A General Model for Analyzing Data from Mark-recapture Experiments with an Application to the Pacific Halibut

A general model is developed to examine the patterns of the regional movement of tagged and released fish from mark-recapture experiments. It is a stochastic model that incorporates fishing mortality, natural mortality, fish movement, tag-shedding, and different rates of reporting. A likelihood function is constructed for estimating its parameters. We used this model to analyze data on the Pacific halibut from mark-recapture experiments conducted by the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC), with a total of 36,058 releases from 1982 to 1986 and 5,826 recoveries from 1982 to 2000. We estimated their rates of movement among IPHC management areas, along with their instantaneous rates of natural and fishing mortalities. Our analysis revealed that fish movement was not significant among areas, with a resident probability of > 0.92. This lends support to the IPHC catch-at-age stock assessment model (which has no built-in movement components). The estimated instantaneous rate of natural mortality (0.198 year⁻¹) lies between that assumed in all IPHC stock assessments before 1998 (0.20 year⁻¹) and that from 1999 onwards (0.15 year⁻¹). The estimates of the instantaneous rates of fishing mortality were consistent with those from the IPHC stock assessment model. Received: April 2003 / Revised: May 2005