No abstract

In common with many fish stocks in the North Sea, cod are heavily exploited with as much as 60% of the fishable stock being removed annually. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which advises fishery managers on the state of fish stocks in the northeast Atlantic, has recommended that exploitation rates be reduced considerably and immediately, in order to prevent further stock decline. We examine the most recent ICES assessment of the North Sea cod stock to see if the present exploitation regimen is sustainable. Our analysis suggests that not only is the present exploitation rate unsustainable, but that even regimens close to the maximum sustainable yield may be potentially prone to risk. There is a need for swift and effective action to protect the stock and avoid the problems of the much publicized collapse of cod stocks off the coast of Atlantic Canada

Purpose -This paper aims to derive and verify a collaborative framework that specifies the role of different parties in contemporary logistics setups. Design/methodology/approach -To prepare this paper, a study of the logistics literature has been conducted together with several case studies. The empirical evidence has been collected in Europe as well as in the USA. Different aspects of collaboration between organizations in logistics setups have been studied where the services and the activities have been analyzed to understand the characteristics of the role of third-party service providers. Findings -The results from the work cluster the different third-party service providers in three different groups: carriers, logistics service providers (LSPs) and logistics service intermediaries (LSIs). All of these parties have different roles and provide various services in outsourced logistics setups. A collaborative logistics management (CLM) model has been derived that embraces the role of the different parties, the information and material flows between them, the interface attributes and the information systems architecture. In this paper, a focus is mainly on the part of the model that reveals the role of the third-party service providers. Practical implications -The practical implications of the work has its foundation in that activities, performed by two parties, can be adapted to each other so that their combined efficiency is improved. The CLM model can be applied when designing and negotiating third-party services for specific logistics assignments. Originality/value -The paper offers a model of logistics collaboration between the different parties in contemporary, outsourced logistics setups.

A variety of tools are available to quantify uncertainty in age-structured fish stock assessments and in management forecasts. These tools are based on particular choices for the underlying population dynamics model, the aspects of the assessment considered uncertain, and the approach for assessing uncertainty (Bayes, frequentist or likelihood). The current state of the art is advancing rapidly as a consequence of the availability of increased computational power, but there remains little consistency in the choices made for assessments and forecasts. This can be explained by several factors including the specifics of the species under consideration, the purpose for which the analysis is conducted and the institutional framework within which the methods are developed and used, including the availability and customary usage of software tools. Little testing of either the methods or their assumptions has yet been done. Thus, it is not possible to argue either that the methods perform well or perform poorly or that any particular conditioning choices are more appropriate in general terms than others. Despite much recent progress, fisheries science has yet to identify a means for identifying appropriate conditioning choices such that the probability distributions which are calculated for management purposes do adequately represent the probabilities of eventual real outcomes. Therefore, we conclude that increased focus should be placed on testing and carefully examining the choices made when conducting these analyses, and that more attention must be given to examining the sensitivity to alternative assumptions and model structures. Provision of advice concerning uncertainty in stock assessments should include consideration of such sensitivities, and should use model-averaging methods, decision tables or management procedure simulations in cases where advice is strongly sensitive to model assumptions

No abstract