Integrating management strategy evaluation into fisheries management: advancing best practices for stakeholder inclusion based on an MSE for Northeast US Atlantic herring^,

Abstract

The New England Fishery Management Council used management strategy evaluation (MSE) to evaluate possible harvest control rules for Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), the first MSE in the US and perhaps globally to use open-invitation, public workshops for input. Stakeholder inclusion can increase both realism and likelihood of use by managers, but inclusivity is not achieved easily. Here, self-selected participants had diverse backgrounds and differing levels of interest and preparedness. We describe some challenges with directly engaging the public in MSE and offer broader insights for obtaining effective public participation during a decision-making process. Conducting an open MSE aligns well with publicly driven management but requires clear goals and communication. Investment in effective organizers, impartial facilitators, and knowledgeable analysts can improve communication and understanding of MSE to the betterment of fisheries management. We aim to further MSE best practices on integrating stakeholders and hope that our lessons learned on communication, engagement, and integration of MSE into an existing management arena will be useful to other practitioners.

Progress on Implementing Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management in the United States Through the Use of Ecosystem Models and Analysis

“…There has been considerable interest in balancing the direct harvest of forage fish (a provisioning service for humans) with the supporting ecosystem services that they provide (e.g., Cury et al, 2011;Pikitch et al, 2012;Essington et al, 2015;Hilborn et al, 2017). In 2016, the NEFMC initiated a management strategy evaluation (MSE) to develop a harvest control rule for Atlantic herring, Clupea harengus, that considered herring's ecological role as forage (Deroba et al, 2019;Feeney et al, 2019). The harvest control rule needed to meet all MSA requirements, in addition to considering herring's role as forage for commercially and recreationally important fishes and for protected predators such as seabirds and marine mammals (Overholtz and Link, 2007).…”

“…To understand the interests of many and varied stakeholders with diverse and potentially conflicting objectives, the NEFMC implemented a transparent and inclusive process to select an ecosystem-based harvest control rule and analyze its ecological and economic effects. The MSE was bounded by open stakeholder workshops in recognition of both MSE best practice and MSA requirements for public processes (Feeney et al, 2019). MSE models and analyses were tailored to the specific objectives and performance metrics outlined at the first stakeholder workshop, and were constrained by the management timeline to provide results by early 2017, less than a year after the planning process began (Deroba et al, 2019).…”

“…Multispecies model parameters also drew from regional studies, such as information on herringbluefin tuna relationships (Golet et al, 2015). Stakeholders helped fill important gaps: some workshop participants worked at seabird refuges and contributed essential data on common tern colony size, fledgling production, and fledgling diet (Deroba et al, 2019;Feeney et al, 2019). In contrast, the relationship between herring and spiny dogfish had to be hypothesized based on trend analysis rather than a clear mechanism, and a lack of existing information prevented the development of delaydifference models for any marine mammal predators of herring (Deroba et al, 2019).…”

“…This left thousands of potential control rules with acceptable predator performance to be further narrowed based on performance for the herring fishery and the herring stock. After many follow-up questions regarding the performance of individual control rules, the NEFMC narrowed the list to ten alternatives for further consideration and National Environmental Policy Act analysis (Feeney et al, 2019). Later, in September 2018, the NEFMC selected a final herring harvest control rule, which took into consideration the role of herring as forage and the outcomes for predator populations, setting aside a portion of the available catch to explicitly account for the important role of Atlantic herring as forage within the ecosystem (New England Fishery Management Council [NEFMC], 2018).…”

“…NEFMC members and staff, NOAA fisheries scientists and policy analysts shaped the MSE collaboratively to ensure that the stakeholder workshops and resulting analyses would be useful in NEFMC decision making. Communication between the managers, analysts and interested stakeholders took place throughout the process (Feeney et al, 2019). During the process, an external expert committee reviewed the MSE, endorsed it as best available science for NEFMC decision making, and suggested possible improvements for future iterations (Feeney et al, 2019).…”