B-HQ-99-29(102)

Abundance-Based Management Regimes

The cornerstone of the new fishing arrangements negotiated in 1999 under the Pacific Salmon Treaty is "abundance-based management."

This fishery management approach means resource conservation is the imperative. Harvest rates for each salmon stock are set according to the stock’s actual abundance. The objectives of the new approach are to:

• sustain wild stocks
• prevent over-fishing
• set a predictable framework for sharing the burdens of conservation and benefits of stock recovery
• provide cost-effective, responsive fishery management
• establish a common basis for stock assessment, fishery monitoring, and performance evaluation.

The Lessons of the 1985 Pacific Salmon Treaty

Under the initial fishing arrangements in the 1985 Treaty, salmon harvesting, particularly for chinook and coho, was generally managed with pre-set catch ceilings. Operational experience gained since 1985 demonstrated the weakness of this approach. It was insensitive to stock abundance, was based on little knowledge of which stocks were caught and their relative health, and ignored in-season adjustment to fishing effort. Since catch ceilings were routinely regarded as guaranteed quotas, this resulted in a tendency to over-fish when stocks declined.

The use of fixed catch ceilings placed Canadian fishermen in an increasingly disadvantaged position as abundance declined and Canada put greater emphasis on conservation. Where evidence of low abundance was found, the burden of catch reductions fell on fishing activity in terminal areas near the mouth of spawning rivers. Since a number of Canada's salmon fisheries occur in terminal areas, near the end of the salmon runs, Canadian fishermen had to bear the lion's share of any required harvesting curtailment.

The rigidity of the pre-set ceiling approach also caused problems under conditions of higher than expected abundance. Fishermen often would reach an abundant stock's catch ceiling very quickly. Fishery managers would then routinely respond in one of two ways:

• by closing the entire fishery in the area, eliminating opportunities to harvest other stocks that were still below their catch ceilings; or

• by permitting harvesting of other stocks still below their catch ceilings, but with a requirement to release fish alive from the highly abundant stock. Unfortunately, this often resulted in high mortality of released fish.

The New Arrangements

In contrast, the new abundance-based management regimes are more responsive and more responsible, and reflect modern, conservation-based fishing practices. They require an informed pre-season, and where appropriate a responsive in-season approach to fishing, one that is far more sensitive to conservation requirements. By matching harvest levels to actual abundance, this new approach also reduces the previous bias to over-fish, removes the mortality resulting from ineffective live release practices, and prevents unnecessary loss of fishing opportunities. It also means that curtailment in fishing can be shared proportionately among fishermen in all areas through which the salmon transit.

Fishermen and fishery managers in each jurisdiction now have a strong self-interest in re-building and conserving stocks. Under the new approach, varying management rules are established for different levels of expected stock abundance, from lowest to highest. Most of the new arrangements also specify harvest shares, meaning catches will increase as the harvestable surplus of fish grows. The degree of uncertainty about allowable catch shares that fishermen faced under pre-set catch ceilings is reduced.

Abundance-based management requires more science input, and more robust, timely information than the previous approach. Abundance must be assessed for each stock, and the level of detail required varies across fisheries and areas. Management decisions must account for the fact that, in some fisheries and areas, stocks are highly mixed.

Abundance-based management requires a greater degree of cooperation than pre-set ceilings. Managers have to rely on common management and assessment models and shared forecasts, in-season management predictions and stock identification practices. All parties must become better informed about issues of stock definition, conservation, planning, in-season management and post-season assessments.

The new arrangements mark a significant advancement in Canada and US efforts to conserve salmon stocks and ensure that catches reflect what a stock can sustain, rather than pre-set ceilings and resulting declines.