Fishery managers require stock assessment tools to guide responsible management decisions and to ensure that they achieve sustainable goals and objectives for their fishery. Many managers, however, are constrained in adopting good management practices and in choosing the best tools by their limited understanding of the benefits and needs of the many alternative options. This project was designed to assist the uptake of those stock assessment tools and guidelines developed by over 20 previous FMSP projects. It has developed and tested a concise 'Managers Guide', showing step by step how to write a fishery management plan. Examples are given of different plans designed to deliver alternative biological, ecological, social and economic goals for a fishery. A complementary 'Stock Assessment Guide' has also been developed showing how the different stock assessment tools produced by the FMSP can be used to provide the scientific information needed to ensure biological sustainability of the fishery. The guide emphasizes how scientists need to provide advice from such tools that fully allows for the uncertainty in the assessment and that promotes precautionary and adaptive management approaches. These new materials have been written for an audience of fishery managers and those charged with stock assessment in developing countries, many of whom have little previous (or at least recent) experience in quantitative stock assessment. The guides are compatible with and complement the longer, more technical guide produced by the previous Project R8360; they promote the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries; and are appropriate to a global target audience. Used correctly, the outputs should assist managers to maintain or improve livelihood outcomes for poor, fishery-dependent stakeholders. The project has built capacity for the uptake of improved fishery management practices in India and the Caribbean by collaborating with target stakeholders in both the development and testing of the new materials. Project collaborators in the target Indian states (Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal) have now started to develop management plans for selected fisheries, and to collect the data required for stock assessment. Benefits for poor people (achievement of the programme purpose) may only be expected some years after such management plans are developed and after any new rules and regulations start to take effect.
Marine Resources Assessment Group Ltd, London, UK, 73 pp.