title: An Evaluation of Rebuilding Policies for U.S. Fisheries.
abstract: Rebuilding depleted fish populations is a priority of modern fisheries management. In the U.S., strong statutory mandates extend to both the goals and process by which stocks are to be rebuilt. However, the National Standard Guidelines that govern the implementation of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act may change to increase flexibility in rebuilding requirements. In this study we evaluate performance of the status quo approach to fish stock rebuilding in the United States against 3 alternatives that have been proposed to improve rebuilding outcomes. These alternatives either simplify the analytical requirements of rebuilding analyses or apply 'best practices' in fisheries management, thereby avoiding the need for rebuilding analyses altogether. We use a Management Strategy Evaluation framework to evaluate rebuilding options across 6 fish life history types and 5 possible real-world fishery scenarios that include options for stock assessment quality, multiple fleets, and the degree to which the stocks are overfished at the start of the analysis. We show that the status quo rebuilding plan and a harvest control rule that reduces harvest rates at low stock size generally achieve the best rebuilding outcomes across all life-history types and fishery scenarios. Both approaches constrain fishing in the short term, but achieve high catches in the medium and long term as stocks rebuild to productive levels. These results support a growing body of literature that indicates that efforts to end overfishing early pay off in the medium- to long-term with higher cumulative catches than the alternative.
authors.affiliation: Canadian Fisheries Research Network, Biology Department, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton N.B., Canada.
authors.forename: Ashleen Julia
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Benson
authors.affiliation: School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada.
authors.forename: Andrew B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.affiliation: Fisheries Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
authors.forename: Thomas R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Carruthers
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D005398:Fisheries / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000379:methods*; D005399:Fishes; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011336:Probability; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011640:Public Policy; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D014481:United States