Performance evaluation of harvest control rules for Pacific herring management in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Despite application of a harvest control rule (HCR) since 1986, abundance of several Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) stocks in British Columbia, Canada, are currently below levels considered adequate for exploitation. An alternative HCR, based on default limit and upper stock reference (USR) points at 0.4 BMSY and 0.8 BMSY, was recently developed under Canada's precautionary fisheries management policy. We simulated the Pacific herring fishery management system to examine whether (i) realized fishery performance over the past 10 years is an expected consequence of applying the existing herring HCR (with a single lower reference point) and (ii) performance could be improved by adopting the Department of Fisheries and Oceans new HCR with limit and USR points. Both HCRs successfully rebuilt stocks to sustainable levels under a high-productivity scenario, but performed poorly when stock productivity was low. The two HCRs were sensitive to stock productivity, because the effect of a target harvest rate (20) that is independent of productivity was much larger than the effects of biomass reference-point choices. We therefore recommend further research on estimating reference points and sustainable harvest rates for Pacific herring, so that HCRs may be made more responsive to changes in productivity. © 2010 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Oxford Journals. All rights reserved.