Management Science in Fisheries ─ A Introduction to Simulation-Based Methods

A key goal of fisheries management is to regulate extractive pressure on a resource, so as to maximise both economic returns and sustainability. This text provides an accessible entry point for students and professionals to management science as developed in fisheries, in order to facilitate uptake of the ideas and methods currently being developed.

Traditional approaches have relied upon a stock assessment that represents current understanding of resource status and dynamics, and therefore likely response to a proposed management action. However all such assessments include an inherent degree of uncertainty, and the last few decades have seen the emergence of an adaptive management approach that attempts to explicitly account for this unknown. The book focuses on this new approach, referred to variously as a Management Procedure, Operational Management Procedure or Management Strategy. It is characterised by simulation testing of a control rule, which defines a relationship between perceived status of the resource and an optimum management action. Evaluating this control rule across a range of uncertainties attempts to ensure that it is robust to what is not known about resource status or future dynamics. The book is enriched by a large number of practical case study examples drawn from different parts of the world and covering major species of fish, crustacea and bycatch.

Charles Edwards is a Fisheries Scientist in the Fisheries Modelling Group at NIWA Ltd, Wellington, New Zealand. He has previously worked as a fisheries consultant in the UK and South Africa, and as a Research Associate at Imperial College, London, UK.

Dorothy Dankel is a Researcher at the University of Bergen, Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities & the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway.