its own, including:

Ecosystem Status Reports

These reports compile data from numerous internal and external sources into a comprehensive annual report that provides information across different ecological layers. Reports for the Eastern Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, Arctic, and Aleutian Islands large marine ecosystems bridge the gap between complex science and tactical fisheries decision making.

Risk Tables

These provide contextual ecosystem evidence for annual catch recommendations. They are structured frameworks that stock assessment authors can use to consider climate or other food web-related considerations that are not explicitly accounted for in models.

Ecosystem and Socioeconomic Profiles

These profiles use multiple types of ecosystem data at the single-species level. They connect the dots on how specific climate, ecological, and economic pressures affect a single species or population. They also incorporate socioeconomic indicators such as catch-per-unit effort and ex-vessel prices, which account for the human element of the fishery as well as the environmental aspect.

Dynamic Structural Equation Models

These are advanced statistical models that incorporate numerous ecosystem variables and take their cascading impacts on a particular species into account. Their power lies in accounting for how ecosystem variables influence each other rather than just considering them independently.

We've made incredible advancements in the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management in recent years, but we're still trying to answer the question of what ecosystem information we need to better understand and predict changes in stock biomass. We're exploring that by monitoring and assessing the climate and species interactions that have the strongest influence on stock production and stability.

We're also developing a dynamic framework that maps ecosystem metrics against time-varying parameters such as growth, mortality, recruitment, and catchability in stock assessments. This will allow us to identify and prioritize ecosystem information for management needs. We've just completed this for Greenland turbot and are now working on a framework for Gulf of Alaska and Eastern Bering Sea pollock , which are both high-value fisheries.

How is the Alaska Fisheries Science Center using advanced technologies to address challenges in the stock assessment process and continue to deliver high-quality scientific data?

The Alaska Fisheries Science Center is constantly innovating advanced technologies to efficiently process and collect data and improve our data products. The more information we can collect and digest, the more precise our models and recommendations. We collect a huge volume of samples and data on our surveys, but processing that data can be time- and labor-intensive, and we need to be able to process it more quickly for timely use in assessments.

For example, length-at-age information is needed to estimate age structure and growth. We typically estimate fish age by counting rings on their otoliths, or earbones. The traditional method requires that a scientist manually prepare the otoliths and read them with a microscope. We're addressing capacity challenges by integrating advanced technologies such as Fourier Transform Near-Infrared (FT-NIR) Spectroscopy coupled with trained machine learning models to efficiently read otolith rings.

FT-NIR spectroscopy measures the chemical and physical properties along a gradient of a fish earbone, which can be translated into an age estimate. Increased sample throughput allows us to process more fish ages, and the more fish we age, the more accurate the data used in stock assessments.

We are also conducting research on the potential use of epigenetic aging for some species, which is showing enormous promise. We can infer age using epigenetics by identifying specific attachments to DNA called methyl groups, which can alter an organism's genome depending on its age. This strategy is particularly effective in long-lived species, such as rockfish and marine mammals, as they can be difficult to age. Since epigenetic aging can be done using a tissue sample instead of an otolith, it also provides us with a non-lethal method for estimating the ages of fish and marine mammals.

How does the Alaska Fisheries Science Center engage with local industry and communities as part of its work?

The Alaska Fisheries Science Center engages with industry and communities regularly, but I firmly believe we can do more. Science Center social scientists conduct regular interviews in the field with Alaska fishers and others in the seafood industry, and their findings inform fisheries management decisions. Our staff have proactively built these relationships and established trust over many years in their careers. That's something we strongly encourage our staff to do, but as Director it's my responsibility to foster that culture of collaboration and facilitate those connections.

I want to do a better job of partnering with Tribal entities and weaving Local and Traditional Knowledge into our work. We've had a strong start with salmon in the Bering Sea area, red king crab in Norton Sound, groundfish surveys in the northern Bering Sea, and fur seals in St. Paul. We're now working to expand this list to include species identified as high-priority by Alaska Natives. We're building a database to present information we've collected and hope to integrate Traditional Knowledge into that process. We are always seeking new opportunities to incorporate Traditional Knowledge.

As I mentioned earlier, we are prioritizing cooperative research and engaging the community in our scientific endeavors. As Director, I'm responsible for considering the needs of all of our stakeholders: industry, community members, Tribal entities, and the fishery management council, to name a few. I want to hear about the good, the bad, and the uncertainties from all of them, so we can strive to fulfill everyone's needs.