Trevor Hutton

Integrating indigenous livelihood and lifestyle objectives in managing a natural resource

Evaluating the success of natural resource management approaches requires methods to measure performance against biological, economic, social, and governance objectives. In fisheries, most research has focused on industrial sectors, with the contributions to global resource use by small-scale and indigenous hunters and fishers undervalued. Globally, the small-scale fisheries sector alone employs some 38 million people who share common challenges in balancing livelihood and lifestyle choices. We used as a case study a fishery with both traditional indigenous and commercial sectors to develop a framework to bridge the gap between quantitative bio-economic models and more qualitative social analyses. For many indigenous communities, communalism rather than capitalism underlies fishers’ perspectives and aspirations, and we find there are complicated and often unanticipated trade-offs between economic and social objectives. Our results highlight that market-based management options might score highly in a capitalistic society, but have negative repercussions on community coherence and equity in societies with a strong communal ethic. There are complex trade-offs between economic indicators, such as profit, and social indicators, such as lifestyle preferences. Our approach makes explicit the “triple bottom line” sustainability objectives involving trade-offs between economic, social, and biological performance, and is thus directly applicable to most natural resource management decision-making situations.

Use of Incentive-Based Management Systems to Limit Bycatch and Discarding

In most fisheries, a number of species are unintentionally caught as bycatch while attempting to catch the targeted species. While much of the bycatch problem is technological in nature due to imperfect selectivity of the fishing gear, fisher behaviour also plays a major role. How, when and where fishers choose to fish can influence catch composition and thereby the quantity of bycatch. Behavioural changes can be encouraged through the development of an appropriate set of incentives — both economic and social — to avoid bycatch and reduce discarding. In this paper, a number of alternative incentive-based bycatch management systems are reviewed. The potential applicability of these systems to quota species, non-commercial species and threatened or conservation-dependent species (such as turtles, seals, dolphins) is reviewed, and examples of their application are presented. The review concludes that incentive-based approaches can reduce the level of bycatch and discarding in most fisheries.

Measuring the unmeasurable: a multivariate and interdisciplinary method for rapid appraisal of the health of fisheries

This chapter describes a new multivariate, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary rapid appraisal technique that can be used to classify world fisheries and diagnose their problems. For ecological, technological, economic and social categories, we chose 15–25 attributes that (a) are easily and objectively scored on a ranked scale using readily available data, (b) are likely to discriminate among fisheries, and (c) may be easily related to sustainability. A multivariate ordination using multidimensional scaling (MDS) is performed within each disciplinary set of attributes. The ordination scores are then brought together into an overall interdisciplinary analysis, also using MDS. Reference points for evaluating the relative status of fisheries are provided by constructing hypothetical fisheries that are assigned ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘random’ scores, defined in terms of sustain-ability for each discipline, or that have a random assignment of attribute values.

Tropical Marginal Seas: Priority Regions for Managing Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function

Tropical marginal seas (TMSs) are natural subregions of tropical oceans containing biodiverse ecosystems with conspicuous, valued, and vulnerable biodiversity assets. They are focal points for global marine conservation because they occur in regions where human populations are rapidly expanding. Our review of 11 TMSs focuses on three key ecosystems-coral reefs and emergent atolls, deep benthic systems, and pelagic biomes-and synthesizes, illustrates, and contrasts knowledge of biodiversity, ecosystem function, interaction between adjacent habitats, and anthropogenic pressures. TMSs vary in the extent that they have been subject to human influence-from the nearly pristine Coral Sea to the heavily exploited South China and Caribbean Seas-but we predict that they will all be similarly complex to manage because most span multiple national jurisdictions. We conclude that developing a structured process to identify ecologically and biologically significant areas that uses a set of globally agreed criteria is a tractable first step toward effective multinational and transboundary ecosystem management of TMSs.

The Coral Sea: Physical Environment, Ecosystem Status and Biodiversity Assets

The Coral Sea, located at the southwestern rim of the Pacific Ocean, is the only tropical marginal sea where human impacts remain relatively minor. Patterns and processes identified within the region have global relevance as a baseline for understanding impacts in more disturbed tropical locations. Despite 70 years of documented research, the Coral Sea has been relatively neglected, with a slower rate of increase in publications over the past 20 years than total marine research globally. We review current knowledge of the Coral Sea to provide an overview of regional geology, oceanography, ecology and fisheries. Interactions between physical features and biological assemblages influence ecological processes and the direction and strength of connectivity among Coral Sea ecosystems. To inform management effectively, we will need to fill some major knowledge gaps, including geographic gaps in sampling and a lack of integration of research themes, which hinder the understanding of most ecosystem processes.

Workshop on the ecosystem and fisheries of the Coral Sea: an Australian perspective on research and management

This report summarizes a workshop on the Coral Sea to determine key research findings and identify the research gaps needed to support sustainable management of a proposed Coral Sea Marine Reserve. Key research questions included determining the connectivity of apex predators with the broader southwest Pacific Ocean, and assessing the regions’ biodiversity in relation to seabed topography and oceanographic processes. The workshop concluded noting the importance of engaging surrounding countries in maintaining the sustainability and uniqueness of the Coral Sea.

DEA-based predictors for estimating fleet size changes when modelling the introduction of rights-based management

The introduction of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) into a fishery is going to change not only the amount of catch a fleet can take, but often also changes the fleet structure, particularly if total allowable catches are decreased. This can have an impact on the economic, social and environmental outcomes of fisheries management. Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) modelling approaches are recognised as the most appropriate method for assessing impacts of management, but these require information as to how fleets may change under different management systems. In this study, we test the applicability of data envelopment analysis (DEA) based performance measures as predictors of how a fishing fleet might change under the introduction of ITQs and also at different levels of quota. In particular, we test the assumption that technical efficiency and capacity utilisation are suitable predictors of which boats are likely to exit the fishery. We also consider scale efficiency as an alternative predictor. We apply the analysis to the Torres Strait tropical rock lobster fishery that is transitioning to an ITQ-based management system for one sector of the fishery. The results indicate that capacity utilisation, technical efficiency and scale efficiency are reasonable indicators of who may remain in the fishery post ITQs. We find that the use of these measures to estimate the impacts of lower quota levels provides consistent fleet size estimates at the aggregate level, but which individual vessels are predicted to exit is dependent on the measure used.

From input to output controls in a short-lived species: the case of Australia's Northern Prawn Fishery

A management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework is developed to evaluate strategies that provide total allowable catches (TACs) when the target biomass corresponds to maximum economic yield (MEY). The framework is applied to Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF), which has been actively managed using a tradable input-control system, but is to move to output controls based on individual transferable quotas (ITQs), with a consequence that the current management strategy needs to be replaced. Because the fleet is small, it is possible to set a TAC that cannot be taken entirely. Whereas input controls tend to self-adjust if recruitment is not accurately predicted, and consequently catch variability tends to be low, this is not the case for the reasonably variable species caught in the NPF when they are managed using TACs. The management strategy recovered the simulated stock to the target reference point when it was initially depleted, and avoided dropping the stock below the limit reference point (LRP) for five scenarios based on the current best understanding of resource status; however, in some cases, the stock was left above the target biomass because of biases in the assessment. A scenario in which the stock was forced to be initially depleted to below the limit reference point showed that the management strategy allows recovery.

Estimating maximum economic yield in multispecies fisheries: a review

Fisheries can generate substantial economic returns to society if managed with economic targets as the main objective, that is with biomass, catch, and effort levels that correspond to maximum economic yield (MEY), although the move to such targets presents a number of challenges. These are compounded in multispecies fisheries, as it is not possible to achieve all individual targets simultaneously if targets are set on a species-by-species basis. Identifying appropriate targets both conceptually and empirically has also proven challenging, and consequently the implementation of economic targets to real world fisheries have been limited to a small number of data-rich and high-valued fisheries, with reliance on proxy target reference points in other fisheries. Moreover, these application has been limited due to unknowns as to what proxies should be used under different circumstances. Here, we review the alternative ways in which MEY has been estimated and applied in multispecies fisheries. We also review the roles and potential use of proxy target reference points for multispecies MEY in data-limited fisheries, building on Australian’s experience in implementing such a policy.

Implications of efficiency and productivity change over the season for setting MEY-based trigger targets

The banana prawn component of Australias Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF) is currently managed through the use of annually updated trigger catch rates as a means of achieving maximum economic yield (MEY) in the fishery, taking into account the estimated price and cost components for that season. The estimation of these target catch rates is based on the assumption of relative homogeneity of the fleet in terms of efficiency, productivity and cost structure. In this study, these assumptions are examined through the estimation of a stochastic production frontier. While technical efficiency varies between vessels, average efficiency is relatively constant over the fishing season. However, average productivity of the fleet increases, with smaller vessels (in terms of engine power) exiting the fishery earlier. This would likely increase the average cost of fishing towards the end of the season, with implications for setting the target catch rate. Based on a standard assumption as to the relationship between costs and vessel size, we find that the MEY target catch rates are most likely currently underestimated. However, the implementation of a precautionary minimum catch rate (which is above the MEY target catch rates for recent years) has maintained the fishery at a profitable level.