Trade-offs for data-limited fisheries when using harvest strategies based on catch-only models

Details

• Journal Title:
  Fish and Fisheries
• Personal Author:
  Walsh, Jessica C. ; Minto, Cóilín ; Jardim, Ernesto ; Anderson, Sean C. ; Jensen, Olaf P. ; Afflerbach, Jamie ; Dickey-Collas, Mark ; Kleisner, Kristin M. ; Longo, Catherine ; Osio, Giacomo Chato ; Selig, Elizabeth R. ; Thorson, James T. ; Rudd, Merrill B. ; Papacostas, Katherine J. ; Kittinger, John N. ; Rosenberg, Andrew A. ; Cooper, Andrew B.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) ; JISAO (Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean)
• Description:
  Many of the world's fisheries are unassessed, with little information about population status or risk of overfishing. Unassessed fisheries are particularly predominant in developing countries and in small-scale fisheries, where they are important for food security. Several catch-only methods based on time series of fishery catch and commonly available life-history traits have been developed to estimate stock status (defined as biomass relative to biomass at maximum sustainable yield: B/B-MSY). While their stock status performance has been extensively studied, performance of catch-only models as a management tool is unknown. We evaluated the extent to which a superensemble of three prominent catch-only models can provide a reliable basis for fisheries management and how performance compares across management strategies that control catch or fishing effort. We used a management strategy evaluation framework to determine whether a superensemble of catch-only models can reliably inform harvest control rules (HCRs). Across five simulated fish life histories and two harvest-dynamic types, catch-only models and HCR combinations reduced the risk of overfishing and increased the proportion of stocks above B-MSY compared to business as usual, though often resulted in poor yields. Precautionary HCRs based on fishing effort were robust and insensitive to error in catch-only models, while catch-based HCRs caused high probabilities of overfishing and more overfished populations. Catch-only methods tended to overestimate B/B-MSY for our simulated data sets. The catch-only superensemble combined with precautionary effort-based HCRs could be part of a stepping stone approach for managing some data-limited stocks while working towards more data-moderate assessment methods.
• Source:
  Fish and Fisheries, 19(6), 1130-1146.
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12316
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:2ebdb2b973f364ba43cc3893081e1dd21c6a862d0bcde35a54503e07f0b63ba0
• File Type: