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The U.S. South Atlantic region has many long‐standing data needs and limited data collection resources for federally managed marine fish stocks. Much of the harvest is dominated by recreational fisheries, where data are limited, especially during historic time periods. FISHstory, a pilot project developed through the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council's Citizen Science Program, developed a standardized protocol for archiving and analyzing historic photos from the 1940s to 1970s from a for‐hire fleet based in Florida. These photos document the beginnings of the South Atlantic for‐hire fishery and are potentially an untapped source of data that can help recreate information on catch and length composition prior to when dedicated fishery dependent surveys began. Many careful steps were taken in the design of FISHstory to ensure data collected would be fit for purpose and useful to management. This paper highlights these steps and describes lessons learned through project development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A constant challenge in fisheries stock assessment and management is having sufficient data to inform research and analyses. Nontraditional data sources like citizen science, when collected and applied appropriately, can help fill such data gaps. Use of nontraditional data sources is on the rise, but its use and application in fisheries science and management remains largely untapped. In order to examine the use of such data sources, we held a symposium at the 2020 American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting entitled "How Citizen Science and Nontraditional Data Sources can be Better Incorporated Into Fisheries Stock Assessments and Management" (https://bit.ly/3V13vHe). The session included 12 talks and a panel discussion to examine best practices. This paper reviews seven nontraditional data programs and projects used to support fisheries management featured in this special issue of Fisheries. It concludes with key lessons from the panel discussion for best applying nontraditional data sources in fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With wild-capture fisheries, important globally as a source of food and livelihood, and facing chronic overfishing, development of the best available science can reduce scientific uncertainty and improve the quality of science-based advice and the credibility to stakeholders of the management decisions based on that science. Fish stock assessments are complex scientific analyses used to provide critical, science-based advice for decision-making, such as quota setting. Building on findings from a 2017 American Fisheries Society (AFS) symposium, this paper describes and compares different national, multilateral, and private peer review systems to assess peer review characteristics and the role of peer review in the development of best available science and science-based advice. There is considerable diversity in how peer review systems are organized in terms of how reviewers are selected, use of internal or external expertise, the level of independence required of reviewers, and the steps in the assessment process at which peer review is conducted. Peer review systems face a number of challenges, including limited funding, a small pool of available expertise and the often highly technical nature of reviews, and trade-offs related to competing demands such as thoroughness versus timeliness, independent technical expertise versus local knowledge, and efficiency versus transparency, among others. The prevalence of peer review systems underscores the importance of objective, peer-reviewed, scientific-based advice across fishery management systems. The diversity of approaches to peer review demonstrates that there is no one ideal way to implement peer review, and there are tradeoffs inherent in designing a peer-review system. • Peer review of stock assessments is a key component of fishery management systems. • Transparent peer review enhances stakeholder acceptance of science-based advice. • Systems differ in reviewer source and compensation, throughput, consensus. • Systems can avoid reviewer conflicts of interest, or seek and acknowledge them. • System trade-offs include thoroughness/timeliness, independence/local knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]