A Management Procedure for Every Fishery: Extending Management Procedure Discipline to even the Most Data-Poor Fisheries

4 de junio de 2026

AuthorKerrie Robertson
Fisheries and Oceans Expert, ADIRA CONSULTING

^{Photo by Rod Waddington. CC BY-SA 2.0.}

The management procedure (MP) framework — management objectives, reference points, harvest control rules (HCRs), and MPs — is current best practice in fisheries management, replacing traditional reactive management with a proactive approach based on a pre-agreed decision framework.

MPs – also known as harvest strategies – have themselves undergone a significant evolution. It was not that long ago that MPs were less known and even lesser used in fisheries, particularly internationally managed ones. Then, they became the domain of a handful of well-monitored fisheries, slowly becoming mainstream fisheries management. The key to the success of MPs is their ability to simulate future scenarios and test management approach effectiveness, therefore providing confidence in the pre-agreed decision rules.

MPs have also progressively been adapted to more data-limited contexts with empirical MPs, including catch per unit effort (CPUE) and length-based HCRs. Each step has extended the reach of the MP discipline to stocks that would previously have been considered unmanageable under this kind of framework.

The next frontier is the stocks that are beyond even those adapted methods: fisheries where a reliable CPUE series is not available, and where conventional data-limited approaches are quantitatively impossible (i.e. it is not possible to build a simulation system to test potential management decisions).

The standard response in these cases in international fisheries is to apply precautionary catch limits derived from historical averages and move on – or set no limits at all and hope for the best. Aspects of that approach are defensible as an interim measure. As a permanent management approach, though, it forgoes many of the benefits an MP framework is designed to provide.

The question is then: How can the benefits of an MP be realised when it is not possible to construct and quantitatively test an MP? How can we take those MP principles and apply them to a greater number of fisheries?

The Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA)

The Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA) is exploring that very question in an internationally novel way.

SIOFA is an organisation with a significant management challenge.  It is responsible for more than 100+ species under its mandate, many of which are smaller fisheries or are severely data challenged. For SIOFA, a substantial proportion of stocks fall into this category — stocks for which the quantitative toolkit, even in its most adapted data-limited forms, simply does not work.

SIOFA’s new Precautionary Approach and Management (PAM) Framework, under development through its Scientific Committee and funded by the EU, seeks to address this directly. It is attuned to the fact that it has this full diversity of stocks of varying commercial importance, and with different levels of data quality. Some stocks will justify significant ongoing scientific investment. Others are lower priority — but that does not mean SIOFA can afford to ignore them. A stock that slips into serious decline through inattention is a management failure regardless of its commercial value.

The PAM Framework’s response is not to draw a line below which proactive management does not apply, but instead to design a tiered system that extends MP discipline as far as the data will allow, for every stock under its remit — including for stocks where quantitative methods are not currently feasible. The PAM Framework creates “Tier 1” and “Tier 2” MPs (both quantitative, with different levels of sophistication of testing using management strategy evaluation, or MSE) — the typical MPs we see in fisheries management.  And then it goes one step further to extend MP principles to even the most data-limited of fisheries. Its “Tier 3 Qualitative MP” is the instrument for that extension.

What SIOFA’s “Tier 3 Qualitative” Management Procedure provides

Many of the most durable benefits of an MP are structural, not computational. Pre-agreed rules shift management decisions from reactive, case-by-case negotiation to a rules-based system agreed in advance. Explicit consideration of future scenarios, including adverse ones, disciplines decision-making in ways that traditional assessment advice rarely does. Defined monitoring triggers create accountability and an evidence base for future review.

A Qualitative MP formalises these benefits. It is a full MP in its composition: it requires a fishery definition, explicit management objectives, limit reference points, HCRs, performance monitoring, exceptional circumstances protocols, and scheduled review — the same core architecture as a quantitative or empirically-derived MP.

What differs is how elements are developed, selected, and implemented. Most notably, Qualitative MPs are not developed using quantitative simulation testing, a fundamental element of what typically makes an MP an MP. For these Tier 3 stocks, quantitative analyses are impossible. Stock assessment relies on the best available method given the data — which at this tier means qualitative analysis: expert judgement applied to life history knowledge from analogous species; observable indicators such as changes in catch composition, fish size, or fleet behaviour; and any other evidence the fishery or other sources can provide. And similarly, when it comes to MP development, in place of quantitative MSE modelling, structured qualitative evaluation applies: an independent expert panel (odd-numbered to allow majority decision-making) is asked the same question the quantitative simulation would perform. It considers the plausible scenarios for the stock (changes in fishing dynamics, recruitment variability, environmental shifts, alternative biological assumptions), evaluates candidate management approaches against the agreed management objectives, and recommends the approach most likely to meet those objectives. Where panel members disagree, the range of opinions and the driving factors are documented. The HCRs that result may be qualitative — a defined catch trigger, escalating levels of intervention, or thresholds based on observable changes — but they are pre-agreed, explicit, and binding in the same way as any other HCR.

The output is a complete MP. It is evaluated differently, and its rules may be expressed qualitatively rather than quantitatively, but it carries the same procedural weight and the same expectation of compliance as any other MP adopted under the PAM Framework.

Expert knowledge should not be considered a substitute where sufficient fisheries data exists — but it is data that can be used where it doesn’t. Scientists, managers, and industry participants carry substantial knowledge that never enters a formal assessment process: life history understanding from analogous species, observations of shifts in catch composition or fleet behaviour, and practical understanding of what the monitoring system can and cannot detect. Structured evaluation makes that knowledge explicit, subjects it to independent scrutiny, and converts it into documented, auditable management advice.

Qualitative MPs should be treated as temporary. The process of structured expert evaluation is good at identifying, with some precision, exactly which data gaps are preventing graduation to a higher (quantitative) tier. That specificity creates an institutional case for closing data gaps, which does not exist when a stock sits entirely outside the management framework. The PAM Framework builds in scheduled re-evaluation and expects stocks to graduate upward as understanding improves, but it also acknowledges that graduation requires a genuine commitment to monitoring and data collection.

Qualitative MPs are not the goal. An MP should always be as quantitative as the data will support. Qualitative MPs are the floor, not the default — the point is to match the rigour of the MP to the information available, and to push that rigour as far as possible.

Final Reflections

A Qualitative MP will never deliver the confidence that a quantitatively developed MP will provide. But, for stocks that currently have no structured management framework at all, the question is not whether the MP is perfect — it is whether it is better than the alternative. Structured objectives, pre-agreed rules, independent evaluation, explicit precaution, and a defined pathway toward more rigorous management is a meaningful foundation.

Fisheries professionals have spent decades demonstrating that proactive, rules-based management outperforms reactive decision-making. Tier 3 Qualitative MPs extend that argument to the fisheries that have, until now, been left out of it.

Kerrie Robertson previously chaired the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA) and two subsidiary committees of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO). She represented governments in multilateral negotiations spanning UN frameworks and many RFMOs. Her consultancy work through Adira Consulting focuses on translating complex legal instruments into workable governance arrangements, particularly for Pacific Island nations. She has spent her career working at the intersection of international law, fisheries science, and cross-cultural collaboration—convinced that effective ocean governance comes from dialogue, commitment to progress and ensuring that all voices are genuinely heard at the table.