Abstract
SUMMARY: Harvest control rules are widely used by management agencies for decision-making and for promoting public awareness of the status of marine and freshwater fisheries. Many current control rules combine fishing mortality and biomass-based biological reference points. Control rules were introduced as a precaution against the influence of uncertainty and to decrease the risk of overfishing, but are compromised if the uncertainties of the biological reference points are not explicitly considered. Uncertainty has been widely acknowledged but has not been incorporated into control rule design and application. In this paper, we used a Bayesian statistical catch-at-age model to estimate uncertainties in the indicators of fishing mortality, population size, and biological reference points. We apply this model to the Lake Erie walleye (Sander vitreus) fishery, and by fully considering the uncertainty of the indicators, the risk of overfishing and the risk of the population being overfished can be explicitly estimated in the control rules. We suggest short and long-term approaches to incorporate uncertainty in the design of control rules. We also suggest that control rules for specific fisheries should be designed with explicit consideration of the uncertainty of the biological reference points, based on a risk level that the management agency and stakeholders agree upon.
Highlights
Harvest control rules are widely used by fisheries management agencies of the United States and other countries for decision-making, and for promoting public awareness of the status of marine and freshwater fisheries (Restrepo et al, 1998; Restrepo and Powers, 1999)
SUMMARY: Harvest control rules are widely used by management agencies for decision-making and for promoting public awareness of the status of marine and freshwater fisheries
Control rules were introduced as a precaution against the influence of uncertainty and to decrease the risk of overfishing, but are compromised if the uncertainties of the biological reference points are not explicitly considered
Summary
Harvest control rules are widely used by fisheries management agencies of the United States and other countries for decision-making, and for promoting public awareness of the status of marine and freshwater fisheries (Restrepo et al, 1998; Restrepo and Powers, 1999). Constant catch (such as maximum sustainable yield [MSY]) and constant fishing mortality (such as Fmsy and F0.1) are two approaches of simple harvest control rules (FAO, 1995; Garcia, 1996; Restrepo et al, 1998). A target reference point expresses the desired state of a fishery in terms of parameters such as output (catch), fishing effort, or capacity, stated as an explicit management objective for the fishery. A limit reference point (or threshold) is the limit beyond which the state of a fishery is undesirable (Garcia, 1996)
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