Fifty Years On

The ‘traditional’ approach to providing fisheries management advice through assembly of a population model, estimation of its parameters, identification of ‘optima’ and calculation of sustainable catch limits is briefly summarised, and its failures noted. An alternative approach, developed first by the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is described. This involves the use of stochastic population models to generate ‘data’ which are then used in computer simulations of the performances of alternative algorithms for catch limits which do not aim at ‘optima’ but which satisfy particular sets of management objectives as defined by the management authority.