Fisheries and Aquaculture Department

Overview of the activity

Based on the scope and values of the fishery, the next step, which is central to the entire EAF process, is to identify all the relevant issues (assets, outcomes, systems and drivers) associated with the fishery across each of the EAF components (ecological wellbeing, human wellbeing and ability to achieve).

The identification process must cover all direct and indirect impacts generated by the fishing activities on retained and non retained species, the broader ecosystem; plus the wanted and unwanted social and economic outcomes on both the fishers and the community. The process should also identify all the elements needed to enable the effective governance and administration of the fishery, including legislation, plans, consultation, compliance, etc.   Finally, it also records any issues external to the management system that could affect the performance of the fishery including natural (e.g. climatic) and manmade ecological (e.g. pollution), social (e.g. international attitudes) or economic (e.g. exchange rates) impacts.

Relevant stakeholders (fishers, managers, scientists, community etc.) should be able to raise any issues through a suitable consultation process such as interviews, surveys or, most commonly, stakeholder workshops.  The consultation process must be completed in a common language of the participants and they must be given sufficient instructions on the purpose and process before beginning. 

A number of workshop tools can assist with effective issue identification and structuring.  This may include brain storming, checklists, component trees and impact – asset matrices.  These can be used separately but also in combination to help ensure (i) good participation, (ii) comprehensive sets of issues are generated and (iii) these are sorted into the relevant EAF categories to facilitate their alignment with one or more of the high level fishery management objectives.

Relevant questions

• What are the ecological ‘assets’ which are being impacted directly or indirectly by the fishery, and how specifically is the fishery impacting them?   This covers all the retained and non retained species, the broader ecosystem - including habitats and endangered species - that the fishery may be impacting and therefore the management plan may need to control. 
• What are the social and/or economic ‘outcomes’ (both good and bad) currently being generated by the fishery (or impacting on the fishery), plus what outcomes does the community want to have generated in the future?  This should relate to the community values identified in the scoping phase.
• What governance ‘systems’ are in place or required to manage impacts on the ecological assets and generate the desired social and/or economic outcomes?  This should cover both the fishery management system plus any governance systems used by other agencies, the fishers or the community that may be affecting (both positive and negative) the performance of the fishery. 
• What are the external ‘drivers’ which may be affecting the fishery performance but are not directly controlled by the management plan?   This includes activities managed by other agencies (e.g. coastal development, pollution), world scale drivers (fuel costs, markets) and natural impacts (oceanography, climate)   

Key actions

• Organize stakeholder meetings and/or interviews to identify all the issues of potential relevance to the EAF management process, related to the main direct and indirect impacts of fishing and related activities (along the entire fish production chain) on the fisheries itself and on non-fishery activities.
• Identify any issues that are outside of the fishery management responsibility that are affecting, or could in the future affect, the performance of the fishery.
• Sort and structure each of the issues into their relevant EAF components and clarify if the issue is ‘asset’ with one or objective that is to be managed and achieved; or if it is an impact or threat to one or more objectives.
• Identify which high level fishery management objectives are relevant to each of the issues raised.

Tools

 Stakeholder input is essential for this activity and this can be facilitated in various ways. e.g. formal workshops and focus groups using EAF presentation materials or a series of individual discussions, e.g. with representatives of the various groups. These consultation methods and tools need not be mutually exclusive and a small group of individual interviews can be used to draft a set of identified issues while a broader consultation can subsequently be asked to formally amend and adopt the final set of issues.  For widely dispersed stakeholders or where large numbers are involved, surveys or questionnaires may be more appropriate.

There are also a number of specific tools available to enhance the level of participation in issue identification (brainstorming and cardstorming) within workshops or focus groups.  There are tools to help ensure all relevant EAF issues are identified (component trees, checklists, conceptual models) and sorted into categories (Objective – impact matrices).

The tools used should match the stakeholders’ capability and the environment where the meetings will occur.  Addressing subsistence or other community-level fisheries on a beach will require less formal/technical processes to be effective. For meetings with government officials and large scale fisheries in a formal environment, use of computer-based methods is common.  It is often best to use a combination of tools but in all cases, the assistance of expert facilitation helps greatly and the discussions (along with any reference material) should always be in the common language of the audience.

The selection criteria for these tools are given in the table below.

Tools and information sources		Selection criteria
		Difficulty	Cost	Capacity	Know.	Participation	Time
	Card Storming	Easy	L	L-M	L	M-H	S
	Brainstorming	Easy	L	L-M	L	M-H	S
	Component trees	Moderate	L -M	M	L	M	S
	EAF Component Lists	Easy	L	L-M	L	M	S
	Objective – Impact matrices	Moderate	L- M	M	L	M	S
	Conceptual Models	Moderate	M	M	M	L	S

L= Low or Long; H= High; M= Medium, S=Short

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