Living with uncertainty in fisheries: analytical methods, management priorities and the Canadian groundfishery experience

Uncertainties in fisheries arise in three principal forms: random fluctuations, uncertainty in parameter estimates and states of nature, and structural uncertainty that reflects a basic lack of knowledge about the nature of the fishery system. The first two of these have been addressed quantitatively through a variety of analytical tools, reviewed briefly in this paper. On the other hand, structural uncertainty poses a greater challenge; having proven rather immune to analytical treatment, it appears to be best addressed through the design of fishery management itself, to ensure that such management is robust, adaptive and precautionary. The paper discusses the nature of these three management characteristics, and illustrates their importance through an analysis of Atlantic Canada's groundfish fishery and its collapse in the early 1990s. The groundfishery is also used as a case study for exploring the extent to which fishery institutions provide a framework for 'living with uncertainty'; specifically, an analysis is provided of fishery management and conservation institutions (notably the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council) that have been established in response to the groundfish collapse. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.