Ideal survey patterns: an example of using a simulated world

This paper considers a class of survey patterns for a toothfish long lining fishery. These survey patterns are characterised by a minimum mutual separation distance and a shot selection criteria. The shot selection criteria can be either that locations of known good quality are preferentially selected or that locations are selected at random. The landscape and fishery are simulated in a spatially explicit Monte Carlo model and the use of such models to study these issues is considered along with their ability to answer such questions as: How well do different survey restrictions capture information of interest about the fished population? If and when can the catch/effort data be used as a measure of the relative abundance of the population? How well can this method detect changes in the abundance of the population? How sensitive are the results to the number of research shots used?
This paper shall show the strength of the simulation method in answering these questions and in exploring the efficacy of survey strategies in general as well as a generator of ideas for survey design.