The spatiotemporal standardization of the stock index and reduction of hauls in research surveys (on the example of red king crab in the Barents Sea)

The paper presents the results of the spatiotemporal standardization of the stock biomass index of red king crab in the Russian EEZ of the Barents Sea carried out using the generalized additive mixed effect model (GAMM) which was implemented in the sdmTMB library of the Renvironment. The spatiotemporal approach used in species distribution modelling within GAMM enables taking into account numerous environmental factors and fishing gears, thereby increasing the quality of the assessment especially in areas with data shortage. Additionally, in modelling the stock density for areas with no observations the space-time autocorrelation in between hauls is also taken into consideration.