Developing management procedures that are robust to uncertainty: lessons from the International Whaling Commission

Abstract

Punt, A. E. and Donovan, G. P. 2007. Developing management procedures that are robust to uncertainty: lessons from the International Whaling Commission. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 603–612. Traditionally, fisheries management advice has been based on stock assessments that considered merely the “best” set of assumptions while uncertainty arising only from observation and process error was quantified, if considered at all. Unfortunately, uncertainty attributable to lack of understanding of the true underlying system and to ineffective implementation may dominate the sources of error that must be accounted for if management is to be successful. The management procedure approach is advocated as the appropriate way to develop management advice for renewable resources. This approach, pioneered by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee, takes politically agreed management objectives and incorporates all scientific aspects of management including data collection and analysis, development of robust harvest control laws or effort regulations, and monitoring. A primary feature is that uncertainty (including that arising from sources conventionally ignored) is taken into account explicitly through population simulations for a variety of scenarios. The nature of the management procedures developed for commercial and aboriginal subsistence whaling and the processes by which they have been developed is highlighted. We also identify lessons that have been learned from two decades of IWC experience and suggest how these can be applied to other fishery situations.

Sei whale movements and behaviour in the North Atlantic inferred from satellite telemetry

“…After the introduction of the moratorium on commercial whaling, the Scientific Committee of the IWC developed a new robust management procedure, coupling politically set management goals with the scientific aspects of management (Punt & Donovan 2007, Cooke et al 2012. This management procedure is called the 'revised management procedure' in IWC jargon, but is also known as 'management strategy evaluation' in other wildlife management applications (Smith et al 1999, Milner-Gulland et al 2010.…”

“…One of the primary features of the revised management procedure is that it explicitly takes into account uncertainty from several sources (Punt & Donovan 2007). Performance of a management strategy in the face of uncertainties is evaluated through simulation trials considering, e.g.…”

“…Performance of a management strategy in the face of uncertainties is evaluated through simulation trials considering, e.g. plausible alternative hypotheses about the underlying resource dynamics (Punt & Donovan 2007, Milner-Gulland et al 2010. A considerable part of that uncertainty may reside in issues of stock structure and the temporal and spatial variation in the mixing of stocks in the areas being evaluated (Punt & Donovan 2007).…”

Management Strategy Evaluation of Fisheries Resources in Data-poor Situations Using an Operating Model Based on a Production Model

“…However, various errors and biases in the processes of stock assessment and management implementation are unavoidable. Therefore, when decisions are made on the formulation of MPs and the values for their key parameters, these uncertainties need to be appropriately considered 15,16 . In this study we focused on determining the values of the key parameters (k and δ) of the MPs under circumstances where stock size could not be accurately estimated (i.e.…”

Bio-economic management strategy evaluation of deepwater stocks using the FLBEIA model

“…Management strategy evaluation (MSE) or operational management procedure (OMP) (De la Mare 1998;Punt and Donovan 2007;Rademeyer et al 2007) consists in analysing the performance of management strategies by simulation before their implementation. In the analysis, the main sources of uncertainty in the knowledge of fishery systems, including the management process should be taken into account in order to find management strategies robust to these uncertainties.…”