Harvest strategies for climate-resilient fisheries
This study shows that climate-resilient harvest strategies can be achieved by using dynamic harvest control rules that adjust to current biomass and productivity rather than relying on forecasts. Stochastic dynamic programming reveals that time-invariant rules perform nearly as well as optimal dynamic policies, except at low productivity. The key priority is timely detection and response to changing productivity.
Subject Tags
- Climate resilience
- Fisheries
- Climate adaptation
Abstract
A pressing challenge for climate-vulnerable fisheries is how to manage now for present and future climate change. In contrast to climate forecasting approaches, we track integrated signals of change and use stochastic dynamic programming to compare the performance of management-ready policies over all possible future states. Our main results highlight: (i) biomass-linked harvest control rules (HCRs) can partially compensate for changing production, even if time invariant; and (ii) the form of utility (risk neutral vs. risk averse) can result in markedly different optimal decision paths. Performance degrades marginally from dynamic HCRs to static HCRs but markedly when biomass is ignored. Understanding climate effects on productivity is important for interpreting past data, but forecasts are not needed for tactical decisions. Priorities for managing climate-affected stocks are to measure current productivity, assess current abundance, and respond with a dynamic HCR.
Citation
Collie, J. S., Bell, R. J., Collie, S. B., & Minto, C. (2021). Harvest strategies for climate-resilient fisheries. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 78(8), 2774–2783.
Media Contacts
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Jeremy S. Collie
Graduate School of Oceanography,
University of Rhode Island
Email: jcollie@uri.edu