Terms of Reference

A Management Procedure Framework for British Columbia Groundfish

Regional Peer Review – Pacific Region

June 8-9, 2020
Virtual meeting

Chairperson: Andrew Edwards

Context

The Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Sustainable Fisheries Framework (DFO 2009) lays the foundation for an ecosystem-based and precautionary approach to fisheries management that enables continued productivity of Canada’s fisheries.

The Pacific Region Groundfish Integrated Fisheries Management Plan includes over 200 groundfish species (DFO 2019) of which approximately 100 are regularly caught in British Columbia (BC). Individual Transferable Quotas are used to manage fisheries, where quotas are ideally set using stock assessment information. However, in recent decades, DFO groundfish stock assessments have focused on data-rich species, resulting in a subset of stocks with full stock assessments, while many stocks with less informative data remain unassessed. Consequently, quotas assigned to rarely assessed or unassessed stocks may result in catch rates that are too high, may restrict harvesting opportunities to catch target species, or may result in failure for fisheries to meet seafood certification standards. This project aims to address this gap by developing a framework that can provide sound and timely scientific advice for data-limited groundfish stocks (defined here as stocks with insufficient data for a full age-structured stock assessment or lacking existing assessment models).

DFO Fisheries Management has requested that Science Branch develop a framework for applying a management-procedure approach to data-limited groundfish stocks in British Columbia. DFO Science has undertaken a two-phase approach to exploring assessment methodologies for data-limited groundfish stocks that are robust to a range of data quality, information, and uncertainty. The first phase, a groundfish data synopsis (Anderson et al. 2019), provided a visual snapshot of long-term and recent survey trends, fishing trends, growth and maturity characteristics, and data availability for over 100 BC groundfish stocks. The second phase, and the focus of this peer review, is to develop a framework for testing the performance of a suite of data-limited management procedures against conservation and fishery objectives. This will be done using an existing closed-loop simulation framework that includes building appropriate operating models, testing suites of management procedures, and determining management procedures that best meet conservation and fishery objectives for one or more case-study stocks. The framework will use the open source R package DLMtool (Carruthers and Hordyk 2018), developed at the University of British Columbia, in partial partnership with DFO.

The advice arising from this Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) Regional Peer Review (RPR) will be used to inform DFO Fisheries Management on harvest strategies for data-limited groundfish stocks, and may be used to inform other processes, including COSEWIC and Marine Stewardship Council for conservation and/or certification purposes.

Objectives

The following working paper will be reviewed and provide the basis for discussion and advice on the specific objectives outlined below.
Anderson, S.C., Forrest, R.E., Grandin, C.J., Huynh, Q.C. and Keppel, E.A. A Management Procedure Framework for British Columbia Groundfish. CSAP Working Paper 2014GRF07c.

The specific objective of this review is to:

Develop a framework to test the performance of data-limited management procedures for BC groundfish fisheries. Steps include:

1. Recommend provisional conservation and fishery objectives based on Sustainable Fisheries Framework policies and associated performance metrics (e.g., probability of maintaining biomass above a limit reference point, probability of short-term yield remaining above a threshold) for use in future assessments.
2. Screen available data-limited management procedures for potential suitability in future assessments. Candidate management procedures may include fixed total allowable catch levels, empirical procedures, and simple models paired with harvest control rules.
3. Develop one or more operating models for one or more case-study species using the R package DLMtool (Carruthers and Hordyk 2018) and data extracted using the data synopsis tools (Anderson et al. 2019).
4. Apply closed-loop simulation using DLMtool to evaluate the performance of select management procedures against the objectives in step 1.
5. Establish provisional visualizations of performance metric trade-offs.
6. Identify the benefits of the framework to support timely harvest advice for data limited species. Identify limitations of the framework and recommend next steps.

Expected Publications

• Science Advisory Report  
• Proceedings
• Research Document

Expected Participation

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)
• Academia
• Indigenous communities/organizations
• Fishing industry
• Nongovernmental organizations

References

Anderson, S.C., Keppel, E.A., Edwards, A.M. 2019. A reproducible data synopsis for over 100 species of British Columbia groundfish. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2019/041. vii + 321 p.

Carruthers, T.R., and Hordyk, A.R. 2018. The Data-Limited Methods Toolkit (DLMtool): An R package for informing management of data-limited populations. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 9(12): 2388–2395. doi:10.1111/2041-210X.13081.

DFO 2009. Sustainable Fisheries Framework.

DFO 2016. Proceedings of the Pacific regional peer review on A Review of International Best Practices to Assigning Species to Tiers for the Purposes of Stock Assessment Based on Data Availability and Richness; May 30-31, 2016. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Proceed. Ser. 2016/051.

DFO 2019. Groundfish, Pacific Region 2019 Integrated Fisheries Management Plan Summary.