FishAssess is a package on fisheries resources assessment in R language. The goal is to integrate methods commonly used in fishery science with graphical and statistical capabilities of R.
To make the better possible choice in fish stock assessment, we need to compare different options, rather than calculate any single value of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) or fishing effort to maximize yield-per-recruit (Fmax) or whatever. As fisheries systems are dynamics, there is no room for equilibrium or static descriptions. Computer simulations packages are the easier and quicker way to explore this dynamic nature and find out how different could be our predictions in response to minor or major changes in various aspects concerned in the models -- parameters or input values. Finally, uncertainty pervades fisheries analysis and the reason for major management disasters are the inability and unwillingness of fishery managers to deal directly and explicitly with uncertainty.
The R language is a dialect of S designed in the 1980's and has been in widespread use in the statistical community since. Functions for ANOVA, generalized linear models (GLM) and many statistical tests are present in R. Through other add-on packages, methods for bootstrap, interfaces to RDBMs (like PostgreSQL), nonlinear regression, multivariate and time series analysis are available too, assuring a fulfilled analysis environment for a fishery scientist. Further, FishAssess allows classical and modern methods in population dynamics and fisheries assessment to be done in Monte Carlo approach.