Salvaged pearls: lessons learned from a floundering attempt to develop a management procedure for Southern Bluefin Tuna

During 2002–2006, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) engaged in a multilateral process to develop and simulation test a Management Procedure (MP) for the international SBT ( Thunnus maccoyi) fishery. The CCSBT Scientific Committee reached consensus in 2005, and recommended an MP to the Commission (including both the pre-specified data collection methods and decision rule for recommending a Total Allowable Catch (TAC)). The MP was adopted, in principle, by the Commission. However, revelations of substantial, long-term under-reported catches undermined confidence that the MP was likely to achieve the intended management objectives. Consequently, it has not been implemented, pending further work to determine the implications of the historical data problems, and the progression of compliance measures to improve future data collection. This is a discouraging outcome of a lengthy and resource intensive process that had been recognized as a promising solution to a difficult management impasse. However, the CCSBT did become aware of the serious catch under-reporting problem, and reached a consensus agreement on the first substantive TAC change since 1989, and the MP process may have contributed to this progress. We outline a range of lessons from the CCSBT MP experience that we would expect to be relevant to other fisheries engaging in a similar process. Foremost among the lessons: formal Management Procedures cannot be expected to resolve all of the hard problems faced by fisheries managers, and agreement on data monitoring, sharing and verification standards should be established before MP development is pursued.