Multiple Management Objective Decision Analysis (MODA) for Ecosystem-Based Management of Forage Fish

As fisheries management agencies move towards implementing ecosystem approaches to management, many ecosystem issues are focused on forage fish.  Forage fish are key to ecosystems in that they are prey for many piscivores of concern to fisheries managers as well as a part of valuable bait and reduction fisheries. In addition, forage fish stocks receive abundant attention of environmental organizations for their importance as prey to other non-fisheries living marine resources.  Because multiple stakeholders are concerned with the management of forage fisheries, setting stock and harvest objectives for their management can be difficult.  Many management agencies have worked with scientist and technical staff to undertake extensive efforts to develop multi-species and ecosystem models that enable analysis of ecosystem considerations for forage fish.  This type of information has been used to think strategically about fisheries management and evaluate management scenarios; however, this information has rarely been used to implement tactical fisheries management (e.g., for development  of ecosystem-based reference points). In part, this uptake of ecosystem information for tactical management has been limited because of the complexity of the models and the complexity of making decisions that incorporate multiple stakeholder perspectives.  Many fisheries management agencies have limited time to meet and set reference points, and inclusion of more complex models and objectives is difficult to achieve in large groups with limited time. In this presentation, I discuss the use of Use Multiple Objective Decision Analysis (MODA) to assess stakeholder preference and help determine objectives for management of forage fish.  MODA for forage fish management can be conducted by having a series of facilitated workshops with a small representative group of stakeholders for the fishery as well as fisheries biologists and multi-species modelers who can help provide technical advice. During the workshops, stakeholders have the time to effectively discuss their concerns and objectives, find common ground, and understand how multi-species/models can be used to assess the ability to achieve a common set of objectives.