Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar L.) populations in Scotland are subject to active management and conservation practices which require biological reference points (BRPs), specifically conservation limits, defined at the level of the stock. Acquiring the data necessary to independently derive these BRPs for all managed populations in Scotland is prohibitive, motivating the use of Bayesian hierarchical stock–recruitment models. The...

Despite technical advances in archival tag attachment and functional longevity, long-term tracking of individuals of some fish species remains prohibitively difficult. Here we combined high resolution stable isotope sampling of otoliths, genetic assignment, growth increment analyses and a simple movement model to inform a hidden Markov model of the location of individual wild Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar L.) at sea. The model...

Using data from wild Atlantic salmon Salmo salar returning to spawn in seven Scottish rivers, we developed a model of fecundity based on individual body size and key developmental traits. We used a novel approach to model selection which maximises predictive accuracy for application to target river stocks to select the best from a suite of Bayesian hierarchical models. This approach aims to ensure the optimal model within the...

Using tagged and recaptured Atlantic salmon Salmo salar (n = 106) the present analysis shows that the most commonly applied linear back‐calculation method for estimating past length, the Dahl‐Lea method, resulted in overestimation of the length of large smolts and underestimation of small smolts. A correction equation ( y = 0.53 x + 6.23) for estimating true smolt length ( y ) from lengths back‐calculated from adult scale meas...