Choosing fisheries harvest policies : when does uncertainty matter?

Fisheries harvest policies are formulated under uncertainty because estimates of stock abundance and biological parameters are imprecise. However, allowable harvests are often based solely on point estimates of these quantities, essentially ignoring uncertainty. Some fishery scientists have advocated adjusting harvest levels downward to account for uncertainty, but few formal methods have been developed to determine how large these "uncertainty adjustments" should be. We describe an age-structured simulation model that explicitly incorporated uncertainty in parameters of the stock–recruitment relationship, errors in abundance estimates, and year-to-year variability in recruitment and calculated which uncertainty adjustment was optimal in terms of expected discounted yield. The optimal adjustment varied considerably, depending on the stock and harvest policy simulated. The increase in expected value from incorporating the adjustment into the harvest policy was usually small, except when we modeled a biolog...

[1]  W. C. Allee.  Animal Aggregations: A Study in General Sociology , 1931 .

[2]  H. Johnson,et al.  A comparison of 'traditional' and multimedia information systems development practices , 2003, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[3]  W. E. Ricker,et al.  Maximum Sustained Yields from Fluctuating Environments and Mixed Stocks , 1958 .

[4]  D. Garrod.  Population Dynamics of the Arcto-Norwegian Cod , 1967 .

[5]  Howard Raiffa,et al.  Decision analysis: introductory lectures on choices under uncertainty. 1968. , 1969, M.D.Computing.

[6]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  A Generalized Computer Simulation Model for Fish Population Studies , 1969 .

[7]  C. Clark.  The Economics of Overexploitation , 1973, Science.

[8]  Colin W. Clark,et al.  Possible effects of schooling on the dynamics of exploited fish populations , 1974 .

[9]  C. Walters.  Optimal Harvest Strategies for Salmon in Relation to Environmental Variability and Uncertain Production Parameters , 1975 .

[10]  C. Walters,et al.  Adaptive Control of Fishing Systems , 1976 .

[11]  Colin W. Clark,et al.  Mathematical Bioeconomics: The Optimal Management of Renewable Resources. , 1993 .

[12]  Sergio Rinaldi,et al.  Mean Value and Variability of Fish Catches in Fluctuating Environments , 1976 .

[13]  M. Gilpin,et al.  Multiple domains of attraction in competition communities , 1976, Nature.

[14]  Randall M. Peterman,et al.  A Simple Mechanism that Causes Collapsing Stability Regions in Exploited Salmonid Populations , 1977 .

[15]  J. A. Gulland.  The stability of fish stocks , 1977 .

[16]  W. Silvert.  The Price of Knowledge: Fisheries Management as a Research Tool , 1978 .

[17]  W. Reed.  The steady state of a stochastic harvesting model , 1978 .

[18]  Dennis V. Lindley.  Introduction to decision theory , 1978 .

[19]  Donald Ludwig,et al.  Optimal Harvesting of a Randomly Fluctuating Resource. II: Numerical Methods and Results , 1979 .

[20]  Louis W. Botsford,et al.  Optimal fishery policy for size-specific, density-dependent population models , 1981 .

[21]  C. Walters.  Optimum Escapements in the Face of Alternative Recruitment Hypotheses , 1981 .

[22]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  Adaptive Management of Stock–Recruitment Systems , 1981 .

[23]  Allowing for risks in setting catch limits based on MSY , 1981 .

[24]  M. Gatto,et al.  Some remarks on periodic harvesting of a fish population , 1981 .

[25]  R. Mendelssohn.  Discount Factors and Risk Aversion in Managing Random Fish Populations , 1982 .

[26]  John Shepherd,et al.  A versatile new stock-recruitment relationship for fisheries, and the construction of sustainable yield curves , 1982 .

[27]  C. Walters,et al.  Optimal harvesting with imprecise parameter estimates , 1982 .

[28]  Leah J. Smith,et al.  Risk reduction in fisheries management , 1982 .

[29]  C. Clark,et al.  Uncertainty, search, and information in fisheries , 1983 .

[30]  J. M. Elliott,et al.  Fish Stock Assessment. A Manual of Basic Methods , 1984 .

[31]  R. Hilborn,et al.  Adaptive Probing Strategies for Age-Structured Fish Stocks , 1983 .

[32]  M. Sissenwine.  The Uncertain Environment of Fishery Scientists and Managers , 1984, Marine Resource Economics.

[33]  R. Hilborn.  A Comparison of Harvest Policies for Mixed Stock Fisheries , 1985 .

[34]  D. Ruppert,et al.  A Stochastic Population Model for Managing the Atlantic Menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus) Fishery and Assessing Managerial Risks , 1985 .

[35]  Colin W. Clark,et al.  Bioeconomic Modelling and Fisheries Management. , 1985 .

[36]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  Adaptive Management of Renewable Resources , 1986 .

[37]  Ganapati P. Patil,et al.  Risk Analysis in the Georges Bank Haddock Fishery—A Pragmatic Example of Dealing with Uncertainty , 1986 .

[38]  C. Walters,et al.  ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT OF HARVEST RATES IN THE PRESENCE OF A RISK AVERSE UTILITY FUNCTION , 1987 .

[39]  Ganapati P. Patil,et al.  Application of event tree risk analysis to fisheries management , 1987 .

[40]  Doug S Butterworth,et al.  Towards rational harvesting of the South African anchovy considering survey imprecision and recruitment variability , 1987 .

[41]  A. Tyler.  Biological Basis for Management of Groundfish Resources of the West Coast of Canada , 1988 .

[42]  W. Lovejoy.  Effect of Stochasticity on Optimal Harvesting Strategies in Some Lumped-Parameter Fishery Models , 1988 .

[43]  Stock-recruitment curves as used in the stock-reduction analysis model , 1988 .

[44]  C. Walters,et al.  Alternative Harvest Strategies for Pacific Herring (Clupea harengus pallasi) , 1988 .

[45]  C. Walters.  A Partial Bias Correction Factor for Stock–Recruitment Parameter Estimation in the Presence of Autocorrelated Environmental Effects , 1990 .

[46]  Jie Zheng,et al.  Threshold Management Policies for Exploited Populations , 1990 .

[47]  A. Parma,et al.  Experimental Harvesting of Cyclic Stocks in the Face of Alternative Recruitment Hypotheses , 1990 .

[48]  Max Henrion,et al.  Uncertainty: A Guide to Dealing with Uncertainty in Quantitative Risk and Policy Analysis , 1990 .

[49]  K. J. Sainsbury,et al.  Application of an experimental approach to management of a tropical multispecies fishery with highly uncertain dynamics , 1991 .

[50]  R. I. C. C. Francis,et al.  Use of Risk Analysis to Assess Fishery Management Strategies: A Case Study using Orange Roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) on the Chatham Rise, New Zealand , 1992 .

[51]  C. Walters,et al.  Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment , 1992, Springer US.