Annual review of priors for grey seal population model 2019: Special Committee on Seals (SCOS) Briefing Paper (BP 2019/02)

Prior distributions (Table 1) for the grey seal population model (Thomas 2019) are required for the
following model parameters: adult female survival , maximum pup survival , fecundity ,
shape of density dependence acting on pup survival , region-specific carrying capacity (in terms of
pup production) , number of adults per female , and precision of the pup production estimates
. The data used to inform these priors are presented below and in Tables 2 and 3. The resulting
prior distributions are shown in Figure 1 and Table 1. These distributions are identical to those used
at the upper bound on has been increased
from 0.97 to 0.98. Further discussion of previous and current prior selection is given in Lonergan (2012;
2014), and Russell (2017). Recent data, and any implications for the current priors, are highlighted.
For study sites for which there are multiple estimates for a parameter, only the most comprehensive
study is presented. This briefing paper is based on Supporting Information in Thomas et al. (2019).