Freely available online stock assessment tools have made state-of-the-art expertise globally accessible. They provide standardised, defensible and efficient ways to conduct stock assessments and provide management advice, particularly when local capacity is lacking. The most successful tools are globally recognised and represent cutting edge methodologies and approaches.
To date, little attention has been paid to understanding how stock assessment tools have evolved, and the risks and challenges associated with their development. We suggest that tools have origin, transition, upscaling, and maintenance phases, with each having associated overheads. We theorise that key risk points are where the developer has a larger plan for their tool than their own organisation, there is not a dedicated source of funding, and that tool maintenance lags when ongoing funding or personnel/capacity support is lacking.
To seek empirical support for these hypotheses, we surveyed key tool developers to elicit tool development phases and risk points, and the extent of support for tool development, upscaling and maintenance. We then identified whether and how the effects of any of these challenges could be reduced, and provide recommendations to reduce identified risks and challenges, and ensure that freely available online stock assessment tools can be more overtly supported.