When I first delved into the world of harvest control rules and harvest strategies in 2011 during my time with WWF as their global tuna lead, I saw it as a critical opportunity to ensure sustainable fisheries. At the time, except for Southern Bluefin Tuna, none of the tuna RFMOs had established effective harvest strategies, despite the clear benefits they offered. It was a moment where the scientific community, NGOs, and some in the industry began to rally around this concept, recognizing that pre-agreed frameworks for managing fishing effort could mitigate the volatility and short-term pressures that often dominate RFMO negotiations.
A key challenge we encountered early on was the lack of understanding among stakeholders, particularly those outside the scientific realm. Harvest strategies were often perceived as a ‘black box’ solution—complex and intimidating. This is where capacity building became essential. Working on the Common Oceans Project, we hosted a series of workshops, using interactive tools to demystify harvest strategies and get participants actively involved in shaping their development. I remember one workshop vividly: participants were surprised to learn that there isn’t always a single “right” answer when mapping out a harvest strategy. Different components, such as reference points and harvest control rules, can be arranged in multiple ways, depending on the needs of specific fisheries. This flexibility is one of the greatest strengths of harvest strategies, allowing them to be tailored to the unique challenges each fishery faces.
While we’ve made significant progress—tuna RFMOs have adopted several harvest control rules in recent years—the true challenge lies ahead: effective implementation. In the Indian Ocean, for example, despite adopting harvest control rules for skipjack tuna, we’ve seen significant non-compliance with recommended catch limits. Moving forward, compliance isn’t just about enforcement. It’s about fostering goodwill, ensuring all stakeholders feel invested in the long-term goals of sustainable management, and developing fair allocation systems that work for everyone involved.
Monitoring and enforcement will also play a crucial role. The adoption of advanced technologies, like electronic monitoring systems and automated data analytics, will be essential to ensuring that harvest strategies work in practice. We’ve already seen fisheries adopt management procedures that integrate such tools, and it’s a model that will need to be expanded globally.
The journey of implementing harvest strategies over the past decade has been transformative. In 2014, I was thrilled to see mainstream media in the UK publish pieces on the need for harvest control rules and the European retailers demanding this—something unheard of when I began this work. Today, many of our GTA partners instantly understand the value of these strategies. This is a credit to all the capacity building that has happened. However, as we look ahead, ensuring robust compliance and continued capacity building will be critical to their long-term success.
At the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA), our global supply chain partners are deeply committed to pushing for progress in this area. Over the next five years, we will leverage our partnerships to advocate for the effective uptake and critical implementation of harvest strategies across all tuna RFMOs, ensuring that our tuna fisheries remain sustainable for future generations.
About the Author: With 20 years of experience in fisheries and marine conservation, Daniel Suddaby has a deep passion for the ocean, marine life, and sustainable fishing practices. He is an expert in tuna, advocacy, and sustainable market tools that drive change in fisheries and seafood supply chains. Prior to joining the GTA, Daniel founded and led the Tuna and Distant Water Fisheries Program at Ocean Outcomes, building effective relationships with longline tuna and supply chain companies to incentivize transformation through tools such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fishery Improvement Projects. Previously, Daniel spent six years as the Deputy Leader of the World Wild Fund for Nature’s (WWF) global fisheries initiative, leading global engagement in tuna fisheries and advocacy in all Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), and providing strategic direction to WWF International on seafood engagement. He also has experience as a Senior Fisheries Certification Manager for the MSC.
The ICCAT annual meeting wrapped up on Monday in Limassol, Cyprus. Management procedures (MPs) were the big winners of the meeting, with progress made on eight different stocks. This remarkable advancement affirmed ICCAT’s commitment to transitioning its management to MPs as a more science-based and transparent approach to achieving long-term sustainability for its $5.4 billion fisheries.
North Atlantic Swordfish: A Landmark Success
An MP was adopted for North Atlantic swordfish, marking ICCAT’s first MP for a non-tuna species. Twenty-five years ago, there was a boycott of North Atlantic swordfish, given its dire status. Today, the stock is fully recovered, and the new MP will lock in this abundance and ensure a vibrant fishery for years to come. The MP was also evaluated to ensure that it can be responsive to any negative impacts of climate change on swordfish abundance, ensuring a sustainable system even in a changing ocean.
The northern swordfish catch limit will increase by 12% next year, the first catch increase for swordfish since 2002. Importantly, the adopted MP is called “MCC,” which stands for “Mostly Constant Catch,” as it is designed to secure long-term stability in the fishery, which is good for business, both on fishing vessels and in seafood markets.
West Atlantic Skipjack: Significant Progress Despite Delay
While we had hoped an MP would be adopted for West Atlantic skipjack, ICCAT members decided that they needed a bit more information before selecting a specific MP. They, therefore, stopped just short of MP adoption, finalizing operational management objectives and giving clear guidance on how to put the finishing touches on the management strategy evaluation (MSE), the results of which will determine the MP to be adopted next November. This still remarks tremendous progress and is cause for celebration.
Forward Momentum for Other Important Stocks
ICCAT also agreed to interim management objectives for the other three tropical tunas – bigeye, yellowfin, and East Atlantic skipjack. The new measure contains important information to guide and reinvigorate the multispecies MSE underway for those stocks, calling for MP adoption in 2026. We note that the 50% probability of having each of the stocks not overfished and not subject to overfishing is a minimum standard for MP development, and we will work with ICCAT members to ensure that the likelihood is raised to at least 60% for the final MP. A coin flip’s chance of success is insufficient, especially given the number of livelihoods and coastal communities that depend on these stocks.
South Atlantic albacore and North and South Atlantic blue sharks round out the list of MP actions, with objectives agreed upon for the former and all three stocks added to ICCAT’s MSE workplan.
Charting a Sustainable Future
The outcomes of the Cyprus meeting reaffirm ICCAT’s leadership in global fisheries management. By adopting a new MP and providing guidance on MP development for 7 other stocks, ICCAT is charting a path toward more sustainable and resilient big fish fisheries. The Commission is well-positioned to secure the long-term health of these key resources and the communities that depend on them. The coming year will be pivotal as these initiatives take shape, and we at www.HarvestStrategies.org look forward to continuing to engage as a stakeholder in the process.
Squid fisheries are some of the most important but undermanaged fisheries worldwide. Cephalopod catches, which include squids, made up about 11 percent of the global catch of marine species in 2022.
Because of their short lifespan, rapid growth, and fluctuation with changes in environmental conditions, applying traditional fisheries management approaches has been challenging. The result: important stocks of squid are being harvested without hard, science-based limits on fishing or even an understanding of the health of the resource.
The management procedure approach offers a solution to the tricky problems involved in squid management. And it could be in the Pacific, the ocean basin where more of the world’s squid is harvested than any other, where management procedures (also called harvest strategies) for squid are demonstrated on an international level.
Two regional fisheries management organizations in the Pacific, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) and South Pacific Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), have an express remit to manage squids. They are, in fact, the only two RFMOs with squid as a key species covered by their conventions.
This year, NPFC and SPRFMO are taking steps to improve their focus on squid sustainability, but they need to ramp up their efforts to make a lasting impact. NPFC in August held its first small scientific committee meeting focused on neon flying squid to accelerate efforts to develop the first stock assessment for that stock, whose stock status is unknown at the international level. The largest harvesters are China and Japan.
Turning south of the equator, SPRFMO’s Scientific Committee, which is about to begin its annual meeting on Sept. 30, is due to receive a report on the progress of a new task team focused on assisting in the development of SPRFMO’s first stock assessment for jumbo flying squid, whose status also is not estimated by an assessment across its range but is nonetheless being harvested within the Convention Area and members’ Exclusive Economic Zones in the amount of one million metric tons a year. That makes jumbo flying squid in the South Pacific the single largest squid fishery in the world. China is the significant harvester in the international waters, while catches in Peru’s waters are of a similar scale, with lesser catches in Chile’s and Ecuador’s waters.
Both RFMOs have plans to investigate the use of Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) to better account for the uncertainty in key biological components of their squid fisheries, with potential plans leading to the development of harvest control rules. These aspirations are laudable, but they need to be made much more concrete and translated into actions.
To accelerate their work, members in the two RFMOs should commit to developing full management procedures, tested via MSE. They should also commit to fully sharing scientific and fleet information as necessary to better understand the dynamics of their fisheries, and create science-management dialogue groups with the resources and timelines to efficiently step through the process of developing management procedures.
If data availability problems continue, data-limited approaches should be investigated to develop the MSEs, which could test the performance of simple management procedures against the potential range of different population dynamics (as well as other uncertainties).
Amidst concerns for the global sustainability of squid stocks, with researchers finding that fishing effort on squid increased 68 percent from 2017 to 2020, NPFC and SPRFMO should seize the opportunity to demonstrate how management procedures could help chart out a more sustainable path for these important squid species, one that could be followed by other squid fisheries.
Squids are both a commercially and ecologically important species, playing an integral role in marine ecosystems as prey for swordfish, sharks, tunas, marine mammals, and seabirds. However, concerns over the declining abundance of squid and lack of management measures to safeguard these fisheries cannot be overstated. It’s imperative that NPFC and SPRFMO members advance modern, science-based fisheries management for these species by strengthening data reporting, creating science-management dialogue groups and beginning the development of management procedures.
With the global demand for seafood increasing, the need to prioritize sustainable and responsible fisheries management has become increasingly urgent. An essential tool in achieving this goal is the development and implementation of a Harvest Strategy, which provides a comprehensive approach to guide decision-making in fisheries management. In Indonesia, a vast archipelagic country with abundant marine resources, robust Harvest Strategies are crucial to protect marine ecosystems and ensure the long-term viability of its fisheries. Indonesia has made significant progress in preserving its marine resources and launched a Harvest Strategy for Tropical Tuna in Indonesian Archipelagic Waters. The strategy aims to strike a balance between ecological conservation and the prosperity of Indonesian people. It is MDPI’s hope that the careful management of tuna resources will not only ensure their long-term availability but also create economic opportunities for coastal communities.
The importance for Indonesian small-scale fishers
Indonesia’s small-scale fishers play a crucial role in the country’s fisheries sector. Small fishing vessels (under 10 gross tons) represent nearly 90% of Indonesia’s fishing fleet and are responsible for more than half of the total catch, thus constituting the backbone of captured fisheries in the country. However, their vulnerability to changes in tuna populations necessitates careful management strategies to protect their livelihoods.
The Harvest Strategy for Tropical Tuna holds particular significance for Indonesian small-scale fishers. By encouraging sustainable tuna harvesting practices, the strategy could help secure their livelihoods while preserving the resource for future generations. The inclusion of small-scale fishers’ data strengthens the knowledge base, enhances their representation, fosters accountability, and promotes a sense of ownership among fishers and coastal communities. This collaborative effort highlights the importance of including diverse stakeholders and recognizing the significance of data from small-scale fishers in developing comprehensive and effective fisheries management strategies.
Since 2014, MDPI, along with small-scale fishers, have actively contributed to the development of the Harvest Strategy, providing valuable insights, technical assistance, and data collection efforts for the small-scale handline segment. This has helped address the specific complex dynamics of Indonesia’s small-scale fisheries. The integration of small-scale tuna fishers’ data into this Harvest Strategy has been a significant achievement, considering the limited data available for certain sectors of tuna fisheries, as well as the requirements, standards and technical challenges.
MDPI’s contributions to the Harvest Strategy extend beyond data provision to include scientific research, technical workshops, and capacity building efforts. MDPI’s early involvement as a data provider who had previously developed protocols to meet the requirements of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations, served as a catalyst for other governmental and non-governmental organizations to design data protocols that could contribute to the Harvest Strategy. MDPI’s expertise and commitment to sustainable fishing practices have facilitated evidence-based decision-making and fostered collaboration among stakeholders. “MDPI and other NGOs can contribute by filling the gaps that the government cannot fill,” said Toni Ruchimat, ex-head of the Marine and Fisheries Research Center, BRIN.
In May 2023, Dr. Fayakun Satria, Head of the Marine and Fisheries Research Center, BRIN, highlighted that “Without data from stakeholders, there is no Harvest Strategy. The Harvest Strategy will not succeed without collaboration.”
Wildan, Small-Scale Fisheries Lead for USAID Ber-IKAN, who worked at MDPI from 2013 to 2023, acknowledged the improvements made in tuna fisheries data through collaborations between various stakeholders, including the government, NGOs, and fisheries associations. He emphasized the importance of regularly discussing the Harvest Strategy and involving all parties, including businesses and fishers, to ensure shared understanding and active participation. In an interview with Mongabay in 2022, Wildan stated, “Through regular discussions on the Harvest Strategy, we hope that all stakeholders will be gradually engaged, including businesses and fishers. Given the highly scientific nature of this Harvest Strategy, it is not an easy task. It requires collective understanding and considerable energy and time to achieve our goals.”
Benefits, challenges, and future perspectives
Implementing the Harvest Strategy for Tropical Tuna brings numerous benefits. It can help maintain fish populations at sustainable levels, which could help ensure a consistent supply of seafood, thus enhancing long-term food security and safeguarding the income and livelihoods of those dependent on the sector. Through the implementation of responsible fishing practices, a sustainable Harvest Strategy can also help protect non-target species, reduce bycatch, and minimize the impact of fishing on sensitive habitats, supporting the overall health of marine ecosystems and promoting biodiversity conservation.
To achieve these objectives, several key management priorities have been identified: restrictions on the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs), area closures to protect spawning grounds, and establishment of Total Allowable Catch limits.
With the Harvest Strategy for Tropical Tuna, Indonesia has a goal to maintain the tropical tuna stocks above 20% of the unfished level with a 90% probability, known as the limit reference point (LRP). The goal is to prevent overexploitation and ensure long-term sustainable catches. The target is based on stock assessments conducted in different regions within the Western and Central Pacific Oceans.
However, developing and implementing a Harvest Strategy is not without challenges. Data limitations, stakeholder engagement, and enforcement of regulations are among the obstacles faced. Robust data collection and monitoring systems remain essential for accurate stock assessments and effective decision-making. Engaging stakeholders, including fishing communities, in the implementation process is necessary to foster a sense of ownership and cooperation.
MDPI has been supporting the dissemination of information and socialization of the Harvest Strategy by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries through the Fisheries Co-Management Committees, platforms that address current fisheries-related issues and engage various stakeholders, including small-scale fishers. Besides, strong enforcement measures and effective compliance mechanisms are necessary to ensure adherence to regulations and prevent illegal fishing practices. Additionally, flexibility and continuous evaluation are required to adapt the Harvest Strategy to changing environmental conditions, such as climate change impacts and shifting fish distributions. As Indonesia continues to prioritize sustainability and address the challenges associated with fisheries management, including by implementing this newly published Harvest Strategy, it can set an example for other nations in the pursuit of responsible fishing practices. Looking ahead, ongoing efforts are necessary to effectively manage tuna resources while ensuring that the voices of small-scale fishers are heard and the needs of coastal communities are addressed.
About the Author: Juliette Ezdra (she/her) was a Development Lead from 2021 to 2023 at Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI), a non-profit organization aspires to empower coastal communities in achieving sustainability by supporting community organization and harnessing market forces. Visit www.mdpi.or.id to learn more about tropical tuna harvest strategy in Indonesia.
References
Notohamijoyo A., et al. 2020. “Sustainable fisheries subsidies for small scale fisheries in Indonesia”. ICESSD 2019.
As we continue our deep dive into Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) with Dr. Tom Carruthers, CEO of Blue Matter Science, this second and final part focuses on the advanced perspectives and future directions that shape the evolution of MSE in fisheries management. From the integration of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) principles to the impact of climate change and technological advancements, this discussion delves into how MSE can address the complex challenges facing our ocean. With his extensive experience, Tom shares invaluable insights on stakeholder engagement, international collaboration, and the need for modern innovation.
HS.org: How do you perceive the integration of EBFM principles within current MSE frameworks, and what strides must be taken to ensure a holistic approach to fisheries management that adequately protects marine biodiversity and supports the resilience of oceanic ecosystems and the sustainability of fisheries?
Tom: Ah, EBFM. Scarcely has there been a topic in fisheries of so much discussion and so little management action! A few years ago, I was asked to review the history of EBFM in fisheries. Despite many hundreds, maybe thousands of papers on the subject spanning more than 15 years, I could find evidence of only one fishery, Atlantic menhaden, where the principles of EBFM had shaped tactical management advice.
In my view, MSE is the only existing framework that can operationalize EBFM in the routine provision of tactical advice. This is because most ecosystem models are difficult to evaluate empirically. They often struggle to pass conventional standards of peer review for models used to inform management advice. MSE is expressly designed to navigate such hypotheses, potentially ending in an adopted harvest strategy robust to hypothetical scenarios for ecosystem dynamics.
HS. org: How do you involve stakeholders, including fishers and conservation interests, in the MSE process, and why is their involvement crucial?
Tom: A common reason for pursuing MSE is that the conventional stock assessment approach excludes the interests, experience, and values of the wider group of fishery participants. To many participants whose livelihoods are directly impacted by the results of stock assessments, the process can feel like a technologically complex exercise that removes all but a handful of nerdy scientists and reviewers (I am probably one of those!).
Stock assessment is like designing a car engine – it is necessarily complicated. MSE, on the other hand, is more about driving the car – the controls and the instrumentation. MSE asks stakeholders what they know and care about and how best to achieve those outcomes. All this should be presented in a package that is easy to drive, with the focus being on where we are going, not the complexities under the hood.
HS.org: How have recent technological advances and data analytics improved the MSE process?
Tom: We’ve come a long way from coding a bespoke MSE from scratch for every case study. Packages like FLR and OpenMSE standardize data inputs and harvest strategy configuration, allowing for greater focus on the more important issues, such as management objectives and the harvest strategies themselves.
My colleague, Dr. Adrian Hordyk, has been working hard on Slick, which is a package and online app that presents MSE results and diagnostics using graphics conceptualized by scientific communications experts. All together, this new technology has made MSE much more accessible and efficient.
HS. org: Where is there even more room for improvement?
Tom: MSE is still relatively new in the field of fisheries science and management. As a result, MSE processes tend to be rather ad-hoc and differ among fisheries management organizations and stocks. Much could be learned and synthesized from these various applications.
Having the tech to do MSE easily is one thing. What is needed now is an established framework, an MSE roadmap of sorts, that is integrated with stakeholders and the tech so that the process is standardized, efficient, and disciplined. As it happens, this is something we are currently working on; what are the odds?!
HS.org: How does MSE help adapt fisheries management to the impacts of climate change?
Tom: In a way, this is similar to the question about MSE and EBFM above.
Just about every fishery management organization I know of has an objective along the lines of ‘implement management considerate of changing climatic conditions.’ Despite a huge amount of scientific literature naming possible impacts, there are very few that make quantitative predictions that could be used to inform management advice. From my perspective, the forecasting of climate impacts on fish populations is necessarily hypothetical. I simply don’t think we can reasonably evaluate the credibility of an ‘end to end’ model that combines the predictions of climate, oceanographic, ecosystem, physiology, and fleet models to forecast impacts on a fishery. This is a problem for the conventional stock assessment approach that focuses on scientific veracity. This is less of a problem for MSE, which focuses on harvest strategy robustness, including robustness to highly uncertain future fishery scenarios. MSE might be the only framework we have available for establishing tactical advice for fisheries, providing us with harvest strategies that have demonstrated climate readiness.
HS.org: What roles do climate change and environmental variability play in shaping MSE approaches?
Tom: In general, these phenomena interact with the types of harvest strategies being tested. In an attempt to consider possible climate change or environmental conditions, MSEs often simulate changes in future stock productivity. Systematic productivity shifts tend to favor harvest strategies aiming to fish a consistent fraction of the stock over those that aim for a particular stock level. Variable stock productivity tends to favor harvest strategies that are responsive to recent data and allow for larger changes in management advice. Depending on resource conservation objectives, climate change, and other challenging environmental scenarios can be highly influential in harvest strategy selection if they provide an extreme stress test.
HS.org: What role does international collaboration play in developing and applying MSE, especially for transboundary fisheries?
Tom: Collaboration on both scientific and management aspects is absolutely essential. On the science side, an MSE for an international transboundary stock almost always requires the timely submission of standardized data from all fishing nations and a shared understanding of the important fishery uncertainties. Although these may already be a part of an existing stock assessment process, MSE tends to go further and allow for a wider range of data and hypotheses.
You could argue that the most important collaboration occurs at the management level, where I have less experience. Those managers must agree on aspects that may include the mundane, such as how often to update advice; the important, such as the principle management objectives; and the contentious, such as catch allocations. For transboundary stocks, international collaboration can be seen as an opportunity and a strength, but it is also a necessary precondition of MSE.
HS.org: In your opinion, which regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) are leading the way in adopting and refining MSE practices? What lessons can be learned from these pioneers that could be applied globally?
Tom: I think CCSBT does a remarkable job of including new genetic technology in their MSE frameworks, not just in defining fishery hypotheses but also in the harvest strategy itself. I think the lesson from CCSBT is to keep innovating and looking for new sources of scientific information.
Now, sadly, I am biased toward those processes I have had some direct involvement with:
The Canadian DFO is leading the way with data-poor and data-moderate MSE frameworks in B.C. DFO has established a framework for its groundfish fisheries that allows for the rapid adoption of simple empirical harvest strategies where a stock assessment is not feasible. The lesson from DFO is that MSE is not necessarily an exercise for data-rich stocks – the whole idea of establishing tactical advice in the face of uncertainty is very much a data-poor fishery problem.
HS.org: What do you see as the future directions for MSE in fisheries management over the next decade?
Tom: In the next decade, MSE should:
HS.org: What are the key research questions or areas that, if addressed, could significantly advance the field of MSE? Are there particular gaps in our current understanding or methodology that need to be filled?
Tom: For the most part, we still think of fishery management in terms of individual species and data streams for individual species. From the early work I have been doing, it is apparent that if we consider multiple stocks together, the data may have considerably more information about stock and exploitation levels. I think there must be more investigation into multi-species MSEs and harvest strategies. We could be ignoring a lot of information.
In most cases, MSE has been used to establish a harvest strategy that sets a catch limit. There needs to be a greater focus on the efficacy of mixed management options, such as a catch limit in combination with other regulations such as bag limits, effort limits, spatiotemporal closures, and size limits. Exploration of mixed management controls often reveals opportunities to obtain a superior trade-off in yield and resource conservation.
HS.org: What advice would you give fisheries managers and scientists who are new to MSE and looking to implement it in their region’s fisheries?
Tom:
Dr. Tom Carruthers’ insights highlight the critical role of innovation, collaboration, and a disciplined approach in advancing MSE to address the evolving challenges in modern fisheries management. By focusing on efficiency, stakeholder engagement, and adapting to environmental changes, MSE can provide robust and sustainable solutions for the future of our oceans. To learn more about MSE and Tom’s work, please visit www.bluematterscience.com.
Blue Matter Science, led by CEO Dr. Tom Carruthers, is a leading organization dedicated to advancing marine science and sustainable fisheries management. With a background in marine biology, experimental ecology, and a PhD in applied mathematics from Imperial College, Tom is also an Adjunct Professor of Fisheries Science at the University of British Columbia. His passion for problem-solving in marine science drives his current focus on developing tools that support robust fisheries management.
In this two-part blog series, we delve into the nuanced landscape of MSE with Tom, unpacking the fundamental components that render MSE indispensable in our collective pursuit of ecologically responsible and economically viable fisheries management.
HS.org: In 50 words or less, can you explain what Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) is and why it is an important tool in international fisheries management?
Tom: International fishery managers are tasked with implementing a harvest strategy that meets the objectives of diverse stakeholders, often in the face of large scientific uncertainties. MSE is a computer simulation approach that tests candidate harvest strategies across various scenarios for the fishery to identify those that can robustly achieve management objectives.
A common analogy for MSE is the testing of pilots using a flight simulator. In the MSE context, harvest strategies are the pilots being tested. Instead of flying conditions, MSE simulates a plausible range of biological, ecological, and exploitation scenarios for the fishery. Like a flight simulator, MSE can provide us with confidence that a harvest strategy (the pilot) will perform well over a wide range of conditions.
HS.org: What are the key components of an effective MSE process, and how do they interact to ensure the long-term sustainability of fisheries?
Tom: MSEs are pursued for various reasons, so ‘effective’ is somewhat case-specific. In the case of Atlantic bluefin tuna, there were difficulties in establishing a scientifically defensible assessment of the resource for use in decision-making. Essentially, there were many hypotheses for biology, ecology, and behavior that were similar to the data. For Bluefin, MSE was all about establishing a simple harvest strategy that was demonstrated to work robustly across all those hypotheses. The challenge in the South African sardine and anchovy fishery was establishing a harvest strategy that could allow for fishing without serious overexploitation of either species. In the case of the Bay of Fundy herring, MSE was used as a sort of ‘due diligence’ for a harvest strategy that had already been adopted and was in use. This might sound like a rather pedantic start of an answer to your question, but it goes to a point: arguably, the most important part of an MSE process is identifying a clear problem statement. Why MSE in this context?
There are three main parts to an MSE that interact in the adoption of a sustainable, robust harvest strategy:
Performance indicators are the basis for the scoring and comparison of harvest strategies. They are the lens through which all participants will view results. The performance aims of managers will be revealed when a harvest strategy is adopted. An effective MSE is one built around participation and communication. It should include a comprehensive consultation process with a range of stakeholders to ensure that their perspectives and values are communicated in results. Any legal requirements for fishery managers should also be expressed as performance indicators. Once established, the set of performance indicators provides a transparent account of harvest strategy strengths and weaknesses. It allows managers to explicitly consider trade-offs between, for example, extraction and conservation objectives. If the performance indicators part is done right, when a harvest strategy is adopted, it is clear why it was selected.
An effective MSE is one where managers have confidence in the adopted harvest strategy. That confidence arises from testing candidate harvest strategies against a wide range of plausible uncertainties (hypotheses) in current and future fishery conditions. Although science is usually the primary basis for developing these hypotheses, an effective MSE process includes stakeholder knowledge and experience, allowing a range of perspectives on the fishery to inform the selection of an appropriate harvest strategy.
Now that we have established how to score them and the conditions by which they will be tested, it is vital to focus on the harvest strategies – the pilots in the flight simulator analogy. An effective MSE is an open process that allows for testing a diverse range of harvest strategies developed by multiple development teams. These teams engage in a collaborative competition where harvest strategies are compared and refined. This diversity, friendly competition, and ingenuity process extracts every possible ounce of performance from a harvest strategy. Within the constraints specified by managers, anything goes. For me, it’s the most fun part of MSE!
If I’ve answered this correctly, it should be clear why MSE is such a powerful tool in establishing a long-term sustainable harvest strategy for a fishery. MSE is 1) inclusive, open, and transparent. 2) accounts for economic and biological definitions of sustainability in performance indicators, and 3) selects a harvest strategy that has been shown to provide sustainability across a range of hypotheses for the system.
HS.Org: Despite the proven benefits of harvest strategies and MSE, widespread adoption has been slow in some areas. What are the primary barriers to the broader adoption of these management approaches, and how can they be addressed?
Tom: Technical overhead. Previously, a serious impediment to MSE adoption was developing all the code to do the simulation work. Today, MSE packages like FLR and OpenMSE take much of this burden away from the process, allowing it to refocus on performance indicators, uncertainties, and harvest strategy design – the things that matter. However, the false perception of MSE as an expensive, burdensome, complicated techno-rats-nest persists. A big part of our collaboration with www.harveststrategies.org and The Ocean Foundation has been about showing people that this is no longer the case. We have been to management settings with OpenMSE, where managers and stakeholders were very organized, and harvest strategies were adopted in less than six months. A lot of managers and scientists don’t realize what is now possible.
Getting stuck in ‘Assessment mode’. The conventional approach to fisheries management is to develop a ‘best’ model of the fishery that is empirically validated by fitting to data and then used in management decision-making. Yes, you can look at alternative models and assumptions via so-called sensitivity analyses, but fundamentally the focus of stock assessment modelling is scientific veracity. That is not the focus of MSE, which is all about harvest strategy robustness. ‘Assessment mode’ is a condition that is a serious threat to the health of any MSE process. Scientists can get bogged down in the details of the models and data, which may affect perceptions of the stock but are often inconsequential to harvest strategy performance. Managers want to see stock assessments in their harvest strategies instead of simpler approaches that perform similarly. MSE projections are viewed as forecasts, not scenarios, for testing harvest strategies and so on. As is the case for many MSE problems, the solution is to do a thorough introduction to MSE and then get a demo MSE framework up and running as soon as possible so that all participants can see it in action and hopefully interact with it.
Indecision. MSE necessarily requires many decisions to be made, including who to include, when to hold meetings, when to draw a line on developing hypotheses, what performance indicators, what diagnostics, and what types of harvest strategies.
The list is enormous. This can drag out an MSE into an arduous process where momentum is lost to a point where new data and hypotheses emerge, and the process is stalled in a constant update loop. The best way to solve this is to employ an experienced chair of the process who can develop an MSE roadmap and maintain discipline on timelines.
HS.Org: How do you balance short-term economic interests with long-term fishery goals in MSE?
Tom: For most MSEs, the principal performance trade-off among harvest strategies is between what you take and what is left over in the water. Managers must navigate this trade-off between catches in the short term and biomass/catch outcomes over the longer term based on their established objectives and legal requirements. As a mere analyst, this is above my pay grade! Things are not as clear-cut as you might expect, however. I’m currently working on a harvest strategy for an invasive species.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Advanced Perspectives and Future Directions in Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE), where we dive deeper into the challenges, technological advances, and future directions of Management Strategy Evaluation in international fisheries management. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about how these modern approaches are shaping the sustainable future of our global ocean.
