On the development of a roadmap for new formal harvest strategies for SIOFA

Butterworth, Douglas

On the development of a roadmap for new formal harvest strategies for SIOFA

Report

2022

Abstract

The Consultants past experience with conducting assessments of and/or providing management advice for SIOFA fish stocks has indicated that a key problem has been the lack of background information on the data available and how they relate to the way the fishery operates. That missing information is a key input to the assessment process, and its ability to provide reliable results. The International Whaling Commission’s “harvest strategy roadmap” is reviewed. Their first step for any stock of a “pre-assessment” process to compile the data to be used in the harvest strategy analyses and how they should be interpreted, is suggested to be an essential component of any similar SIOFA roadmap. This process should be put into practice by the appointment, for any stock for which a harvest strategy is to be developed, of a Technical Sub-Committee which would meet separately from the SIOFA Scientific Committee and report back to it. This Sub-Committee would include persons with the relevant expertise about the stock to provide this missing information and to develop ToR’s for the basis on which the harvest strategy development should proceed. Overview comments are provided about the process that would then follow. An important decision to be made is whether the harvest strategy for a specific stock is to be based on the “best assessment plus harvest control rule” approach or on Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE). A table is provided summarising the details associated with this “Technical Sub-Committee” pre-assessment component of a harvest strategy development roadmap.