Abstract
Management strategy evaluation (MSE) is a simulation approach that serves as a “light on the hill” (Smith, 1994) to test options for marine management, monitoring, and assessment against simulated ecosystem and fishery dynamics, including uncertainty in ecological and fishery processes and observations. MSE has become a key method to evaluate trade-offs between management objectives and to communicate with decision makers. Here we describe how and why MSE is continuing to grow from a single species approach to one relevant to multi-species and ecosystem-based management. In particular, different ecosystem modeling approaches can fit within the MSE process to meet particular natural resource management needs. We present four case studies that illustrate how MSE is expanding to include ecosystem considerations and ecosystem models as ‘operating models’ (i.e., virtual test worlds), to simulate monitoring, assessment, and harvest control rules, and to evaluate tradeoffs via performance metrics. We highlight United States case studies related to fisheries regulations and climate, which support NOAA’s policy goals related to the Ecosystem Based Fishery Roadmap and Climate Science Strategy but vary in the complexity of population, ecosystem, and assessment representation. We emphasize methods, tool development, and lessons learned that are relevant beyond the United States, and the additional benefits relative to single-species MSE approaches.
Highlights
What Is MSE?Management strategy evaluation (MSE) has become a common best practice for managing living marine resources (Sainsbury et al, 2000; Punt et al, 2014b)
As a proof of concept, we present outputs of a simulated singlespecies assessment of a small pelagic fish, using generated data from the Atlantis operating model with atlantisom as the link between Atlantis and Stock Synthesis
Lessons Learned Using existing infrastructure for single-species modeling is the best way to use MSE to test real-world estimation models, rather than approximating with scaled down or simplified versions
Summary
What Is MSE?Management strategy evaluation (MSE) has become a common best practice for managing living marine resources (Sainsbury et al, 2000; Punt et al, 2014b). A recent international working group defined MSE as “a process whereby the performances of alternative harvest strategies are tested and compared using stochastic simulations of stock and fishery dynamics against a set of performance statistics developed to quantify the attainment of management objectives” (Anon, 2018), and we adopt their terminology for this and other language, with small local adaptations (see Appendix). Involvement of stakeholders such as commercial and recreational fishers, seafood processors, non-extractive users, conservationists, and the general public is essential if MSE is to be used for complex ecosystem problems with potential trade-offs between users (Feeney et al, 2019); this is true for single species MSE applications. Objectives and performance criteria can include ecological, social and economic components of the ecosystem under study (Nielsen et al, 2018), with the expectation that different sets of performance metrics will resonate with each group
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