Basing rebuilding on a timeline diminishes consideration for the socioeconomic impacts of the rebuilding plans.
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) September 6, 2013 — A new study from the National Research Council of the National Academies, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Stock Rebuilding Plans in the United States," examines the ability of US fisheries management to reduce overfishing. Among other conclusions, the study, currently in pre-publication, finds that current stock rebuilding plans, which are based on eliminating overfishing within a specified time period, are not flexible enough to account for uncertainties in scientific data and environmental factors that are outside the control of fishermen and fisheries managers. It concludes that basing rebuilding on a timeline diminishes consideration for the socioeconomic impacts of the rebuilding plans.
The study was originally requested by Senator Olympia Snowe and Congressman Barney Frank in 2010, who wrote to NOAA asking them to fund the National Research Council's work. The following are excerpts taken from pages 179 and 181 of the report:
The tradeoff between flexibility and prescriptiveness within the current legal framework and MFSCMA guidelines for rebuilding underlies many of the issues discussed in this chapter. The present approach may not be flexible or adaptive enough in the face of complex ecosystem and fishery dynamics when data and knowledge are limiting. The high degree of prescriptiveness (and concomitant low flexibility) may create incompatibilities between singlespecies rebuilding plans and EBFM. Fixed rules for rebuilding times can result in inefficiencies and discontinuities of harvest-control rules, put unrealistic demands on models and data for stock assessment and forecasting, cause reduction in yield, especially in mixed-stock situations, and de-emphasize socio-economic factors in the formulation of rebuilding plans. The current approach specifies success of individual rebuilding plans in biological terms. It does not address evaluation of the success in socio-economic terms and at broader regional and national scales, and also does not ensure effective flow of information (communication) across regions. We expand on each of these issues below and discuss ways of increasing efficiency without weakening the rebuilding mandate.
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The idea of a simple fixed rule for determining the maximum number of years for rebuilding is, in principle, an effective way to ensure rebuilding occurs at a reasonable pace, but also can create inefficiencies in practice. Having a rule for determining the maximum time horizon associated with acceptable rebuilding plans clearly reduces the possibilities for delaying fishing reductions into the future.
However, there are also disadvantages to fixed rules for specifying the maximum time for
rebuilding. First, problems may be associated with the specific formulation of the rule. The 10-year rule presently in place uses TMIN to determine a minimum possible rebuilding time; this is useful as it takes account of initial stock condition and expected productivity. However, the way the rule determines TMAX has a discontinuity at 10 years (see Fig. 4.1), which can lead to discontinuities in target dates for recovery (10 years to many decades) with potentially only small changes in estimates of stock size from assessments.
Second, a fixed maximum time for rebuilding also hinders the consideration of socioeconomic tradeoffs, especially when the range of acceptable rebuilding periods (i.e., from TMIN to TMAX) is narrow. The allotted rebuilding time can lead to substantial increases in rebuilding costs if the incremental additional costs from rebuilding are sensitive to the rebuilding schedule. As described in Chapter 6, it is sometimes possible for modest changes in a rebuilding schedule to have non-trivial effects on net social benefits; such adjustments are often precluded under current requirements. Abrupt changes in management measures can have real economic and social impacts on communities, and influence the perceptions and attitudes of stakeholders and managers.
Finally, a fixed time to rebuilding can also be problematic when rebuilding is faster or
slower than expected, causing over-reaction and misinterpretation of the causes. Rebuilding
faster than expected can lead to pre-mature demands to lessen rebuilding measures and therefore the rate of rebuilding. Delays in rebuilding, on the other hand, can lead to severe reductions in target fishing mortality in an effort to achieve the rebuilding target by the pre-specified date. The reasons for rebuilding occurring slower than expected include unexpectedly low recruitment, an ecosystem change, or failure to reduce fishing mortality due to imprecise or inaccurate science, or to catches exceeding desired levels (fishing mortality is higher than the target level). When recruitment is below expectations (e.g., due to unfavorable environmental conditions), a control rule based on maintaining fishing mortality at some fraction of FMSY may be more efficient than one that forces ever more severe controls to try to keep rebuilding on schedule; such a control rule could be formulated to ensure achievement of the goals of rebuilding as more favorable conditions return.
When discussing the goals and design of rebuilding plans in the future, the benefits and costs of introducing more flexibility in determining the time to rebuild should be considered so that new scientific information and socioeconomic tradeoffs can be more fully accounted for in rebuilding and community mitigation. Determining when and how within the rebuilding process to introduce additional flexibility that properly accommodates biological and socio-economic factors is a challenge. Experience from other countries (Chapter 3) indicates that legal mandates that are similarly strong in demanding reductions in fishing mortality as in place now in the U.S., but that allow greater flexibility in setting the time horizon for rebuilding can be effective. A caveat to the applicability of the international examples is that there are other aspects of the fishery management systems, such as the role of industry interests in decision-making, that differ among countries, which make direct comparisons difficult.
Read the full study from the National Research Council
View an interactive chart from the National Research Council on overfishing over the past 30 years
Read a press release on the study from the National Academies