Identifying stakeholder preferences for rebuilding a Canadian Atlantic redfish fishery—limitations and benefits of different opinion survey approaches

Abstract

Fisheries management authorities seek to improve the incorporation of stakeholders’ preferences into decision-making but conventional approaches to assessing stakeholder viewpoints may risk under-representing a diversity of opinions. In Atlantic Canada’s units 1 and 2 redfish fisheries, there are competing visions about re-developing the fishery following historical overfishing. A management strategy evaluation (MSE) sought to identify which fishery objectives should guide the formulation of performance metrics. Following the MSE, we carried out a study to further sample the social, economic, and ecological objectives for the fishery using multiple questioning methods: i.e., workshops, questionnaires, and interviews. Results of interviews and questionnaires identified areas of consensus and complexity of opinion among the different groups (commercial, government and Indigenous), and showed that the workshop-based performance metrics defined in the MSE underrepresented the diversity of stakeholder preferences, particularly regarding social and economic goals. Multi-method and multi-disciplinary approaches to formalizing objectives are resource-intensive. However, there is value in applying multiple methods to systematically develop and formalize performance metrics that accurately reflect a diversity of stakeholders’ priorities for the fishery.