What are common challenges when developing and implementing a harvest strategy?

1. Funding and time constraints: MSE requires an upfront investment and adequate technical expertise, but it pays off in dividends upon implementation, given the streamlined scientific inputs and pre-agreed management actions.
2. Stakeholder Engagement: Achieving active and inclusive participation from fishers, conservation groups, local communities, and other stakeholders is crucial but challenging. Balancing diverse interests, building consensus, and addressing communication gaps—especially between scientists and managers—can complicate the process.
3. Data Availability and Quality: Reliable data is desirable for creating effective harvest strategies. In many regions, there may be gaps in data collection, issues with data accuracy, or a lack of historical data, which can hinder the development of robust strategies.
4. Adaptation to Environmental Changes: As climate change and other environmental factors alter fish populations and ecosystems, harvest strategies must be adaptable. However, predicting and incorporating these changes into management plans can be complex.
5. Capacity Building: It is essential to build the capacity of local managers, scientists, and stakeholders to understand, implement, and maintain harvest strategies. This requires time, resources, and ongoing support.
6. Compliance and Enforcement: Ensuring that all parties adhere to the agreed-upon harvest strategy can be challenging, particularly in areas with limited resources for monitoring and enforcement.
7. Allocation: Determining how to allocate fishing opportunities or catch limits among different countries, regions, or fishing sectors can be contentious. Disagreements over allocation often stem from historical fishing rights, economic interests, and differing national priorities. Reaching fair and equitable allocation decisions that satisfy all stakeholders can be one of the most challenging aspects of harvest strategy implementation.

How do harvest strategies address uncertainty?

Harvest strategies address uncertainty using a process known as Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE). This process tests the effectiveness of different management approaches across a range of possible future scenarios. It involves evaluating how the harvest strategy would perform under various conditions, such as changes in stock productivity, environmental factors, or illegal fishing levels. By testing these different scenarios, scientists and managers can find the harvest strategy that will perform best, that is, best meet the management objectives, regardless of which scenario comes to fruition.

What are the key components of a harvest strategy?

Although management bodies name and define them slightly differently, all harvest strategies include these basic elements: management objectives; a monitoring program; indicators of the fishery’s status and population health, with associated reference points; a method to assess those indicators; and harvest control rules that set fishing opportunities, which could include catch and size limits, depending on the value of key indicators relative to the reference points.

How are reference points used in harvest strategies?

Reference points are benchmarks used to compare the current status of a fishery management system against a desirable (or undesirable) state. When ingrained in the agreed management objectives for a fishery, they can be used to assess progress toward meeting those objectives. Check out our resources reference points to learn about the different types of reference points and considerations when choosing candidate reference points.

What is the process for developing a harvest strategy?

Although different management bodies may take different approaches, harvest strategies are all developed using MSE and generally follow this development process:

Check out our animation that explains harvest strategies, including how they are developed to achieve a long-term vision for a stock and the fisheries that target it.

What is the difference between a harvest strategy and a traditional management approach?

In most regions, “management procedure” and “harvest strategy” are used synonymously. However, in some regions, like the western Pacific, a management procedure is considered a type of harvest strategy. In that case, the distinction is that a “harvest strategy” is a more general management framework, whereas each component of a “management procedure” is formally specified, and the combination of monitoring data, analysis method, and harvest control rule has been simulation tested using MSE to demonstrate adequately robust performance in the face of plausible uncertainties about stock and fishery dynamics. It is this definition that HarvestStrategies.org uses for “management procedure” and “harvest strategy.”

Why are harvest strategies important?

Effective long-term management of the world’s fish stocks requires science, stakeholder engagement, and advanced planning. Harvest strategies can help enable effective fisheries management by:

• Enabling sustainability by setting pre-agreed rules and objectives that help maintain fish populations and catches at target levels over the long term
• Improving decision-making by accounting for natural variability and uncertainty, avoiding time-consuming and costly political negotiations, and enabling managers to act precautionarily and swiftly.
• Facilitating greater transparency by providing all stakeholders with a clear, long-term vision of a sustainable stock and fishery.
• Increasing market stability and improving the industry’s ability to plan because management decisions are predictable.

Check out our animation, “Fishing for the Future: The Case for Harvest Strategies,” and our blogs to learn more about the benefits of harvest strategies.

What is Management Strategy Evaluation?

Robust harvest strategies, before they are implemented, are tested through a scientific process called management strategy evaluation (MSE), used to simulate the workings of a fisheries system and test whether potential harvest strategies can achieve the pre-agreed management objectives. MSE helps to identify the harvest strategy likely to perform best, regardless of uncertainty, and balance trade-offs amid competing management objectives. Because MSE is so fundamental to harvest strategies, some consider the term to encompass the process of harvest strategy development itself. Explore our data visualization tools for MSE results, and check out our animation to learn more about MSE.

Is there a difference between a harvest strategy and a management procedure?

In most regions, “management procedure” and “harvest strategy” are used synonymously. However, in some regions, like the western Pacific, a management procedure is considered a type of harvest strategy. In that case, the distinction is that a “harvest strategy” is a more general management framework, whereas each component of a “management procedure” is formally specified, and the combination of monitoring data, analysis method, and harvest control rule has been simulation tested using MSE to demonstrate adequately robust performance in the face of plausible uncertainties about stock and fishery dynamics. It is this definition that HarvestStrategies.org uses for “management procedure” and “harvest strategy.”

What is a harvest strategy, also known as a management procedure?

A harvest strategy, also known as a management procedure, is a pre-agreed framework for making fisheries management decisions (such as catch or effort limits) to achieve a long-term vision for the fish and fishery. Before they are implemented, robust harvest strategies are tested through a process that involves fishery scientists, managers, and other stakeholders, which is called management strategy evaluation (MSE).

Check out our resources to learn more about the basic elements of a harvest strategy and how the process works.