A Note on Determining Parameter Redundancy in Age-Dependent Tag Return Models for Estimating Fishing Mortality, Natural Mortality and Selectivity

Jiang et al. (JABES 12:177-194, 2007) present models for tag return data on fish. They examine whether the models are parameter redundant, but need to resort to numerical methods as symbolic methods were sometimes found to be intractable. Also, their results are only applicable for a specified number of years of tagging data and age-classes. Here we show how symbolic methods can in fact be used and also how conclusions apply to any number of years of tagging data and age-classes. This article has supplementary material online.