Fisheries and Aquaculture Department

Overview of the activity

Having determined the set of operational objectives, indicators and performance measures for the fishery, the next action is to produce an agreed and coherent set of management measures that should generate acceptable levels of performance. This involves the identification of potential management options and some level of evaluation to determine which of these will be the most practical and appropriate given the fishery’s value, location and the level of resources available (human, financial and information).
 
There are many options for management arrangements based on some combination of limiting access, vessels, gear, catch, areas, time etc and there are many books, manuals and reports that provide guidance on choosing the most appropriate options. The process for identifying the draft set of measures can be initiated by the management authority but their evaluation and refinement should always involve stakeholders (especially fishers and compliance officers) to ensure any proposals are practical/enforceable which generally increases their acceptance and adoption.

The evaluation of which are the best options may simply involve the qualitative consideration of each option by those involved in the management of the fishery using some form of expert judgement. Alternatively, a number of quantitative methods are available to assist from quantitative stock/bioeconomic assessments that examine single objectives; Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) that includes management and stakeholder processes; up to Ecosystem and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) that can assess the management package against multiple objectives and a number of GIS based tools can assist in determining appropriate boundaries for spatially based management systems.

Clearly the more complex the assessment method the more demanding it is in data, time and resources.

Relevant questions

• How complex a Management Plan can you afford, and what are you capable of implementing?  What are the management resources available to implement the measures?
• What types of management measures have worked or not worked in similar types of fisheries.
• Are there local conditions or constraints that would make some management measures more or less likely to be successful
• Are all high priority issues to be covered? Have we identified all possible interactions between them and are there any synergies that can make the plan more efficient?
• Have we achieved overall coherence, within the plan, within the sector and with national policies?
• What is the timeframe that stakeholders think acceptable for the management measures to produce the expected outcomes?  Are there interim actions that can be taken before it is finalised?
• What is the likely chance of success of the proposed management package and how does this fit with the risk profile of the stakeholders and government?
• How practical (in terms of costs and likely degree of community acceptance) to implement?

Key actions

• Identify possible alternative and complementary management measures portfolios to meet the objectives of each issue.
• Evaluate each of the possible management options available to deal with one issue/objective and determine the ‘best’ option.
• Assess the impact of the management option on other issues and other objectives.
• Adjust the overall set of options to minimise unwanted interactions and maximize synergy between options.
• Outline what management actions will occur if a future assessment shows that performance for the issue/objective is not acceptable. This may imply fine tuning of the management measure or the updating of the entire management planning cycle.
• Review the set of indicators and performance measures for each issue to ensure they are still the most cost effective.
• Ensure there are sufficient resources to undertake the agreed set of management measures including monitoring of all their associated indicators.

Tools

Possible new management options could be identified through the use of existing management theories and manuals for the type of fishery being considered including a desk-top assessment of what has worked or not worked elsewhere in similar situations. There are numerous fisheries management manuals that outline the various types of management measures available.  These can be divided into a number of categories based on the type of fishery control (e.g. gear-based or area-based measures, effort control or catch allocation), some cover specific issues (e.g. by-catch reduction, destructive fishing, post-harvest handling), some specific management methods (e.g. quotas, MPAs) and others governance measures (e.g. fisheries enforcement and compliance, safety at sea, community based, access rights, incentives).  In addition to the formally documented options, inspiration could also come from the stakeholders themselves if the participation has been effective so mobilisation of traditional knowledge may be required and there are now manuals that outline Community Based Management options.

Evaluating options can be completed by collective expert judgement or expert panels using the collective thoughts those with direct experience in management.  More formal methods, include cost-benefit analyses, which may involve some form of quantitative techniques. For single issues such as determining actions for stock management the more complicated methods involve the use of quantitative stock or bio-economic simulation models.

To simultaneously assess many issues expert advice is still useful with the simplest tool being Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). If the examination of the robustness of the management arrangements is to be formally examined, especially to include uncertainty about the management process, Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) approaches can be useful but only if there are sufficient data to support them. For even more data hungry approaches, there are a number of integrated assessment models some of which have reached a high level of complexity (e.g. Atlantis) which have just been reviewed by the FAO.  For spatially based management systems there are now a large number of GIS based decision support tools that can assist in the selection of appropriate boundaries and zoning.

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

Tools and information sources		Selection criteria
		Difficulty	Cost	Capacity	Know.	Participation	Time
Option Identification
	Specific EAF Summaries	Easy	L	M	L	L-M	S
	Management Manuals and Reviews	Moderate	L	M	L	L-M	S-M
	Community Based Techniques	Easy	L	M	L	M-H	M
	Root Cause Analysis	Moderate	L	M	M	L-M	M
	Fisheries Enforcement and Compliance	Moderate	M-H	M-H	M	L-M	M-L
	SWOT Analyses	Moderate	L	L -M	L	M-H	S
Evaluation
	Expert Judgment or Panels	Easy	L	L-M	L-M	M-H	S
	Cost Benefit Analysis	Moderate	L-M	M	M	L	M
	Social and Economic Assessment Methods	Fairly hard	M-H	H	H	L	L
	Quantitative stock assessment methods	Fairly hard	M-H	H	H	L	L
	Multicriteria Analysis	Moderate	L	M	L	L-M	S-M
	Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE)	Very Hard	M- H	H	H	M-H	L
	GIS based decision support	Fairly Hard	M-H	M-H	M-H	L-M	M-L
	Review of Quantitative Ecosystem Models	Very Hard	H	VH	VH	L	L

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

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