Socioeconomic Dynamics and System-Level Evaluation of Enhancement Outcomes

Stock enhancement is increasingly considered as a management strategy to improve outcomes of commercial and recreational fisheries.   Assessing enhancement outcomes requires evaluating the entire system, including socioeconomic attributes (e.g., governance, economic dynamics, and stakeholder opinions and values).   We synthesized information from studies of fisheries, enhancement, human dimensions, natural resource economics, and system change to describe system dynamics that are useful to consider.   A key finding was that the economic outcomes of enhancement depend largely on the spatial scale considered (e.g., water body, regions or state), since enhancement may spatially redistribute economic benefits.  We also found that system-level outcomes may depend as much on stakeholder perceptions and behavior as on biological dynamics.   Our results further suggest that sometimes, enhancements may give rise to rapid, fishery system-level changes involving multiple biological, stakeholder and governance attributes.