Zusammenfassung: An adjustment method for age-length keys is presented that incorporates yearly variability in cohort abundances. The method is based on two models (one for growth and the other for standard deviations of length versus age) and involves an iterative algorithm. The algorithm rapidly converges to stable results that yield, under some conditions, maximum likelihood estimates. It is also used to estimate parameters of the length standard deviation model. The method is applied to yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) catches in the eastern Atlantic from 1975 to 1989.

Zusammenfassung: Because of the simplicity of calculation and the availability of evaluating the precision of the estimates, a partial likelihood approach has been used for estimating fish mortality rates from tag recoveries and the stock composition in the mixed population based on genetic data. We compare the partial likelihood estimator with the full likelihood estimator, and find that under some conditions, both estimators are the same. The above applications meet the conditions and hence the estimates using the partial likelihood are the same as the ones using the full likelihood. In this case, the partial likelihood approach is quite useful.