Using the catch reconstruction approach developed by Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller from the Sea Around Us at the University of British Columbia, BC, Canada, I use a variety of data sources from colonial reports to newspaper articles to human population census data to generate time-series of unreported fisheries catches. These data allow for a more complete baseline of marine resources in the past, which can be used to inform current and future management decisions.
Currently, I am applying a new technique developed by Rainer Froese and colleagues from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Germany, to estimate maximum sustainable yield (MSY) levels from reconstructed catch time series and other ancillary data.