Hi. My name is Paul Taylor. I registered Statfishtics Ltd with the New Zealand Companies Office in May 2011, about the time I left the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) after 24 years of employment. I am an independent consultant with 28 years experience in fisheries research, specialising in pelagic finfish. I have worked on a wide range of species including highly migratory tunas and billfish, but my main contribution has been to the assessment of inshore schooling pelagics such as kahawai (Arripis trutta) and mackerels (Scomber and Trachurus spp.), most recently developing a method for quantifying their interannual variation using observational aerial sightings data from the New Zealand domestic purse-seine fishery. I have a keen interest in the use of statistical modelling techniques with environmental data, particularly the GLM, GAM, and GLMM as they are applied within certain R packages, including Bayesian-based approaches. This interest extends to the application of stereological methods to intracellular organelles of the decapod crustacean eye.