ICES Journal of
Marine Science
ICES Journal of Marine Science (2014), 71(2), 195– 203. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fst158
Implementing harvest strategies in Australia: 5 years on
Anthony D. M. Smith1*, David C. Smith 1, Malcolm Haddon 1, Ian A. Knuckey2, Keith J. Sainsbury 3,
and Sean R. Sloan 4
1
CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia
Fishwell Consulting Pty Ltd, Queenscliff, VIC 3225, Australia
3
Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, TAS 7005, Australia
4
Primary Industries and Regions South Australia, 25 Grenfell St, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia
2
*Corresponding author: tel: +6 136 232 5372; fax: +6 136 232 5000; e-mail: [email protected]
Smith, A. D. M., Smith D. C., Haddon, M., Knuckey, I., Sainsbury, K. J., and Sloan, S. 2014. Implementing harvest strategies
in Australia: 5 years on. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71: 195 – 203.
Received 28 March 2013; accepted 28 August 2013; advance access publication 8 October 2013.
Australian Commonwealth fisheries are managed using a formal harvest strategy policy (HSP) introduced by the federal government in
2007. At the State level, a number of commercial fisheries are also managed under formal harvest strategies, but no overarching policy
currently exists to guide their consistent implementation across jurisdictions. There have been 5 years of experience with implementation
of the Commonwealth policy across the highly diverse array of commercial fisheries found in Australia. The HSP has an explicit target of
maximum economic yield, and an explicit limit set at half the biomass that would support maximum sustainable yield. The policy also
specifies an acceptable level of risk associated with falling below the limit reference point. We discuss the experience gained from implementing the HSP in Australia, including a number of challenges faced, and attempt to summarize the benefits and costs of implementing
harvest strategies. Our view is that, overall, the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.
Keywords: Australian fisheries, harvest strategy policy, implementation challenges.
Introduction
Over the past decade or so, Australia has embarked on a process of
increasing formalization of harvest strategies to manage its principal
commercial fish stocks. For Australian Commonwealth fisheries—
those managed federally—these harvest strategies are central to
the adaptive management process that constitutes fisheries management, and are managed under a harvest strategy policy (HSP) implemented in 2007 (DAFF, 2007). Although no equivalent formal
policies currently exist at the State level in Australia, several State
fisheries jurisdictions have adopted formal harvest strategies for important commercial fisheries, but the approach to their application
varies between jurisdictions. Formal harvest strategies comprise
three important components—monitoring, assessment, and decision rules (the latter also known as harvest control rules).
Formalization of harvest strategies also requires that management
objectives be made explicit and quantifiable, and that explicit standards for risk be adopted.
Australia is governed under a federal system that includes a national jurisdiction (the Commonwealth of Australia) as well as
states and territories, and fisheries management is undertaken by
# 2013
governments in all jurisdictions. With a few exceptions, most
Commonwealth fisheries can be characterized as larger scale, offshore industrial scale fisheries, whereas State fisheries tend to
include a broader mix of commercial, recreational, traditional,
and customary fisheries, including a larger number of small-scale
coastal fisheries. There are many similarities in approaches to fisheries management between States and the Commonwealth, including
in legislation and policy. For example, all jurisdictions have adopted
ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) approaches as a
means of implementing the principles of ecologically sustainable
development (ESD). This is an objective in all State and
Commonwealth fisheries legislation, and all jurisdictions adopt,
to a greater or lesser extent, a co-management approach. The
main focus in this paper is on experience with harvest strategies in
Commonwealth fisheries, which are managed under the Fisheries
Management Act 1991 by the Australian Fisheries Management
Authority (AFMA), although progress in adoption of harvest strategies by the States is also discussed.
The evolution of harvest strategies in Commonwealth fisheries
can be traced over the past two decades. The legislation under
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196
which AFMA operates was adopted in 1991 and saw the progressive
establishment of resource assessment groups and management advisory groups (Smith et al., 1999, 2001). Similar processes exist separately at the State level for many important commercial fisheries
(e.g. for rock lobster fisheries in Western Australia, South
Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania). The Commonwealth legislation
includes an explicit economic objective aimed at maximizing the net
economic returns from fishing activities, as well as the requirement
to operate under the principles of ESD. The early adoption of both
target and limit reference points (LRPs) for major commercial
species was a feature of this evolution, although formal control
rules were only used from 2005 onwards in Commonwealth fisheries. A major focus on ecological risk assessment (ERA; Fletcher,
2005; Hobday et al., 2011) started in the late 1990s at the
Commonwealth and State level and resulted in progress towards
putting the principles of EBFM into practice (Smith et al., 2007).
The first Commonwealth fishery to formally adopt a more comprehensive approach to harvest strategies was the Southern and
Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery (SESSF). This is a multispecies
and multi-gear fishery that provides the bulk of fresh seafood to
the Sydney and Melbourne fish markets, and adopted a quota management system including individual transferable quotas in the early
1990s (Smith and Smith, 2001). Despite over 30 stocks being under
quota management by the mid-2000s, many of these stocks were
overfished or subject to overfishing and the economic performance
of the fishery was poor (FERM, 2004; McLoughlin, 2006). Working
through its resource assessment group, the fishery adopted a set of
formal harvest strategies in 2005, with the key innovation relative
to previous arrangements being the adoption of formal decision
rules (Smith et al., 2008). Building on similar approaches applied
to some Alaskan fisheries (e.g. Witherall et al., 2000), these harvest
strategies were organized in a “tiered” system, corresponding to
the types of data, assessments, and decision rules available and
selected for each quota species. This resulted immediately in a
more consistent approach across species and stocks. The tiered
system was first used in 2005 to set TACs in the SESSF for 2006.
The Tier 1 decision rule, for stocks with a robust quantitative
stock assessment, comprised a “broken stick” rule as a function of
current biomass, with a fixed F equal to FMEY for stock sizes above
the biomass corresponding to maximum sustainable yield BMSY,
and a linear decrease in F below this level down to a zero targeted exploitation rate at 20% of unfished equilibrium B20. Decision rules
for other tiers (based on estimates of F from catch curves, or
trends in catch rates) aim to mimic the intent of this Tier 1 decision
rule (Figure 1).
Shortly after the adoption of this formal harvest strategy framework in the SESSF, the Federal Minister for Fisheries issued a statutory Direction to AFMA to recover overfished stocks and to prevent
future overfishing in all Commonwealth fisheries (DAFF, 2005).
This direction was accompanied by a structural adjustment
package to reduce fleet numbers in several fisheries with the aim
of removing excess capacity, improving the profitability of the
remaining fleet, and to assist in the implementation of a network
of marine protected areas in the southeast Australian extended economic zone (EEZ) (Rayns, 2007; Vieira et al., 2010). The Direction
required the development and implementation of an HSP to be
applied to all targeted stocks within Commonwealth managed fisheries as well as the implementation of fishery-independent surveys
and improved monitoring of fishing activity. The intent of this
new policy was to manage fish stocks sustainably and profitably,
A. D. M. Smith et al.
Figure 1. Form of the harvest control rules for the SESSF in relation to
reference points. (a) Tier 1 rule where the assessment provides an
estimate of current biomass BCUR; the Tier 1 RBC (recommended
biological catch) is determined by applying FRBC to BCUR; (b) Tier 3 rule
where the assessment provides an estimate of current fishing mortality
rate FCUR; the Tier 3 RBC ¼ CCUR × (1 2 e2FRBC)/(1 2 e2FCUR), where
CCUR is the average recent catch. F20 is the fishing mortality rate that
results in depletion to B20 which is 20% of the unfished level and the
proxy for the biomass LRP. F48 is the proxy for FMEY, the target
exploitation rate corresponding to BMEY. B40 is the proxy for BMSY.
end overfishing, and ensure that currently overfished stocks were
rebuilt in reasonable time frames.
The HSP was developed during 2006 and 2007 under the direction of the federal department responsible for fisheries (the
Department for Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry—DAFF). In
the Australian Federal system, day-to-day fisheries management is
undertaken by AFMA, while overarching government fisheries
policy is developed by DAFF. The HSP was fully implemented by
2008, although some details and modifications were underway at
the same time. The policy specified explicit targets and limits for
stock management, and required the implementation of decision
rules so that the harvest strategy for each stock would meet the
intent of the policy (DAFF, 2007). The fleet reduction that occurred
between November 2005 and November 2006 as a result of structural adjustment paved the way for the adoption of BMEY, the
biomass corresponding to maximum economic yield (MEY), as
the target reference point in the HSP. The LRP adopted was half
BMSY. The proxy values selected for the target and limit, relative to
unfished spawning biomass estimates, were B40 for BMSY, B48 for
BMEY (1.2× BMSY), and B20 for the LRP (half the proxy value for
BMSY). Further, the policy specified an acceptable level of risk associated with biomass, such that stocks should remain above the LRP
for biomass under application of the harvest strategy at least 90% of
the time. Guidelines for implementing the policy were also developed during 2007 (DAFF, 2007) and provided guidance on issues
such as: interpretation of concepts such as harvest strategy and
MEY; potential approaches to use with developing fisheries or datapoor species; how to handle uncertainty and risk; managing highly
variable species; stock rebuilding strategies for depleted fisheries;
and the use of management strategy evaluation (MSE; Smith
et al., 1999) to test and amend the performance of different
harvest strategies over time.
This paper reviews the experience in implementing the
Commonwealth HSP 5 years after its adoption, and discusses
some of the issues yet to be fully resolved or that have developed
since implementation. It also covers some of the current developments in State jurisdictions in implementing harvest strategies.
Implementing harvest strategies in Australia
Harvest strategy achievements
The status of stocks with respect to overfishing is reported each year
for Commonwealth fisheries in fishery status reports (e.g. ABARES,
2012). Similar stock status reporting occurs in most State jurisdictions and in 2012, a national reporting framework was adopted
for fish stock status (Flood et al., 2012). For Commonwealth fisheries, status reports refer to two conditions: overfishing (exploitation
rate too high) and overfished (stock level below LRP). The ministerial Direction to AFMA in 2005 required AFMA to take action to
cease overfishing, recover overfished stocks, and avoid further
species becoming overfished, and progress against these objectives
can be gauged in the annual status reports.
The reduction in the number of stocks subject to overfishing has
to date been greater and more rapid than that in overfished stocks
(Figure 2). This reflects the rapidity with which catches were
reduced, leading to an immediate reduction in fishing mortality following the introduction of the HSP, especially in the SESSF, which
implemented its harvest strategy before other Commonwealth fisheries, and which had accounted for many of the cases of overfishing.
This rapid reduction in overfishing in the SESSF was reinforced by
reductions in other fisheries following the introduction of the full
Commonwealth HSP in 2007. It should be noted that the reductions
in TACs and catches in the SESSF were facilitated by the structural
adjustment that took place in 2007 as part of the overall package
of measures that were adopted with implementation of the HSP.
For the trawl sector in the SESSF, this amounted to a reduction in
the fleet from 81 vessels in 2005/2006 to 49 in 2007/2008 (Vieira
et al., 2010). However, exploitation rates were reduced ahead of
this buy out due to the earlier implementation of harvest strategies
in this fishery.
After the initial reduction in the percentage of stocks subject to
overfishing, there appears to have been a slight rise to a peak in
2009. However, this pattern is influenced by the increasing
number of stocks considered in the status report. A clearer impression can be obtained by considering the proportion of stocks out of
those that could be assessed (i.e. not uncertain) that were determined as subject to overfishing or overfished (Figure 3). Both the
proportion overfished and the proportion subject to overfishing
decline, but the impact on overfishing is large and immediate
following the introduction of the HSP in the SESSF in 2005. It is
to be expected that recovery of overfished stocks will take longer
to come into effect. Several SESSF stocks were overfished before implementation of the harvest strategy, including the long-lived orange
roughy. Eastern gemfish was classified as overfished in the
mid-1990s (Punt and Smith, 1999) and is yet to recover despite a
long period with low exploitation rates (this species has been
closed to targeted commercial fishing since 1998). It has been
accepted that another species that has failed to recover, jackass
morwong, has undergone an environmentally driven change to a
lower productivity regime, and the reference points for the harvest
strategy have been amended therefore (Wayte 2013).
Experience with implementation
Implementation of the HSP involved the development, testing,
and adoption of formal harvest strategies in 12 separate Common
wealth managed fisheries, for 50 separate species or stocks,
mostly within the time frame of a year, though not all of these
were tested before adoption. Formal stock assessments were available for only about half this number of stocks, so a significant challenge was to develop harvest strategies for data-poor species and
197
fisheries while demonstrating that they met the intent of the
policy (Dowling et al., 2008). The short time frame and large
number of fisheries and species also presented a capacity and logistical challenge for implementation, and some of the harvest strategies were not fully tested using MSE when they were
implemented; testing, however, continues to the present day (e.g.
Wayte and Klaer, 2010; Little et al., 2011). In some cases not initially
tested, first cut specifications and unintended consequences
required subsequent improvements that often significantly
changed management outcomes, thereby somewhat undermining
industry confidence in the higher degree of certainty offered by
the adoption of harvest strategies.
Implementation was easiest for fisheries that had a history of
quantitative assessments and that had active and well-funded resource assessment groups. This included the Northern Prawn
Fishery (NPF), several of the tuna fisheries, the SESSF, and the
southern ocean fisheries for Patagonian toothfish. Even for these
valuable and well-resourced fisheries, challenges were encountered
and changes required after implementation. For example, although
the SESSF had developed and implemented a harvest strategy before
adoption of the HSP, the initial biomass target was B40 rather than
BMEY and this required a change to the harvest control rules to
reflect this change. Usually, the default proxy for BMEY was used
(B48 or 20% above BMSY), but this resulted in lower exploitation
rates and lower TACs to move towards the new targets. There was
considerable debate about the rate at which the new targets should
be achieved. For the NPF, a decision was made to implement a
fully dynamic MEY strategy for the two tiger prawn species. This
proved to be a considerable technical challenge but was achieved
successfully (Dichmont et al., 2010), although its data and analytical
requirements remain high and present ongoing challenges for
timely and cost-effective delivery.
Developing harvest strategies for tuna and other large pelagic
species was complicated by straddling stock issues and the need to
adhere to international management requirements as well as domestic policy. The Australian position on internationally shared stocks is
that it will advocate its policy as “best practice” in regional fishery
management organizations, but not require its implementation domestically in the absence of international agreement. For several of
the tropical species, domestic harvest strategies were developed with
novel multifaceted empirical decision rules (Basson and Dowling,
2007; Davies et al., 2008; Prince et al., 2011). However, their application has been contentious in the absence of international agreements since lower Australian quotas under the domestic HSP have
in some cases resulted in higher international catches. Harvest strategies applied to billfish have also been contentious as there is a considerable recreational and sport fishing catch which is not subject to
the same restrictions as the commercial fishery. Developing harvest
strategies has also proved challenging for species or stocks that straddle State and federal jurisdictional boundaries, such as school
whiting (Silago flindersi), and this has also been the case for a
number of State managed species such as southern rock lobster.
Without doubt, the biggest challenges to implementing harvest
strategies were presented by fisheries that were lower value, data
poor, sporadic, or extremely variable (Smith et al., 2009). These
included a very diverse range of fisheries and species, such as scallops, squid, and hand collection fisheries for tropical fish (the
latter including up to 500 “target” species). Each fishery presented
its own challenges, and the harvest strategies developed were in
turn very diverse in nature (Dowling et al., 2008, 2012). Several
harvest strategies for low value fisheries make use of catch triggers
198
A. D. M. Smith et al.
Figure 2. The percentage of species or stocks by status categories from 2004 to 2011 (data sourced from ABARES, 2012). Overfished refers to stocks
below the limit biomass reference level and overfishing refers to fishing mortality rates above limits. Uncertain refers to species where information is
insufficient to assign status. The numbers at the top of each bar represent the total number of stocks considered each year.
Figure 3. The percentage of stocks assessed as either overfished or
subject to overfishing out of the total number of stocks whose status
was not uncertain.
that initiate additional monitoring and assessment if they are
exceeded. This approach requires that catches below the trigger
level are considered biologically acceptable based on the information available, and a judgement about the appropriate trigger
catch level beyond which biological concern could significantly increase. This approach allows low cost strategies to be maintained for
low value fisheries, while providing a clear means of increasing the
rigor of assessment if the fishery shows signs of developing further
(Dowling et al., 2008).
An important part of the process of developing and implementing harvest strategies in Commonwealth fisheries is to ensure that
the strategies adopted are compliant with the intent of the policy.
This is particularly important as the policy itself does not prescribe
the form of the decision rules. However, the policy does prescribe
very clear quantitative targets and limits, as well as acceptable
levels of risk for breaching those limits. These in turn provide
clear criteria for undertaking formal testing of prospective harvest
strategies using MSE, even for fisheries or species where formal
stock assessments are not available. MSE testing has been
undertaken for a range of the fisheries and species that are
managed by AFMA, including well before the implementation of
the HSP (Polacheck et al., 1999; Punt and Smith, 1999; Punt et al.,
2001; Tuck et al., 2001; Dichmont et al., 2006a, b, c; Smith et al.,
2009; Wayte and Klaer, 2010; Little et al., 2011).
Recognizing the problem posed by data-poor species (Smith
et al., 2009), the federal government provided additional funding
to improve stock assessments for an array of such species. The objective of this work was to reduce the number of stocks classified
as uncertain in the annual Fishery Status Reports (ABARES,
2012). This entailed developing defensible means of characterizing
some of the more complex data-poor fisheries to determine their
expected impacts. This included examples such as the Coral Sea
Aquarium trade fishery, which captures relatively small numbers
of individuals from up to 500 species; clearly, such fisheries are
not amenable to standard assessment techniques, although there
are catch triggers that lead to management action already in place
(Dowling et al., 2008). An ERA (Hobday et al., 2011) approach
was not considered appropriate for this clearly targeted fishery, so
a weight of evidence approach that considers a range of qualitative
and quantitative indicators was established as a means of addressing
such difficulties, with emphasis placed on documenting the key evidence used in any argument behind a specific determination
(Krimsky, 2005). This approach has been used since 2010 in the
Coral Sea for a variety of species that are difficult to assess using
more conventional methods (ABARES, 2012).
In addition to the characterization of specific fisheries, further
MSE testing of data-poor harvest strategies was undertaken. Five
Commonwealth fisheries were considered: the Bass Strait scallop
fishery (Haddon, 2011), the Coral Sea and Torres Strait sea cucumber fisheries (Plagányi et al., 2011a, b, 2012), the North West Slope
trawl fishery (Dowling, 2011), and some data-poor species assessment methods of potential use in the SESSF (Klaer and Wayte,
2011; Klaer et al., 2012). Each of these was either data poor, lacked
consistent targets, was spatially complex, or was extremely variable
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Implementing harvest strategies in Australia
in abundance and recruitment. Always MSE simulation frameworks
were developed and the harvest strategies currently used were found
to be effective at achieving the intent of the HSP, although assumptions and limitations were also discovered. These limitations often
related to the proxies used with the data-poor species and highly
variable species, involving estimates of stock status using measures
other than estimates of spawning biomass. Again, a weight of evidence approach was used with emphasis on documenting the arguments and evidence for a particular proxy meeting the intent of the
HSP. For example, proxies relating to spatial distribution or regularity in fishing were identified as indirect proxies for biomass abundance and fishing mortality.
Although the Commonwealth took the lead in developing a
general policy on harvest strategies and implementing it across all
its managed fisheries, several States have also implemented formal
harvest strategies in many key commercial fisheries. At the State
level, the experience has been similar, in that those fisheries that
have implemented formal harvest strategies have tended to be the
higher value fisheries with a history of quantitative assessment
and active management, such as the rock lobster fisheries. The
biggest challenges at the State level have also been similar to those
experienced in the Commonwealth, particularly for the vast
number of smaller scale coastal fisheries, which include a diversity
of commercial, recreational, traditional, and customary fisheries.
A large number of these fisheries could be characterized as data
poor, tend not to have formal stock assessments, and have not
adopted formal harvest strategies. For these fisheries, empirical
harvest strategy approaches offer potential cost-effective solutions
(Sloan et al., 2013).
Early examples of harvest strategy development at the State level
include the South Australian sardine fishery (PIRSA, 2005) and the
spanner crab fishery in Queensland (Dichmont and Brown, 2010),
but more recent examples include the Western Australian western
rock lobster fishery (Reid et al., 2013), and the South Australian
southern rock lobster fisheries (PIRSA, 2005, 2012; Punt et al.
2012). South Australia has embarked on a process of implementing
harvest strategies for all its major commercial fisheries and currently
has formal harvest strategies (both empirical and model based)
in place for southern rock lobster, abalone, sardine, blue crab,
western king prawns, and pipi. Harvest strategies are also under development for small-scale multispecies finfish fisheries. In South
Australia, these harvest strategies are implemented in formal
management plans mandated by the South Australian Fisheries
Management Act 2007. A number of State jurisdictions are also in
the process of developing overarching harvest strategy policies. An
assessment of the extent to which harvest strategies have been implemented in Australian State and Commonwealth managed fisheries
is provided in Sloan et al. (2013).
Outstanding issues
Although much has been achieved in implementing harvests strategies in Australia, particularly in Commonwealth managed fisheries, many challenges remain. These include questions about the
scope and content of the Commonwealth policy, issues and costs
associated with practical implementation, and integration with
broader aspects of fisheries management.
Scope
Usually, there are only a few higher value species that are important
economic drivers in a fishery, influencing much of the fishers’ behaviour and business decisions, including targeting, quota trading
and leasing, and longer term investment strategies. In the SESSF,
for example, 95% of the value of the catch is derived from only
20 of the more than 100 commercially marketed species
(ABARES, 2012). In turn, these 100 retained species are a subset
of the more than 400 species that may be captured over the course
of a fishing season. Currently, the HSP only applies to “key commercial species”, but there are no clear rules for determining which
species fall into this category, or how species could transition in
and out of scope. Furthermore, these key species can change over
time through changing markets and targeting practices.
There is current consideration of broadening the scope of the
HSP to include all commercially retained species rather than just
the “key commercial species”. This will require careful consideration
to avoid the outstanding issues with the implementation of harvest
strategies identified below and the potential cost issues associated
with their application to a greater number of species. The cost implications of the HSP are discussed in more detail below.
Practical implementation
A key feature of the Commonwealth policy is the clear identification
of quantitative target and LRPs. These are currently expressed as
biomass targets and limits, although alternatives (such as fishing
mortality rates) and proxies are allowed under the policy, provided
they can be shown to be consistent with the intent of the policy. To
assess fishery performance against these reference points, and implement the harvest strategy, requires quantitative assessments of
stock/fishery status expressed as either biomass, fishing mortality
rate, or agreed proxies. This in turn requires monitoring and analysis
of data for all the species to which the HSP applies. Issues specific to
the MEY target include short-term fluctuations in costs (particularly fuel) and the value of the Australian dollar (prawns are mainly
exported) that can substantially change the target levels, aside
from any longer term changes in productivity that could also alter
targets. A dynamic MEY target, involving annual recalculation of
an economically optimal trajectory, is currently applied to only
one fishery (the NPF), while equilibrium MEY models are applied
for some SESSF species, and default proxies are used for a number
of other species. Although the HSP allows the use of proxies
for the target and LRPs, development of the proxies and quantitative
assessment of stocks against such biomass/mortality proxies has
been difficult even for relatively data-rich species. The development
of MEY proxies for data-poor fisheries is currently the subject of
investigation.
Data-poor fisheries remain a substantial challenge to implementing harvest strategies. This is also true for the vast number of
small-scale State managed commercial fisheries and recreational
fisheries. Although formal harvest strategies have been developed
for all AFMA’s fisheries, including a set of data-poor fisheries
(Dowling et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2009), the costs associated with
monitoring, assessment, and reporting remain a substantial challenge for many of these fisheries. There is an underlying “catch
cost risk” (CCR) trade-off for these fisheries (Sainsbury, 2005;
Dowling et al., 2013), where risks can remain low at very low
catch levels with monitoring and management costs also kept low.
Increases in catches would then trigger increases in monitoring
and assessment costs to maintain risk at acceptable levels.
However, there remains a basic problem of identifying the minimum information requirements to allow any reasonable assessment
of risk to ensure consistency with the policy (Dichmont et al., 2012).
Development of harvest strategies for data-poor fisheries has also
been the subject of more general investigation (Dowling et al., 2012).
200
The CCR trade-off does not just apply to low value or data-poor fisheries. The South Australian sardine fishery is an example of a valuable
data-rich fishery where the harvest strategy maintains exploitation
levels well below conventional target levels, both to manage risk to
the fish stock and the ecosystem and also to keep monitoring requirements and costs at manageable levels.
The risk criterion in the HSP can be thought of as a practical and
quantitative expression of the precautionary approach. This is given
effect through each harvest strategy such that catches are lower
where uncertainty is higher. In the SESSF, which uses a tiered approach to harvest strategies with higher uncertainty about stock
status at higher tiers (Smith et al., 2008), there has been considerable
debate about the application of precaution where assessment
methods are more uncertain (at higher tiers). Discount factors
that reduce TACs at higher tier levels have been proposed and implemented to give effect to this precaution and to attempt to ensure risk
equivalence across tiers. However, there is a gap between the theory
and its practical implementation and determining appropriate discount factors requires detailed simulation testing. Fay et al. (2012)
demonstrated that the relative risks between tiers can be greatly
affected by what appear small details in the different harvest
control rules at each tier. These authors showed that the level of precaution introduced by a discount factor (and other mechanisms) to
achieve risk equivalence with a Tier 1 harvest strategy (based on a full
quantitative stock assessment) depended on the species’ biology and
its current depletion level.
Another challenge is the application of multiyear TACs in those
fisheries where they can be implemented. Multiyear TACs are attractive because they increase certainty and decrease assessment
costs. However, multiyear TACs and the various means by which
they have been and are being implemented have not yet been
subject to formal management strategy evaluation. In general, multiyear TACs would require a “discount” of some level of catch to
balance the greater risk associated with less frequent review and adjustment. There are obvious risks of stock depletion if the multiyear
TACs are set too high. On the other hand, if the multiyear TACs are
set too low, there may be lost economic opportunities, so the CCR
trade-off requires careful consideration.
There has been debate about the selection and application of
LRPs, with concerns raised that a limit at half BMSY can be at very
low biomass levels for some stocks. There is a suggestion under
current consideration in the HSP review to decouple the LRP
from BMSY and instead to set a minimum LRP at 20% of average unfished biomass (which happens to correspond to the current default
LRP). Identifying reference points for highly fluctuating species and
applying the 10% risk criterion has also been problematic for some
species, where the risk criterion can be breached even in the absence
of fishing. An issue not yet addressed is how to take into account the
impacts of spatial closures in determining target and LRPs. This is of
increasing importance with the recent declaration of a large network
of marine reserves covering more than 10% of Australia’s EEZ, with
some regional coverage being much higher.
In multispecies fisheries, the HSP supposes an economic target of
MEY for an entire fishery—not just individual species within that
fishery. Where bioeconomic models are currently used, at best
they consider only two to three species and there are questions
about the capacity or resources required to apply bioeconomic
models to all the commercial species in a fishery. The current
policy recognizes that for multispecies fisheries, it may be impossible to achieve target reference points for all species in all fishing
years. Fishers can usually “target” to some degree through fishing
A. D. M. Smith et al.
different areas and depths, seasons, times of day, and by modifying
gear. Studies in the NPF indicate that, while fishers can target to
some extent, their ability is limited and all catches will contain a
mix of species (Pascoe et al., 2010). In quota-based fisheries, this
is problematic as the species mix in catches may not necessarily
match the mix in combined TACs or in quota holdings (Chu,
2009; Klaer and Smith, 2012). Under the current policy, it is
acknowledged that the biomass of some species in a multispecies
fishery might be maintained below BMEY but all must be maintained
above BLIM.
Integrated management
The current HSP relies mainly on setting appropriate catch limits, but
there are many fisheries in which relatively complex sets of input controls also operate in an attempt to achieve broader aspects of sustainability. In particular, there are increasing numbers of marine areas
closed to fishing, often to protect juveniles, depleted or recovering
species, bycatch species, or biodiversity more generally. However,
the interactions between such spatial management, stock assessment,
and harvest strategies are poorly understood and there is often limited
monitoring in closed areas. This can complicate fishery assessment
and subsequent management. At present, the behaviour of current
harvest strategies under spatial management is not well understood
in this new management context, and in some cases, it is unclear
whether the harvest strategies that apply in the areas accessible to
fishing are still appropriate.
Environmental and conservation issues also intersect in application of the HSP. Species other than “key commercial species”—
including by-product, bycatch, and protected species—are managed under a Commonwealth Bycatch Policy with individual work
plans for each fishery. A tiered system of qualitative, semiquantitative, and fully quantitative ERAs are undertaken for each
fishery (Hobday et al., 2011) and high-risk species are prioritized
for management response in the work plans. The HSP refers to
“key commercial species” and there was concern that a number of
minor commercial fisheries were not addressed by either policy. A
key issue is that there is a significant difference in the extensive data
and information available for the “key” commercial species compared
with the generally poor information available for “other” commercial
species and bycatch species. Application of the quantitative requirements of the HSP will need to be carefully considered if the scope is
broadened to include all commercial species.
There are already formal linkages between the HSP and environmental legislation, such that commercial species can be considered
for threatened species listing where stock levels fall below 75% of
limit reference levels (DAFF, 2007). Several commercial species
(orange roughy, eastern gemfish, school shark) have been listed as
“conservation dependent” under this legislation (the category of
listing of least concern). This has required the formal development
of rebuilding plans for these species. There are also inconsistencies
between fisheries and environmental legislation. Under the criteria
applied in the environmental legislation, there is potential for a
commercial fish stock managed under the HSP to be nominated
as conservation dependent if it declines below 60% of the pre-fishing
biomass. For most commercial species, BMEY occurs below this level,
and rarely above it. Even for species where BMEY is close to or above
60% of unfished levels, stocks would be expected to fluctuate below
their targets 50% of the time, and potentially be “exposed” to conservation listing.
An issue not yet addressed is the process for de-listing
conservation-dependent species, the transition process back to
201
Implementing harvest strategies in Australia
management under a harvest strategy, and the stock levels at which
targeted fishing could resume.
Another emerging environmental issue concerns the appropriate
targets for commercial species that also have an important ecological role in the ecosystem. Low trophic level species such as sardines are
of particular note here, with several recent studies identifying the
need for more conservative targets for some of these species
(Smith et al., 2011; Pikitch et al., 2012).
Costs of implementing and maintaining harvest strategies
An emerging challenge at both the Commonwealth and State level is
the relatively high cost of harvest strategies that are based on quantitative stock assessments. This cost is becoming increasingly difficult to meet in the economic context of Australian fisheries, where
in many jurisdictions, the attributable costs of fisheries management are recovered from the fishing industry. The result is a
greater emphasis on multiyear TACs where quota management
and assessment-based harvest strategies are used, although this
should lead to lower average TACs to account for the greater risk
with less frequent assessments, and an increasing reliance on the
relatively data-poor tiers of assessment and on empirical harvest
strategies (those whose inputs are direct observations from the
fishery, such as commercial catch rates).
Discussion
Australia’s Commonwealth HSP has now been applied successfully
for 5 years to a very broad range of species and fisheries. It was
envisaged that the policy would be reviewed after 5 years of application, and this review is currently under way (DAFF, 2012). The
review is running in parallel with a review of the Commonwealth
Bycatch Policy, and a broader review of the administration of
Commonwealth fisheries has just been completed (Borthwick,
2012). During the review of the HSP, the publicly available submissions were almost unanimously supportive of the continued adoption of harvest strategies.
The HSP was brought in at a time when there were concerns
about overfishing and fleet overcapacity, and when the economic
performance of most fisheries was in decline. Five years on, the proportion of federally managed stocks subject to overfishing has been
reduced (ABARES, 2012), while the proportion of stocks of uncertain status has also declined. The economic status of most fisheries
has also improved (Vieira et al., 2010; ABARES, 2012). This suggests
that the adoption of harvest strategies has improved both the biological and economic performance of these fisheries. There have
been further, less easily quantified benefits of adopting harvest strategies, including increased certainty for all stakeholders in decisionmaking processes. While providing advice on TACs still involves a
process of stakeholder engagement, the adoption of harvest strategies and particularly of agreed decision rules has greatly reduced
both the time and the degree of contention in the process.
Against these benefits, the costs of implementing the HSP need to
be considered. First, there was a big up-front cost in developing and
implementing fishery-specific harvest strategies for a wide range of
types of fishery and a considerable number of fisheries in a relatively
short space of time. As well as the money to support restructuring
(A$220 million), the federal government provided additional
funds to support the scientific process to design, where possible
test, and then implement the harvest strategies. This additional
funding was provided over 3 years and amounted to several millions
of dollars. Additional funds of a comparable amount have been allocated to reducing the uncertainty in assessments, particularly in
data-poor fisheries, and to undertake additional MSE analyses
where these were still required. Apart from these up-front costs,
there have been additional ongoing costs associated with additional
monitoring and assessment to support the HSP. However, many of
the costs of monitoring and assessment were born before implementation of the HSP, associated with providing scientific advice for
fishery management. The additional costs have come mainly from
the need for ongoing adjustments in harvest strategies as issues or
problems have come to light during practical implementation.
Many of these issues have been discussed above in the section describing outstanding issues and practical implementation. There
has also been a social cost to the implementation of the structural
adjustment and HSP which has seen major changes to many
coastal fishing communities and families. This was partly offset by
funds to allow offshore and onshore businesses to adjust to the
changed management environment. Apart from the costs associated
with ongoing adjustments, funds will be needed to implement periodic major reviews and re-setting of policy in the light of experience,
as is happening currently.
The success of adopting harvest strategies in the Commonwealth
jurisdiction has led to increased interest and adoption among the
States. Several States are in the process of developing harvest strategy
policies and adopting formal harvest strategies across many of their
fisheries. A set of national guidelines has just been completed to
promote consistent harvest strategy development across all jurisdictions (the States and Commonwealth) and to build on the successful
foundation established by the Commonwealth HSP (Sloan et al.,
2013). One of the primary lessons learned to date is the need for a
clear policy that nevertheless allows flexibility in adoption, implementation, and review of harvest strategies at the individual
fishery level. The use of management strategy evaluation in developing and testing prospective strategies has also been widely practised.
Notwithstanding the problems and challenges faced in implementing formal harvest strategies in all Commonwealth fisheries
and many State fisheries, and the costs involved, the consensus
from managers, fishers, and scientists is that it has been a worthwhile
endeavour. After all, most of the challenges discussed here, including the difficulty of adjusting for spatial management, the multispecies challenges, and the high cost of monitoring and assessment, do
not arise specifically from the harvest strategy approach per se, but
are generic to good fisheries management. Adopting a harvest strategy is likely to deliver better outcomes than the “free-range” and reactive management alternative, or giving up on attempts to manage
fisheries altogether.
Acknowledgements
Implementation of the Commonwealth harvest strategy policy has
involved a lot of work from a large number of managers, fishers,
and researchers. In particular, much of the detailed development occurred through the Resource Assessment Groups that AFMA uses
for each of its main fisheries and we acknowledge the work of
these groups. Similar efforts have been made by similarly constituted groups in State fisheries. Rich Hillary, Geoff Tuck, Cathy
Dichmont, and Neil Klaer are thanked for comments on an earlier
version of the manuscript. The paper also benefited from comments
from two anonymous referees.
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