Global consensus is building around the viability of harvest strategies for fisheries management, according to The Ocean Foundation International Fisheries Conservation Project Director Shana Miller.
Harvest strategies, also known as management procedures, are pre-agreed frameworks for making fisheries management decisions based on a proactive approach designed to achieve long-term sustainability for the fishery. According to an Ocean Foundation primer, harvest strategies include management objectives that set a vision for each fishery; a monitoring program to collect data; indicators of the fishery’s status and population health; a method to assess those indicators; and harvest control rules (HCRs) that set fishing opportunities, which could include catch limits and size limits…