Biological, economic & nutritional trade-offs in tropical fisheries: Indonesia’s demersal finfish

Full Title: Biological, economic and nutritional trade-offs in tropical information limited fisheries: Indonesia’s demersal finfish

Presenter: Steven Saul, Associate Professor, Arizona State University

Abstract: Providing tactical management advice for tropical information limited fisheries can be difficult due to the constraints and assumptions of available approaches and uncertainty in data input streams. This study presents a workflow which combines information limited fisheries approaches together with data input sensitivity analyses in a novel way to develop a range of plausible management scenarios and their respective bioeconomic trade-offs, with uncertainty, to inform decision theory. The study applies the approach to the commercial demersal finfish fishery across the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesia is the second largest wild catch producer in the world. The approach provided a menu of policy considerations and their respective trade-offs that managers can use to make informed decisions that balance biological sustainability with economic and nutritional outcomes.