Risk and Sustainability: Assessing Fisheries Management Strategies

We develop a theoretical framework to assess sheries management strategies from a sustainability perspective, when the bioeconomic dynamics are marked by uncertainty. Using stochastic viability, management strategies are ranked according to their probability to satisfy economic and ecological constraints over time. The proposed framework is useful when it is not possible to define a multiattribute utility function to represent the trade-offs between the several sustainability objectives. This framework is applied to a Chilean shery case-study, faced with El Niño uncertainty. We study the viability of effort and quota strategies, when a minimal catch level and a minimal biomass are required. For realistic sustainability objectives, effort-based management results in a better viability probability than quota-based management.