Considerations for Implementing an Adaptive Management Herring Rebuilding Strategy Using Local Interventions in BC

Despite widespread fisheries efforts to rebuild fisheries, the recovery of depleted stocks is still poorly understood. In British Columbia, researchers have been attempting to understand the factors limiting the recovery of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) stocks, which have experienced declines to below harvestable levels in the past decade. Adaptive management is a policy innovation, invented to address problems in natural resource management by treating management interventions as experiments and monitoring the system’s feedbacks. I examine the institutional, social, and ecological considerations for implementing an adaptive management experimental program to rebuild herring stocks, through the use of two ongoing and proposed local management interventions. I highlight opportunities to overcome barriers to program implementation, and provide experimental design recommendations to evaluate the success of these interventions, given existing uncertainties about herring stock structure and variability. Implementing such a program could facilitate learning about how to rebuild Pacific herring populations and fisheries.