Developing Science Tools and Expertise for Management Strategy Evaluation for: NAFO* Redfish units 1+2 and Greenland Halibut stocks 2+3KLMNO*

Fisheries and Oceans Canada  provided $121,900 via the Partnership Fund to researchers led by Dr. Murdoch McAllister at the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia to further develop Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) for fisheries management in Canada.

MSE is an internationally accepted approach to evaluating fisheries, stock and fishery objectives. MSE identifies harvest control rules and strategies that perform well under a variety of potential future circumstances and with uncertainty and error in assessments. The approach requires input from management, industry and science, and highly specialised computer simulation expertise. The fiscal year 2017-18 project is focused on implementation of MSE in two cases involving NAFO* fishing areas for redfish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Greenland halibut/turbot in the Atlantic off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The UBC team will run the simulations and develop means of presenting the MSE and model outputs to facilitate communication with scientists, managers and industry. The MSE initiative will expand in future years, with other species selected for MSE work in other fishing areas.

*North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Regulated Fishing Areas

Project number: NCR2017.1
Year: 2017
Partner(s): University of British Columbia
Principal Investigator: Dr. Murdoch McAllister
Ecoregion(s): Great Lakes, Atlantic