BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE 86(2) 197ndash219 2010

197Bulletin of Marine Sciencecopy 2010 Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami

RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT A GENERIC APPROACH ACCESS

RIGHTS CHANGE AGENTS AND TOOLBOXES

Jeremy Prince

ABSTRACTSmall-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge

to centralized governmental top-down models of assessment and management Such processes have an implicit scale and cost that cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of these resources International experience with alternative management systems has produced convergence on a solution to this issue which involves redesigning the centralized top-down models of data collection assessment and management Central to the solution are governance systems that confer secure exclusive access rights on fishers so that they have strong incentives to engage in processes of data collection assessment and management I suggest that the next layer of the solution is to recognize the generic nature of the issue and to develop a simpler generic approach that can be locally adapted to each small-scale resource The generic approach proposed involves (1) the use of barefoot ecologists or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource with the aim of creating social capital and empowering local fishers to collect their own data and (2) the design and implementation of simple harvest policies intended to conserve local levels of spawning biomass

The misfit of both temporal and spatial scales between ecosystems and institutions has come to be recognized as central to the problem of assessing and managing ma-rine and terrestrial renewable resources (Lee 1993 Hilborn et al 2005 Orensanz et al 2005 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) Hilborn et al (2005) suggested that one of the three primary causes for failure in fisheries is the mismatch between the spa-tial scale of fished populations and the scale of their assessment and management My focus here is a portion of this broader issue the assessment and management of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks that centralized forms of management seem particularly unsuited to sustaining (Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2005 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005 Wilson 2006)

The problems created when fish range across national political borders are obvi-ous but much less attention has been paid to mismatches that disguise the fine-scale structure of fish stocks (Wilson 2006) Although fisheries texts have long recom-mended analyzing fishery data at the finest possible scale (eg Gulland 1969) such resources are usually assessed and managed as though they were panmictic dispers-ing freely throughout their ranges (Wilson 2006) Awareness is growing that many species have complex stock structures (Johannes 1978 1981a Stephenson 1999 Hilborn et al 2005) forming metapopulations (Shepherd and Brown 1993 Wilson 2006) composed of many small populations or ldquomicrostocksrdquo (Prince 2005) that can be relatively isolated from each other or connected by complex flows of larvae andor juveniles and adults (Orensanz et al 2005 Almanny et al 2007 Temby et al 2007) Orensanz et al (2005) term these fisheries ldquoS-fisheriesrdquo after the common first letter

MOTE SYMPOSIUM INVITED PAPER

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010198

of many of the adjectives used to describe them (eg small scale spatially structured sedentary stocks)

Prince et al (1998) and Prince (2005) used the Australian abalone (haliotid) fish-ery as a case study to illustrate why the small scale (10sndash100s of meters) of larval juvenile and adult movement combined with the variable size of maturity make oth-erwise effective broad-scale management with size limits limited entry and indi-vidual transferable quotas ineffective and led to serial depletion and the erosion of spatial structure in the stock at the scale of component populations or microstocks (100s to 1000s of meters) de facto open access continued (Wilson 2006) The ldquorace to fishrdquo therefore continued within these resources despite broad-scale management limiting fishing mortality at the level of the metapopulation (Wilson 2006) Term-ing this problem the ldquotragedy of scalerdquo Prince et al (1998) argued along with oth-ers (Berkes et al 2001 Wilson 2006) that the problem cannot be solved by simple rescaling of centralized top-down models of assessment and management because of their implicit broad scale the sheer number of ldquounits of stockrdquo and the associated transactional costs (Fig 1)

The questions I address here are first if the existing orthodox models of central-ized and top-down fisheries assessment and management are inadequate for small spatially complex fisheries (Wilson 2006) what model of assessment and manage-ment could be successfully applied and second if governments can be persuaded to set up governance frameworks that will foster stewardship of small-scale spatially complex fisheries how will we meet the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks Here I propose that the keys to this seemingly daunting situation are to recognize the generic nature of the problem and to develop and apply knowledge techniques skills and tools that are also generic I propose that rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should be replicating and locally adapting a generic approach involving education commu-nity empowerment and facilitation and fisher-based programs of data collection assessment and local management intended to maintain conservative levels of local spawning biomass

In forming this opinion I have been influenced by both my own experience and the literature describing the challenges and relative successes experienced with these types of fisheries under alternatives to the centralized top-down management mod-els most of us are familiar with Only a cursory overview of the literature that I am most familiar with is provided here to provide context readers wishing to examine this topic in depth are referred to the excellent book on this topic by Berkes et al (2001)

Johannes (1978 1981ab 1984 2002) and others (Ruddle et al 1992 Hickey 2007) have documented in the context of the small-scale marine resources of Oceania the ways in which systems of customary marine tenure which conferred exclu-sive access rights to local fishing grounds on fishing communities often fostered the development of traditional systems of sustainable management and the ways in which more recently recovery and strengthening of these traditional systems have improved management partially repairing the erosion that resulted from introduc-tion of centralized government new fishing technologies and access to cash markets (Johannes 1998a 2002 Ruddle 2007) Customary marine tenure and other prac-tices that protected marine resources were also common across much of Southeast Asia and Africa before being eroded by similar influences (Johannes 1981b Satria

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 199

2007) In 1994 to counter these trends the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management and the Institute of Fisheries Management with national partners in Asia and Africa initiated the Fisheries Co-management Research Proj-ect with the aim of developing strategies and processes for use and adoption by gov-ernments fishing communities and nongovernmental organizations (Pomeroy et al 2001) Pomeroy et al (2001) and Macfadyen et al (2005) provided analyses of the results of this study and discussed the elements of the individual case studies that have contributed to both success and failure Both produced a list of prescriptions they found successful in fostering self-management (Table 1) Berkes et al (2001) also make reference to that body of experience and list the same prescriptions

Yamamoto (1995) Uchida and Wilen (2004) and Makino and Matsuda (2005) de-scribe the decentralized and in some respects innovative Japanese system of fishing cooperative associations (FCAs) The Japanese system has its antecedents in 17th-century traditions but only in 1948 was it fully recognized under law The FCAs are responsible for managing access to all the coastal fishery resources within their local jurisdictions including both sedentary shellfish resources such as clams and mus-sels sea urchins and abalone and shrimp and more mobile species like flatfish rock-fish mackerel herring and pollock Some 85 (almost 250000) of Japanese fishers are members of FCAs and they handle 34 of the Japanese total seafood production by weight almost 50 by value Within the locality-based FCAs members of specific fisheries spontaneously organize themselves into fishery-management organizations on a needs basis in order to focus on issues confronting their fishery Although not officially counted until 1988 these organizations have steadily grown in number from around 30 in 1948 when the system came into law to around 500 in 1962 1339 in 1988 and 1743 in 1998 (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004)

Figure 1 Schematic of the tyranny of scale confronting small-scale spatially complex fisheries under top-down centralized models of assessment and management Reproduced with permission from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010200

Table 1 Convergent solutions for managing small spatially complex fisheries Synthesized by the author from previous studies in several different parts of the world

Oceania (Johannes 1984 1994 1998b)

Exclusive access rights customary marine tenure territorial use rights (TURFs)Extension workers trained to collect and use fisher knowledge and to facilitate development of

local management strategies by villagesDataless management local fisher knowledge and generalized expert knowledge combined to

develop simple management strategies for conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Japan (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004 Makino and Matsuda 2005)

Local fishing rights recognized by law TURFsLocal fishers identifying management issues and addressing them through species- or gear-

focused groupsGovernmental structures that harmonize management strategies of local and regional scalesLocal extension scientists

Southeast Asia (Pomeroy et al 2001)Supracommunity level

Enabling policy and legislationExternal change agents

Community levelAppropriately scaled and defined boundariesClearly defined membershipGroup homogeneityParticipation by those affectedLeadershipEmpowerment capacity building and social preparationCommunity organizationsLong-term local government supportProperty rightsAdequate financial resourcesPartnerships and partner sense of ownership of processAccountabilityConflict-management mechanismsClear objectives and defined issuesEnforcement of management rules

Individual and household levelIndividual incentive structure

Southeast Asia and Oceania (Macfadyen et al 2005)User rights that provide strong incentives for stakeholders to engageRecognized local communities of stakeholdersLeadership and strengthening of community-based institutions to engage with comanagementLocal political supportFormal legislative backing that codifies and helps to enforce community rules and to resolve

disputes

Chile (Orensanz et al 2005)Systems that provide the right incentivesPromotion of participation by fishers and other stakeholdersSpatially explicit and experimental managementBroader definition of data recognition of the greater utility of spatially explicit qualitative data

than of inexplicit quantitative dataRequirement of spatially explicit data for participation by fishersUse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data (as opposed to mediated by assessment

models) to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indices

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 201

In contrast to those listed above the Chilean ldquocaletardquo system described by Castilla et al (1998) Orensanz et al (2005) and Gonzalez et al (2006) is a recently con-structed initiative established by law in 1992 for artisanal fisheries Under it local organizations of fishers are entitled to claim exclusive access rights to the fishing grounds used by their community and are required to gather data and administer management arrangements In each caleta fishers harvest a range of some 50 spe-cies diving for bivalves gastropods cephalopods urchins and kelp trapping crabs and setting baited hooks for hake and pink ling Although not without weaknesses (Gonzalez et al 2006 W Stotz Universidad Catoacutelica del Norte Coquimbo Chile pers comm) the caleta system has grown rapidly since implementation began in 1997 More than 250 caletas have formed and successfully established their rights to approximately 36 of the coastline that has historically accounted for about 82 of historic landings and analyses by Gonzalez et al (2006) suggest the system is largely succeeding in rebuilding stocks of the most valuable species (loco Concholepas con-cholepas Bruguiegravere) within the managed areas On the basis of their collective Latin American experience Orensanz et al (2005) provide a six-point prescription for suc-cessfully managing S-fisheries (Table 1)

The above is by no means an exhaustive review of the literature on the case stud-ies mentioned let alone of the broader body of observational and theoretical work that draws on parallel experience from many other parts of the world Nevertheless any synthesis of this international experience reveals a strong convergence in think-ing about the factors that contribute to the successful assessment and management of fine-scale spatially complex marine resources (Table 1) Here I attempt first to identify these common elements and then to draw them together into an alternative model of assessment and management I then present a case study illustrating how these principles are currently being applied in the Australian abalone fishery

Managing Fine-Scale Spatially Complex Fisheries

Resource Users as the Essential Part of the ProcessmdashThe spatial com-plexity and low unit value of these types of resources preclude central-government-dominated processes of data collection assessment and management because of cost and scarcity of government resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Fishers must be engaged and take ownership of the entire process of monitoring assessing and managing their resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) they must become more than just harvesters data providers or sources of oral information As con-cluded by Gonzalez et al (2006 522) ldquoIn order to become effective stewards fishers must participate in the identification of the problems design and conduct surveys and experiments gather the information and understand the resultsrdquo Clearly only strong incentives will induce the fishermen to accept these responsibilities

Governance and Management Systems Exclusive Access RightsmdashThe incentive to take on the responsibility of stewardship is created by governance frameworks that create exclusive access rights for fishermen (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) This is a robust and symmetrical principle of fisheries management Johannes (1982 259) concluded ldquoIt would be dif-ficult to overemphasize the importance of some form of limited entryhellipto sound fish-

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010202

eries managementrdquo Macfadyen et al (2005) found marked differences in the success of resource management between countries where exclusive access rights exist and those where they do not Summarizing the body of empirical experience from differ-ing angles Jentoft (2000) argued that communities that disintegrate are a threat to fish stocks whereas Hilborn et al (2004) proposed that sustainable fishing will occur whenever institutional frameworks encourage participants to behave in a way that is considered optimal for society Recently Costello et al (2008) tested this premise quantitatively with a metaanalysis of fisheries managed with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) finding that implementation of catch shares halts and even rever-ses the global trend toward widespread collapse They concluded that institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries (Costello et al 2008) The challenge of devising effective governance systems is therefore a fun-damental and primary part of the solution to managing fisheries in general (Dietz et al 2003) and spatially complex fisheries in particular (Hilborn et al 2004 2005) which Dietz et al (2003) likened to a coevolutionary race

But does the exact form of exclusive access right matter for spatially complex fisheries Costello et al (2008) might be read superficially as suggesting that management with ITQs is the preferred form of access right in all situations but they note that for ease of analysis they restricted themselves to the one narrow class of access rights and stressed along with others (eg Berkes et al 2001 Hilborn et al 2005) the need to match institutional reform appropriately with ecological economic and social characteristics so that the form of property rights implemented in each fishery can achieve maximal benefits Ostrom et al (1999) observed that the empirical evidence across all forms of common-pool resources shows that no single type of property regime works efficiently fairly and sustainably in relation to all resources Focusing on spatially complex fisheries Prince et al (1998) Prince (2003a) and Orensanz et al (2005) all advocated using territorial use rights (TURFs Christy 1982) arguing that the spatially explicit nature of TURF management is particularly suited to fostering stewardship of small-scale spatially complex species Yamamoto (1995) concluded that the nature of Japanese territorial fishing rights is what has lead fishermen to engage in community-based management Similarly Johannes in his body of work accepts a priori that the customary-marine-tenure systems of Oceania and Southeast Asia based on exclusive territorial rights are the best suited for managing artisanal fisheries on spatially complex tropical species Thus TURFs seem to offer the outline of a system that has been observed to work successfully for spatially complex fisheries throughout Oceania Asia and South America wherever governance provides a stable form of exclusive access right

Clearly the provision of secure exclusive access rights requires the active support of various tiers of government in enacting enabling policy and legislation and in defining appropriate scales (Pomeroy et al 2001 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) but even if governments can be persuaded to enact the reforms needed the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks remains (Prince 2003a) Common sense and self-interest can be expected to achieve a great deal within com-munities of fishers but in most situations some basic level of fisheries expertise will also be needed Unfortunately the technical challenge of managing monitoring and assessing these resources is proportional to the number of functional units of stock rather than to their size or value (Larkin 1997 Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Wilson 2006) Who is going to do all that local adaptation facilita-

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010198

of many of the adjectives used to describe them (eg small scale spatially structured sedentary stocks)

Prince et al (1998) and Prince (2005) used the Australian abalone (haliotid) fish-ery as a case study to illustrate why the small scale (10sndash100s of meters) of larval juvenile and adult movement combined with the variable size of maturity make oth-erwise effective broad-scale management with size limits limited entry and indi-vidual transferable quotas ineffective and led to serial depletion and the erosion of spatial structure in the stock at the scale of component populations or microstocks (100s to 1000s of meters) de facto open access continued (Wilson 2006) The ldquorace to fishrdquo therefore continued within these resources despite broad-scale management limiting fishing mortality at the level of the metapopulation (Wilson 2006) Term-ing this problem the ldquotragedy of scalerdquo Prince et al (1998) argued along with oth-ers (Berkes et al 2001 Wilson 2006) that the problem cannot be solved by simple rescaling of centralized top-down models of assessment and management because of their implicit broad scale the sheer number of ldquounits of stockrdquo and the associated transactional costs (Fig 1)

The questions I address here are first if the existing orthodox models of central-ized and top-down fisheries assessment and management are inadequate for small spatially complex fisheries (Wilson 2006) what model of assessment and manage-ment could be successfully applied and second if governments can be persuaded to set up governance frameworks that will foster stewardship of small-scale spatially complex fisheries how will we meet the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks Here I propose that the keys to this seemingly daunting situation are to recognize the generic nature of the problem and to develop and apply knowledge techniques skills and tools that are also generic I propose that rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should be replicating and locally adapting a generic approach involving education commu-nity empowerment and facilitation and fisher-based programs of data collection assessment and local management intended to maintain conservative levels of local spawning biomass

In forming this opinion I have been influenced by both my own experience and the literature describing the challenges and relative successes experienced with these types of fisheries under alternatives to the centralized top-down management mod-els most of us are familiar with Only a cursory overview of the literature that I am most familiar with is provided here to provide context readers wishing to examine this topic in depth are referred to the excellent book on this topic by Berkes et al (2001)

Johannes (1978 1981ab 1984 2002) and others (Ruddle et al 1992 Hickey 2007) have documented in the context of the small-scale marine resources of Oceania the ways in which systems of customary marine tenure which conferred exclu-sive access rights to local fishing grounds on fishing communities often fostered the development of traditional systems of sustainable management and the ways in which more recently recovery and strengthening of these traditional systems have improved management partially repairing the erosion that resulted from introduc-tion of centralized government new fishing technologies and access to cash markets (Johannes 1998a 2002 Ruddle 2007) Customary marine tenure and other prac-tices that protected marine resources were also common across much of Southeast Asia and Africa before being eroded by similar influences (Johannes 1981b Satria

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 199

2007) In 1994 to counter these trends the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management and the Institute of Fisheries Management with national partners in Asia and Africa initiated the Fisheries Co-management Research Proj-ect with the aim of developing strategies and processes for use and adoption by gov-ernments fishing communities and nongovernmental organizations (Pomeroy et al 2001) Pomeroy et al (2001) and Macfadyen et al (2005) provided analyses of the results of this study and discussed the elements of the individual case studies that have contributed to both success and failure Both produced a list of prescriptions they found successful in fostering self-management (Table 1) Berkes et al (2001) also make reference to that body of experience and list the same prescriptions

Yamamoto (1995) Uchida and Wilen (2004) and Makino and Matsuda (2005) de-scribe the decentralized and in some respects innovative Japanese system of fishing cooperative associations (FCAs) The Japanese system has its antecedents in 17th-century traditions but only in 1948 was it fully recognized under law The FCAs are responsible for managing access to all the coastal fishery resources within their local jurisdictions including both sedentary shellfish resources such as clams and mus-sels sea urchins and abalone and shrimp and more mobile species like flatfish rock-fish mackerel herring and pollock Some 85 (almost 250000) of Japanese fishers are members of FCAs and they handle 34 of the Japanese total seafood production by weight almost 50 by value Within the locality-based FCAs members of specific fisheries spontaneously organize themselves into fishery-management organizations on a needs basis in order to focus on issues confronting their fishery Although not officially counted until 1988 these organizations have steadily grown in number from around 30 in 1948 when the system came into law to around 500 in 1962 1339 in 1988 and 1743 in 1998 (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004)

Figure 1 Schematic of the tyranny of scale confronting small-scale spatially complex fisheries under top-down centralized models of assessment and management Reproduced with permission from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010200

Table 1 Convergent solutions for managing small spatially complex fisheries Synthesized by the author from previous studies in several different parts of the world

Oceania (Johannes 1984 1994 1998b)

Exclusive access rights customary marine tenure territorial use rights (TURFs)Extension workers trained to collect and use fisher knowledge and to facilitate development of

local management strategies by villagesDataless management local fisher knowledge and generalized expert knowledge combined to

develop simple management strategies for conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Japan (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004 Makino and Matsuda 2005)

Local fishing rights recognized by law TURFsLocal fishers identifying management issues and addressing them through species- or gear-

focused groupsGovernmental structures that harmonize management strategies of local and regional scalesLocal extension scientists

Southeast Asia (Pomeroy et al 2001)Supracommunity level

Enabling policy and legislationExternal change agents

Community levelAppropriately scaled and defined boundariesClearly defined membershipGroup homogeneityParticipation by those affectedLeadershipEmpowerment capacity building and social preparationCommunity organizationsLong-term local government supportProperty rightsAdequate financial resourcesPartnerships and partner sense of ownership of processAccountabilityConflict-management mechanismsClear objectives and defined issuesEnforcement of management rules

Individual and household levelIndividual incentive structure

Southeast Asia and Oceania (Macfadyen et al 2005)User rights that provide strong incentives for stakeholders to engageRecognized local communities of stakeholdersLeadership and strengthening of community-based institutions to engage with comanagementLocal political supportFormal legislative backing that codifies and helps to enforce community rules and to resolve

disputes

Chile (Orensanz et al 2005)Systems that provide the right incentivesPromotion of participation by fishers and other stakeholdersSpatially explicit and experimental managementBroader definition of data recognition of the greater utility of spatially explicit qualitative data

than of inexplicit quantitative dataRequirement of spatially explicit data for participation by fishersUse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data (as opposed to mediated by assessment

models) to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indices

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 201

In contrast to those listed above the Chilean ldquocaletardquo system described by Castilla et al (1998) Orensanz et al (2005) and Gonzalez et al (2006) is a recently con-structed initiative established by law in 1992 for artisanal fisheries Under it local organizations of fishers are entitled to claim exclusive access rights to the fishing grounds used by their community and are required to gather data and administer management arrangements In each caleta fishers harvest a range of some 50 spe-cies diving for bivalves gastropods cephalopods urchins and kelp trapping crabs and setting baited hooks for hake and pink ling Although not without weaknesses (Gonzalez et al 2006 W Stotz Universidad Catoacutelica del Norte Coquimbo Chile pers comm) the caleta system has grown rapidly since implementation began in 1997 More than 250 caletas have formed and successfully established their rights to approximately 36 of the coastline that has historically accounted for about 82 of historic landings and analyses by Gonzalez et al (2006) suggest the system is largely succeeding in rebuilding stocks of the most valuable species (loco Concholepas con-cholepas Bruguiegravere) within the managed areas On the basis of their collective Latin American experience Orensanz et al (2005) provide a six-point prescription for suc-cessfully managing S-fisheries (Table 1)

The above is by no means an exhaustive review of the literature on the case stud-ies mentioned let alone of the broader body of observational and theoretical work that draws on parallel experience from many other parts of the world Nevertheless any synthesis of this international experience reveals a strong convergence in think-ing about the factors that contribute to the successful assessment and management of fine-scale spatially complex marine resources (Table 1) Here I attempt first to identify these common elements and then to draw them together into an alternative model of assessment and management I then present a case study illustrating how these principles are currently being applied in the Australian abalone fishery

Managing Fine-Scale Spatially Complex Fisheries

Resource Users as the Essential Part of the ProcessmdashThe spatial com-plexity and low unit value of these types of resources preclude central-government-dominated processes of data collection assessment and management because of cost and scarcity of government resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Fishers must be engaged and take ownership of the entire process of monitoring assessing and managing their resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) they must become more than just harvesters data providers or sources of oral information As con-cluded by Gonzalez et al (2006 522) ldquoIn order to become effective stewards fishers must participate in the identification of the problems design and conduct surveys and experiments gather the information and understand the resultsrdquo Clearly only strong incentives will induce the fishermen to accept these responsibilities

Governance and Management Systems Exclusive Access RightsmdashThe incentive to take on the responsibility of stewardship is created by governance frameworks that create exclusive access rights for fishermen (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) This is a robust and symmetrical principle of fisheries management Johannes (1982 259) concluded ldquoIt would be dif-ficult to overemphasize the importance of some form of limited entryhellipto sound fish-

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010202

eries managementrdquo Macfadyen et al (2005) found marked differences in the success of resource management between countries where exclusive access rights exist and those where they do not Summarizing the body of empirical experience from differ-ing angles Jentoft (2000) argued that communities that disintegrate are a threat to fish stocks whereas Hilborn et al (2004) proposed that sustainable fishing will occur whenever institutional frameworks encourage participants to behave in a way that is considered optimal for society Recently Costello et al (2008) tested this premise quantitatively with a metaanalysis of fisheries managed with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) finding that implementation of catch shares halts and even rever-ses the global trend toward widespread collapse They concluded that institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries (Costello et al 2008) The challenge of devising effective governance systems is therefore a fun-damental and primary part of the solution to managing fisheries in general (Dietz et al 2003) and spatially complex fisheries in particular (Hilborn et al 2004 2005) which Dietz et al (2003) likened to a coevolutionary race

But does the exact form of exclusive access right matter for spatially complex fisheries Costello et al (2008) might be read superficially as suggesting that management with ITQs is the preferred form of access right in all situations but they note that for ease of analysis they restricted themselves to the one narrow class of access rights and stressed along with others (eg Berkes et al 2001 Hilborn et al 2005) the need to match institutional reform appropriately with ecological economic and social characteristics so that the form of property rights implemented in each fishery can achieve maximal benefits Ostrom et al (1999) observed that the empirical evidence across all forms of common-pool resources shows that no single type of property regime works efficiently fairly and sustainably in relation to all resources Focusing on spatially complex fisheries Prince et al (1998) Prince (2003a) and Orensanz et al (2005) all advocated using territorial use rights (TURFs Christy 1982) arguing that the spatially explicit nature of TURF management is particularly suited to fostering stewardship of small-scale spatially complex species Yamamoto (1995) concluded that the nature of Japanese territorial fishing rights is what has lead fishermen to engage in community-based management Similarly Johannes in his body of work accepts a priori that the customary-marine-tenure systems of Oceania and Southeast Asia based on exclusive territorial rights are the best suited for managing artisanal fisheries on spatially complex tropical species Thus TURFs seem to offer the outline of a system that has been observed to work successfully for spatially complex fisheries throughout Oceania Asia and South America wherever governance provides a stable form of exclusive access right

Clearly the provision of secure exclusive access rights requires the active support of various tiers of government in enacting enabling policy and legislation and in defining appropriate scales (Pomeroy et al 2001 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) but even if governments can be persuaded to enact the reforms needed the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks remains (Prince 2003a) Common sense and self-interest can be expected to achieve a great deal within com-munities of fishers but in most situations some basic level of fisheries expertise will also be needed Unfortunately the technical challenge of managing monitoring and assessing these resources is proportional to the number of functional units of stock rather than to their size or value (Larkin 1997 Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Wilson 2006) Who is going to do all that local adaptation facilita-

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 199

2007) In 1994 to counter these trends the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management and the Institute of Fisheries Management with national partners in Asia and Africa initiated the Fisheries Co-management Research Proj-ect with the aim of developing strategies and processes for use and adoption by gov-ernments fishing communities and nongovernmental organizations (Pomeroy et al 2001) Pomeroy et al (2001) and Macfadyen et al (2005) provided analyses of the results of this study and discussed the elements of the individual case studies that have contributed to both success and failure Both produced a list of prescriptions they found successful in fostering self-management (Table 1) Berkes et al (2001) also make reference to that body of experience and list the same prescriptions

Yamamoto (1995) Uchida and Wilen (2004) and Makino and Matsuda (2005) de-scribe the decentralized and in some respects innovative Japanese system of fishing cooperative associations (FCAs) The Japanese system has its antecedents in 17th-century traditions but only in 1948 was it fully recognized under law The FCAs are responsible for managing access to all the coastal fishery resources within their local jurisdictions including both sedentary shellfish resources such as clams and mus-sels sea urchins and abalone and shrimp and more mobile species like flatfish rock-fish mackerel herring and pollock Some 85 (almost 250000) of Japanese fishers are members of FCAs and they handle 34 of the Japanese total seafood production by weight almost 50 by value Within the locality-based FCAs members of specific fisheries spontaneously organize themselves into fishery-management organizations on a needs basis in order to focus on issues confronting their fishery Although not officially counted until 1988 these organizations have steadily grown in number from around 30 in 1948 when the system came into law to around 500 in 1962 1339 in 1988 and 1743 in 1998 (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004)

Figure 1 Schematic of the tyranny of scale confronting small-scale spatially complex fisheries under top-down centralized models of assessment and management Reproduced with permission from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010200

Table 1 Convergent solutions for managing small spatially complex fisheries Synthesized by the author from previous studies in several different parts of the world

Oceania (Johannes 1984 1994 1998b)

Exclusive access rights customary marine tenure territorial use rights (TURFs)Extension workers trained to collect and use fisher knowledge and to facilitate development of

local management strategies by villagesDataless management local fisher knowledge and generalized expert knowledge combined to

develop simple management strategies for conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Japan (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004 Makino and Matsuda 2005)

Local fishing rights recognized by law TURFsLocal fishers identifying management issues and addressing them through species- or gear-

focused groupsGovernmental structures that harmonize management strategies of local and regional scalesLocal extension scientists

Southeast Asia (Pomeroy et al 2001)Supracommunity level

Enabling policy and legislationExternal change agents

Community levelAppropriately scaled and defined boundariesClearly defined membershipGroup homogeneityParticipation by those affectedLeadershipEmpowerment capacity building and social preparationCommunity organizationsLong-term local government supportProperty rightsAdequate financial resourcesPartnerships and partner sense of ownership of processAccountabilityConflict-management mechanismsClear objectives and defined issuesEnforcement of management rules

Individual and household levelIndividual incentive structure

Southeast Asia and Oceania (Macfadyen et al 2005)User rights that provide strong incentives for stakeholders to engageRecognized local communities of stakeholdersLeadership and strengthening of community-based institutions to engage with comanagementLocal political supportFormal legislative backing that codifies and helps to enforce community rules and to resolve

disputes

Chile (Orensanz et al 2005)Systems that provide the right incentivesPromotion of participation by fishers and other stakeholdersSpatially explicit and experimental managementBroader definition of data recognition of the greater utility of spatially explicit qualitative data

than of inexplicit quantitative dataRequirement of spatially explicit data for participation by fishersUse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data (as opposed to mediated by assessment

models) to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indices

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 201

In contrast to those listed above the Chilean ldquocaletardquo system described by Castilla et al (1998) Orensanz et al (2005) and Gonzalez et al (2006) is a recently con-structed initiative established by law in 1992 for artisanal fisheries Under it local organizations of fishers are entitled to claim exclusive access rights to the fishing grounds used by their community and are required to gather data and administer management arrangements In each caleta fishers harvest a range of some 50 spe-cies diving for bivalves gastropods cephalopods urchins and kelp trapping crabs and setting baited hooks for hake and pink ling Although not without weaknesses (Gonzalez et al 2006 W Stotz Universidad Catoacutelica del Norte Coquimbo Chile pers comm) the caleta system has grown rapidly since implementation began in 1997 More than 250 caletas have formed and successfully established their rights to approximately 36 of the coastline that has historically accounted for about 82 of historic landings and analyses by Gonzalez et al (2006) suggest the system is largely succeeding in rebuilding stocks of the most valuable species (loco Concholepas con-cholepas Bruguiegravere) within the managed areas On the basis of their collective Latin American experience Orensanz et al (2005) provide a six-point prescription for suc-cessfully managing S-fisheries (Table 1)

The above is by no means an exhaustive review of the literature on the case stud-ies mentioned let alone of the broader body of observational and theoretical work that draws on parallel experience from many other parts of the world Nevertheless any synthesis of this international experience reveals a strong convergence in think-ing about the factors that contribute to the successful assessment and management of fine-scale spatially complex marine resources (Table 1) Here I attempt first to identify these common elements and then to draw them together into an alternative model of assessment and management I then present a case study illustrating how these principles are currently being applied in the Australian abalone fishery

Managing Fine-Scale Spatially Complex Fisheries

Resource Users as the Essential Part of the ProcessmdashThe spatial com-plexity and low unit value of these types of resources preclude central-government-dominated processes of data collection assessment and management because of cost and scarcity of government resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Fishers must be engaged and take ownership of the entire process of monitoring assessing and managing their resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) they must become more than just harvesters data providers or sources of oral information As con-cluded by Gonzalez et al (2006 522) ldquoIn order to become effective stewards fishers must participate in the identification of the problems design and conduct surveys and experiments gather the information and understand the resultsrdquo Clearly only strong incentives will induce the fishermen to accept these responsibilities

Governance and Management Systems Exclusive Access RightsmdashThe incentive to take on the responsibility of stewardship is created by governance frameworks that create exclusive access rights for fishermen (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) This is a robust and symmetrical principle of fisheries management Johannes (1982 259) concluded ldquoIt would be dif-ficult to overemphasize the importance of some form of limited entryhellipto sound fish-

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010202

eries managementrdquo Macfadyen et al (2005) found marked differences in the success of resource management between countries where exclusive access rights exist and those where they do not Summarizing the body of empirical experience from differ-ing angles Jentoft (2000) argued that communities that disintegrate are a threat to fish stocks whereas Hilborn et al (2004) proposed that sustainable fishing will occur whenever institutional frameworks encourage participants to behave in a way that is considered optimal for society Recently Costello et al (2008) tested this premise quantitatively with a metaanalysis of fisheries managed with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) finding that implementation of catch shares halts and even rever-ses the global trend toward widespread collapse They concluded that institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries (Costello et al 2008) The challenge of devising effective governance systems is therefore a fun-damental and primary part of the solution to managing fisheries in general (Dietz et al 2003) and spatially complex fisheries in particular (Hilborn et al 2004 2005) which Dietz et al (2003) likened to a coevolutionary race

But does the exact form of exclusive access right matter for spatially complex fisheries Costello et al (2008) might be read superficially as suggesting that management with ITQs is the preferred form of access right in all situations but they note that for ease of analysis they restricted themselves to the one narrow class of access rights and stressed along with others (eg Berkes et al 2001 Hilborn et al 2005) the need to match institutional reform appropriately with ecological economic and social characteristics so that the form of property rights implemented in each fishery can achieve maximal benefits Ostrom et al (1999) observed that the empirical evidence across all forms of common-pool resources shows that no single type of property regime works efficiently fairly and sustainably in relation to all resources Focusing on spatially complex fisheries Prince et al (1998) Prince (2003a) and Orensanz et al (2005) all advocated using territorial use rights (TURFs Christy 1982) arguing that the spatially explicit nature of TURF management is particularly suited to fostering stewardship of small-scale spatially complex species Yamamoto (1995) concluded that the nature of Japanese territorial fishing rights is what has lead fishermen to engage in community-based management Similarly Johannes in his body of work accepts a priori that the customary-marine-tenure systems of Oceania and Southeast Asia based on exclusive territorial rights are the best suited for managing artisanal fisheries on spatially complex tropical species Thus TURFs seem to offer the outline of a system that has been observed to work successfully for spatially complex fisheries throughout Oceania Asia and South America wherever governance provides a stable form of exclusive access right

Clearly the provision of secure exclusive access rights requires the active support of various tiers of government in enacting enabling policy and legislation and in defining appropriate scales (Pomeroy et al 2001 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) but even if governments can be persuaded to enact the reforms needed the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks remains (Prince 2003a) Common sense and self-interest can be expected to achieve a great deal within com-munities of fishers but in most situations some basic level of fisheries expertise will also be needed Unfortunately the technical challenge of managing monitoring and assessing these resources is proportional to the number of functional units of stock rather than to their size or value (Larkin 1997 Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Wilson 2006) Who is going to do all that local adaptation facilita-

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010200

Table 1 Convergent solutions for managing small spatially complex fisheries Synthesized by the author from previous studies in several different parts of the world

Oceania (Johannes 1984 1994 1998b)

Exclusive access rights customary marine tenure territorial use rights (TURFs)Extension workers trained to collect and use fisher knowledge and to facilitate development of

local management strategies by villagesDataless management local fisher knowledge and generalized expert knowledge combined to

develop simple management strategies for conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Japan (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004 Makino and Matsuda 2005)

Local fishing rights recognized by law TURFsLocal fishers identifying management issues and addressing them through species- or gear-

focused groupsGovernmental structures that harmonize management strategies of local and regional scalesLocal extension scientists

Southeast Asia (Pomeroy et al 2001)Supracommunity level

Enabling policy and legislationExternal change agents

Community levelAppropriately scaled and defined boundariesClearly defined membershipGroup homogeneityParticipation by those affectedLeadershipEmpowerment capacity building and social preparationCommunity organizationsLong-term local government supportProperty rightsAdequate financial resourcesPartnerships and partner sense of ownership of processAccountabilityConflict-management mechanismsClear objectives and defined issuesEnforcement of management rules

Individual and household levelIndividual incentive structure

Southeast Asia and Oceania (Macfadyen et al 2005)User rights that provide strong incentives for stakeholders to engageRecognized local communities of stakeholdersLeadership and strengthening of community-based institutions to engage with comanagementLocal political supportFormal legislative backing that codifies and helps to enforce community rules and to resolve

disputes

Chile (Orensanz et al 2005)Systems that provide the right incentivesPromotion of participation by fishers and other stakeholdersSpatially explicit and experimental managementBroader definition of data recognition of the greater utility of spatially explicit qualitative data

than of inexplicit quantitative dataRequirement of spatially explicit data for participation by fishersUse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data (as opposed to mediated by assessment

models) to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indices

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 201

In contrast to those listed above the Chilean ldquocaletardquo system described by Castilla et al (1998) Orensanz et al (2005) and Gonzalez et al (2006) is a recently con-structed initiative established by law in 1992 for artisanal fisheries Under it local organizations of fishers are entitled to claim exclusive access rights to the fishing grounds used by their community and are required to gather data and administer management arrangements In each caleta fishers harvest a range of some 50 spe-cies diving for bivalves gastropods cephalopods urchins and kelp trapping crabs and setting baited hooks for hake and pink ling Although not without weaknesses (Gonzalez et al 2006 W Stotz Universidad Catoacutelica del Norte Coquimbo Chile pers comm) the caleta system has grown rapidly since implementation began in 1997 More than 250 caletas have formed and successfully established their rights to approximately 36 of the coastline that has historically accounted for about 82 of historic landings and analyses by Gonzalez et al (2006) suggest the system is largely succeeding in rebuilding stocks of the most valuable species (loco Concholepas con-cholepas Bruguiegravere) within the managed areas On the basis of their collective Latin American experience Orensanz et al (2005) provide a six-point prescription for suc-cessfully managing S-fisheries (Table 1)

The above is by no means an exhaustive review of the literature on the case stud-ies mentioned let alone of the broader body of observational and theoretical work that draws on parallel experience from many other parts of the world Nevertheless any synthesis of this international experience reveals a strong convergence in think-ing about the factors that contribute to the successful assessment and management of fine-scale spatially complex marine resources (Table 1) Here I attempt first to identify these common elements and then to draw them together into an alternative model of assessment and management I then present a case study illustrating how these principles are currently being applied in the Australian abalone fishery

Managing Fine-Scale Spatially Complex Fisheries

Resource Users as the Essential Part of the ProcessmdashThe spatial com-plexity and low unit value of these types of resources preclude central-government-dominated processes of data collection assessment and management because of cost and scarcity of government resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Fishers must be engaged and take ownership of the entire process of monitoring assessing and managing their resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) they must become more than just harvesters data providers or sources of oral information As con-cluded by Gonzalez et al (2006 522) ldquoIn order to become effective stewards fishers must participate in the identification of the problems design and conduct surveys and experiments gather the information and understand the resultsrdquo Clearly only strong incentives will induce the fishermen to accept these responsibilities

Governance and Management Systems Exclusive Access RightsmdashThe incentive to take on the responsibility of stewardship is created by governance frameworks that create exclusive access rights for fishermen (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) This is a robust and symmetrical principle of fisheries management Johannes (1982 259) concluded ldquoIt would be dif-ficult to overemphasize the importance of some form of limited entryhellipto sound fish-

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010202

eries managementrdquo Macfadyen et al (2005) found marked differences in the success of resource management between countries where exclusive access rights exist and those where they do not Summarizing the body of empirical experience from differ-ing angles Jentoft (2000) argued that communities that disintegrate are a threat to fish stocks whereas Hilborn et al (2004) proposed that sustainable fishing will occur whenever institutional frameworks encourage participants to behave in a way that is considered optimal for society Recently Costello et al (2008) tested this premise quantitatively with a metaanalysis of fisheries managed with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) finding that implementation of catch shares halts and even rever-ses the global trend toward widespread collapse They concluded that institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries (Costello et al 2008) The challenge of devising effective governance systems is therefore a fun-damental and primary part of the solution to managing fisheries in general (Dietz et al 2003) and spatially complex fisheries in particular (Hilborn et al 2004 2005) which Dietz et al (2003) likened to a coevolutionary race

But does the exact form of exclusive access right matter for spatially complex fisheries Costello et al (2008) might be read superficially as suggesting that management with ITQs is the preferred form of access right in all situations but they note that for ease of analysis they restricted themselves to the one narrow class of access rights and stressed along with others (eg Berkes et al 2001 Hilborn et al 2005) the need to match institutional reform appropriately with ecological economic and social characteristics so that the form of property rights implemented in each fishery can achieve maximal benefits Ostrom et al (1999) observed that the empirical evidence across all forms of common-pool resources shows that no single type of property regime works efficiently fairly and sustainably in relation to all resources Focusing on spatially complex fisheries Prince et al (1998) Prince (2003a) and Orensanz et al (2005) all advocated using territorial use rights (TURFs Christy 1982) arguing that the spatially explicit nature of TURF management is particularly suited to fostering stewardship of small-scale spatially complex species Yamamoto (1995) concluded that the nature of Japanese territorial fishing rights is what has lead fishermen to engage in community-based management Similarly Johannes in his body of work accepts a priori that the customary-marine-tenure systems of Oceania and Southeast Asia based on exclusive territorial rights are the best suited for managing artisanal fisheries on spatially complex tropical species Thus TURFs seem to offer the outline of a system that has been observed to work successfully for spatially complex fisheries throughout Oceania Asia and South America wherever governance provides a stable form of exclusive access right

Clearly the provision of secure exclusive access rights requires the active support of various tiers of government in enacting enabling policy and legislation and in defining appropriate scales (Pomeroy et al 2001 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) but even if governments can be persuaded to enact the reforms needed the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks remains (Prince 2003a) Common sense and self-interest can be expected to achieve a great deal within com-munities of fishers but in most situations some basic level of fisheries expertise will also be needed Unfortunately the technical challenge of managing monitoring and assessing these resources is proportional to the number of functional units of stock rather than to their size or value (Larkin 1997 Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Wilson 2006) Who is going to do all that local adaptation facilita-

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 201

In contrast to those listed above the Chilean ldquocaletardquo system described by Castilla et al (1998) Orensanz et al (2005) and Gonzalez et al (2006) is a recently con-structed initiative established by law in 1992 for artisanal fisheries Under it local organizations of fishers are entitled to claim exclusive access rights to the fishing grounds used by their community and are required to gather data and administer management arrangements In each caleta fishers harvest a range of some 50 spe-cies diving for bivalves gastropods cephalopods urchins and kelp trapping crabs and setting baited hooks for hake and pink ling Although not without weaknesses (Gonzalez et al 2006 W Stotz Universidad Catoacutelica del Norte Coquimbo Chile pers comm) the caleta system has grown rapidly since implementation began in 1997 More than 250 caletas have formed and successfully established their rights to approximately 36 of the coastline that has historically accounted for about 82 of historic landings and analyses by Gonzalez et al (2006) suggest the system is largely succeeding in rebuilding stocks of the most valuable species (loco Concholepas con-cholepas Bruguiegravere) within the managed areas On the basis of their collective Latin American experience Orensanz et al (2005) provide a six-point prescription for suc-cessfully managing S-fisheries (Table 1)

The above is by no means an exhaustive review of the literature on the case stud-ies mentioned let alone of the broader body of observational and theoretical work that draws on parallel experience from many other parts of the world Nevertheless any synthesis of this international experience reveals a strong convergence in think-ing about the factors that contribute to the successful assessment and management of fine-scale spatially complex marine resources (Table 1) Here I attempt first to identify these common elements and then to draw them together into an alternative model of assessment and management I then present a case study illustrating how these principles are currently being applied in the Australian abalone fishery

Managing Fine-Scale Spatially Complex Fisheries

Resource Users as the Essential Part of the ProcessmdashThe spatial com-plexity and low unit value of these types of resources preclude central-government-dominated processes of data collection assessment and management because of cost and scarcity of government resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Fishers must be engaged and take ownership of the entire process of monitoring assessing and managing their resources (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) they must become more than just harvesters data providers or sources of oral information As con-cluded by Gonzalez et al (2006 522) ldquoIn order to become effective stewards fishers must participate in the identification of the problems design and conduct surveys and experiments gather the information and understand the resultsrdquo Clearly only strong incentives will induce the fishermen to accept these responsibilities

Governance and Management Systems Exclusive Access RightsmdashThe incentive to take on the responsibility of stewardship is created by governance frameworks that create exclusive access rights for fishermen (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) This is a robust and symmetrical principle of fisheries management Johannes (1982 259) concluded ldquoIt would be dif-ficult to overemphasize the importance of some form of limited entryhellipto sound fish-

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010202

eries managementrdquo Macfadyen et al (2005) found marked differences in the success of resource management between countries where exclusive access rights exist and those where they do not Summarizing the body of empirical experience from differ-ing angles Jentoft (2000) argued that communities that disintegrate are a threat to fish stocks whereas Hilborn et al (2004) proposed that sustainable fishing will occur whenever institutional frameworks encourage participants to behave in a way that is considered optimal for society Recently Costello et al (2008) tested this premise quantitatively with a metaanalysis of fisheries managed with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) finding that implementation of catch shares halts and even rever-ses the global trend toward widespread collapse They concluded that institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries (Costello et al 2008) The challenge of devising effective governance systems is therefore a fun-damental and primary part of the solution to managing fisheries in general (Dietz et al 2003) and spatially complex fisheries in particular (Hilborn et al 2004 2005) which Dietz et al (2003) likened to a coevolutionary race

But does the exact form of exclusive access right matter for spatially complex fisheries Costello et al (2008) might be read superficially as suggesting that management with ITQs is the preferred form of access right in all situations but they note that for ease of analysis they restricted themselves to the one narrow class of access rights and stressed along with others (eg Berkes et al 2001 Hilborn et al 2005) the need to match institutional reform appropriately with ecological economic and social characteristics so that the form of property rights implemented in each fishery can achieve maximal benefits Ostrom et al (1999) observed that the empirical evidence across all forms of common-pool resources shows that no single type of property regime works efficiently fairly and sustainably in relation to all resources Focusing on spatially complex fisheries Prince et al (1998) Prince (2003a) and Orensanz et al (2005) all advocated using territorial use rights (TURFs Christy 1982) arguing that the spatially explicit nature of TURF management is particularly suited to fostering stewardship of small-scale spatially complex species Yamamoto (1995) concluded that the nature of Japanese territorial fishing rights is what has lead fishermen to engage in community-based management Similarly Johannes in his body of work accepts a priori that the customary-marine-tenure systems of Oceania and Southeast Asia based on exclusive territorial rights are the best suited for managing artisanal fisheries on spatially complex tropical species Thus TURFs seem to offer the outline of a system that has been observed to work successfully for spatially complex fisheries throughout Oceania Asia and South America wherever governance provides a stable form of exclusive access right

Clearly the provision of secure exclusive access rights requires the active support of various tiers of government in enacting enabling policy and legislation and in defining appropriate scales (Pomeroy et al 2001 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) but even if governments can be persuaded to enact the reforms needed the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks remains (Prince 2003a) Common sense and self-interest can be expected to achieve a great deal within com-munities of fishers but in most situations some basic level of fisheries expertise will also be needed Unfortunately the technical challenge of managing monitoring and assessing these resources is proportional to the number of functional units of stock rather than to their size or value (Larkin 1997 Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Wilson 2006) Who is going to do all that local adaptation facilita-

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010202

eries managementrdquo Macfadyen et al (2005) found marked differences in the success of resource management between countries where exclusive access rights exist and those where they do not Summarizing the body of empirical experience from differ-ing angles Jentoft (2000) argued that communities that disintegrate are a threat to fish stocks whereas Hilborn et al (2004) proposed that sustainable fishing will occur whenever institutional frameworks encourage participants to behave in a way that is considered optimal for society Recently Costello et al (2008) tested this premise quantitatively with a metaanalysis of fisheries managed with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) finding that implementation of catch shares halts and even rever-ses the global trend toward widespread collapse They concluded that institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries (Costello et al 2008) The challenge of devising effective governance systems is therefore a fun-damental and primary part of the solution to managing fisheries in general (Dietz et al 2003) and spatially complex fisheries in particular (Hilborn et al 2004 2005) which Dietz et al (2003) likened to a coevolutionary race

But does the exact form of exclusive access right matter for spatially complex fisheries Costello et al (2008) might be read superficially as suggesting that management with ITQs is the preferred form of access right in all situations but they note that for ease of analysis they restricted themselves to the one narrow class of access rights and stressed along with others (eg Berkes et al 2001 Hilborn et al 2005) the need to match institutional reform appropriately with ecological economic and social characteristics so that the form of property rights implemented in each fishery can achieve maximal benefits Ostrom et al (1999) observed that the empirical evidence across all forms of common-pool resources shows that no single type of property regime works efficiently fairly and sustainably in relation to all resources Focusing on spatially complex fisheries Prince et al (1998) Prince (2003a) and Orensanz et al (2005) all advocated using territorial use rights (TURFs Christy 1982) arguing that the spatially explicit nature of TURF management is particularly suited to fostering stewardship of small-scale spatially complex species Yamamoto (1995) concluded that the nature of Japanese territorial fishing rights is what has lead fishermen to engage in community-based management Similarly Johannes in his body of work accepts a priori that the customary-marine-tenure systems of Oceania and Southeast Asia based on exclusive territorial rights are the best suited for managing artisanal fisheries on spatially complex tropical species Thus TURFs seem to offer the outline of a system that has been observed to work successfully for spatially complex fisheries throughout Oceania Asia and South America wherever governance provides a stable form of exclusive access right

Clearly the provision of secure exclusive access rights requires the active support of various tiers of government in enacting enabling policy and legislation and in defining appropriate scales (Pomeroy et al 2001 Wilson 2006 Folke et al 2007) but even if governments can be persuaded to enact the reforms needed the massive technical challenge of managing a myriad of microstocks remains (Prince 2003a) Common sense and self-interest can be expected to achieve a great deal within com-munities of fishers but in most situations some basic level of fisheries expertise will also be needed Unfortunately the technical challenge of managing monitoring and assessing these resources is proportional to the number of functional units of stock rather than to their size or value (Larkin 1997 Prince et al 1998 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Wilson 2006) Who is going to do all that local adaptation facilita-

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 203

tion and basic fisheries science Certainly not small cash-strapped centralized gov-ernments or the universities they fund (Fig 1) Most countries simply have too many small-scale resources to assess and manage individually and not enough taxpayers to pay for it all (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005 Wilson 2006)

A Generic Approach mdashThe key to this seemingly daunting situation is to rec-ognize that fundamentally the knowledge techniques skills and tools needed are generic In a very real sense all marine resources are similar The tyranny of scale is universal only the quantitative parameter values vary like the rate of reproduction (h) natural mortality rate (M) and the absolute spatial scale of normal dispersion over a life cycle Assessing and managing spatially complex stocks can therefore be considered a generic issue within any governmental framework designed to foster local management Rather than uniquely developing specific approaches to each small-scale fishery we should consider a process of efficiently replicating the same process of local adaption to each new local resource and of the repeated use of similar systems of education facilitation data collection mapping analysis assessment and local management

So what are the key elements of this generic approach to spatially complex marine resources Drawn from the collective experience cited above the generic ingredients are agents of change or extension officers supported with a generic software toolbox the collection and use of fisher knowledge collaboration with fishers to collect size and abundance data a broader definition of data and knowledge clear management objectives and simple decision rules aimed at conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Barefoot Ecologists or Change AgentsmdashJohannes (1984 1994) wrote that extension workers are needed to support change and that they should be trained to obtain the information needed to plan and sustain village management strategies on the basis of the practical aspects of local knowledge Pomeroy et al (2001) and Berkes et al (2001) described the importance of a similar role for workers they called ldquoexternal change agentsrdquo who provide information to fishing communities facilitate community dialogue about the management of local resources and catalyze change In the Japanese system the extension role is less one of catalyzing change and is more concerned with supporting ongoing processes Local extension scientists play a liaison role between the fishing communities and government agencies helping to provide the linkage between local and regional scales of management and coordinating local scientific programs that inform the setting of total allowable catch and monitoring of stock trends (Yamamoto 1995 Uchida and Wilen 2004) Likewise in Chile the TURF systemrsquos scientific consultants play an important role monitoring resource health and stock status for each TURF and reporting the results on behalf of the caletas to the federal regulators who approve local management plans on that basis or modify regulations where necessary (Gonzalez et al 2006) Although Gonzalez et al (2006) observed that Chilean artisanal fishers need to be more active in the decision process and less subservient to consultants and that for these changes to be possible fishers must understand the dynamics of their resources and be able to engage in dialogue with consultants and managers (rather than simply being handymen for them)

Berkes et al (2001) noted that small-scale fisheries need a new set of skills and capabilities people who can work on the interface among science industry and

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010204

management They envisage this role as being filled by a mediatorsynthesizer an objective and knowledgeable third party who can cope with inputs from both sci-entifictechnical and industry stakeholders Noting the generic and basic nature of the skill set needed for this role along with the considerable breadth of interest and talents required to span community facilitation fisher lore survey design assess-ment and management Prince (2003ab) termed this role the ldquobarefoot ecologistrdquo after the Chinese ldquobarefoot doctorrdquo programs that did so much to raise the standard of community health in China during the 1950s suggesting that as with the Chinese barefoot doctor program barefoot ecologists should where possible be drawn from the fishing communities to which they would return to work The essence of this role should be to act as a change agent building human capacity (Berkes et al 2001) and social capital (Dietz et al 2003) empowering fishing communities to monitor and manage themselves (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003ab) In relation to the current role of outside experts in the Chilean caleta system Gonzalez et al (2006) suggested revamping the system to provide incentives so that new forms of technicalscien-tific assistance are developed that more closely approximate the concept of barefoot ecologists

The Use of Fisher KnowledgemdashThe barefoot ecologist will inevitably have a pressing need for information (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) about the basic distributional and life-history data needed for initial parameterization of assessment models the ongoing time series data needed to monitor trends and the social fea-tures in the community that will determine how management evolves Some of the most important techniques in the barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox will therefore pertain to the gathering of information

In any local situation the major repository of information is the fishers themselves and the use of fisher knowledge is perhaps the most important tool of the barefoot ecologist (Johannes 1982 Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a) Like the fish themselves however such information is never distributed randomly through the fishing com-munity so random sampling followed by rigorous statistical analysis of data can yield highly variable and misleading results (Neis et al 1999 Johannes and Yeeting 2000) 80 of the fish are generally caught by 20 of the fishers and not without reason Not all fishers are valuable sources of information the best are also often the most knowledgeable and seeking out those who enjoy a high reputation among their own people is worthwhile (Johannes 1981b) Johannes recommended finding people of high reputation and keeping the interviews flexible (ldquodeliberately unstructuredrdquo) so that informants themselves can bring up topics they consider important rather than just being channeled to what the researcher thinks will be important (Johannes and Yeeting 2000) Neis et al (1999) calls this approach of using interviews to iden-tify the local experts ldquosnowball samplingrdquo because the referral process ldquogenerates an ever-increasing setrdquo of interviewees In the way Johannes (1981a) practiced the approach however it is probably better referred to as the ldquokernelrdquo approach whereby many of the interviews serve only to identify those the fishing community regards as the local experts and these few remarkable individuals then form the kernel of the process from which most of the information is gained

From my own experience a key point to be remembered in collecting and using fisher knowledge is to distinguish clearly between what has been observed and the inferences drawn from those observations The best fishers are invariably powerful

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 205

observers and very successfully use the patterns of behavior they observe to predict where when and how to fish and this ability can invariably be trusted In contrast the mechanism inferred as having given rise to the observation can often be flawed Johannes and Neis (2007) provided a nice example describing how fishers in Belize told Johannes and other researchers where whale sharks (Rhincodon typus Smith) were spawning When they went to investigate these claims they were able to docu-ment for the first time whale sharks feeding on clouds of spawn produced by large ag-gregations of snapper (Heyman et al 2001) Until that time scientists had not known that whale sharks could feed on such small particulate foods The key point is always to test what informants say For this purpose Johannes (1981b) recommended asking some questions to which the interviewer is already confident of the answer and using the response to test the reliability of the informant

Fishing for KnowledgemdashFisher knowledge is particularly useful for learning about behavior and biology mapping out distributions over space and time describ-ing stock structures and describing broad changes in catch and catch rate and in species and size composition trends over time and space On the other hand any barefoot ecologist wishing to assess the status of a local resource is likely to want to establish some means of gathering more quantitative time-series data as a means of monitoring abundance over time in order to work toward at least a semiquantitative assessment to support future management decisions Again local fishing communi-ties should be considered essential to achieving such aims

Many fishermen gather their own data in order to study patterns they observe and will readily engage with formal monitoring systems if they take ownership of those systems Two of the dividends from secure property rights are that having been saved from the ldquorace to fishrdquo fishermen have both the incentive to participate in data collection and a level of ldquosparerdquo vessel and personal time that in the right setting can be direct toward data gathering Working with motivated fishermen to understand the fishing techniques they employ can often reveal ways in which for few additional resources valuable long-term spatially explicit indices of abundance can be gathered In particular if fishermen will take the trouble to measure at least a few individual animals on each fishing trip and undertake to provide positional and supplemental data sophisticated size-based indices of abundance can be developed for little additional work and minimal expenditure

Two examples illustrate what is possible In the case of the southern shark fishery in southern Australia 80 of the gill-net fishing occurs in about 18 of the available fishing grounds The fishers suggested that they could measure every fish and shark caught in the first shot of each trip generally a low-catch-rate shot placed fairly blind-ly into a known productive ground The fisher observes the catch composition of the first shot and decides where to move the net so that the catch composition might be optimized during the rest of the fishing trip For the cost of about AUD$30000 this program can gather data that cost approximately AUD$500000 to gather through government research surveys In the case of the South Australian lobster fishery de-scribed by Walters et al (1998) fishermen started by voluntarily agreeing to tag one pot in their 40- to 80-pot allocation and measuring all the lobsters in that pot each day Later the fisheries agency temporarily allowed the fishermen participating in research to fish with an extra pot above their legal pot allocation on the condition that they tagged and released all the lobsters caught in that extra pot This low-cost

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010206

project allowed development of spatially explicit indices of abundance based on size-structured catch rates and revealed regional differences in movement growth and exploitation rates

Dataless Management and a Broader Definition of DatamdashUndoubtedly in some fisheries the prospect for gathering even limited quantitative data will be al-ways be elusive In such truly dataless fisheries the types of techniques that Johannes (1998b) called ldquodatalessrdquo must be developed and applied As Johannes pointed out managing without data does not mean managing without knowledge as even in the remotest unresearched areas the information baseline is by no means zero Sim-ilarly Orensanz et al (2005) recommended broadening our definition of data and noted that a broad base of spatially explicit qualitative data can often be more useful than a few precise but spatially inexplicit quantitative data Even when no quantita-tive data exist combining the knowledge of fishers with the generalized knowledge of fisheries experts can result in powerful ldquorules of thumbrdquo and ldquorapid appraisalrdquo techniques through which diagnoses can be made allowing management to pro-ceed through a common-sense approach (Johannes 1998b Berkes et al 2001) Most marine-resource experts (scientists and fishers) have learned how to make rapid vi-sual assessment of catches and situations (Berkes et al 2001) For example in coral reef management a green reef flat indicates that algae are overgrowing the corals suggesting that reef gleaning is depleting populations of grazing invertebrates In a fishery where adults and juveniles can be recognized visually through size color or morphology catches or populations composed almost entirely of juveniles indicate a risk of growth and recruitment overfishing

Simple Decision Rules and Clear Management ObjectivesmdashMoving away from complete reliance on quantitative data toward using qualitative information does obviously force changes in the approach to assessment and management A broad realization is growing that while the problem of overfishing intensifies (Mul-lon et al 2005) many of the sophisticated approaches being developed to address overfishing including harvest policies and quota systems are being designed to re-quire scientific knowledge data and model structures beyond the capability of most fisheries (Walters and Pearse 1996 Cochrane 1999) In dealing with paucity of data and the spatial complexity that often exacerbates it the need arises to reevaluate the overreliance on complex data-intensive stock-assessment models In their six-point solution for S-fisheries (Table 1) Orensanz et al (2005) include the ldquouse of simple feedback decision rules driven by data as opposed to mediated by assessment mod-els to adjust harvest regulations in response to monitoring indicesrdquo Echoing the call of Ostrom (2007) to develop diagnostic approaches we must develop simpler proce-dures based on simple indicators collected directly from the catch

Conserving Local Levels of Spawning BiomassmdashFisheries management can have many objectives and be gauged against many reference points (Berkes et al 2001) but Johannes (1998b) suggests that the simple objective of dataless man-agement should be conserving precautionary levels of spawning biomass My own experience leads me to support Johannesrsquo suggestion strongly for a number of rea-sons First the objective of conserving spawning potential is easily understood and naturally supported by fishers because obviously ldquowithout breeders there can be no youngrdquo Second in the case of fisheries truly without data the objective is relatively

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 207

easily translated into simple management prescriptions for preserving local levels of spawning biomass such as banning the fishing of spawning aggregations or leaving abalone and trochus shells on reef tops to age (and breed) for several years before harvesting Third reducing fishing pressure so that exploited species are allowed several years of adult reproduction commonly produces significant gains in yield per recruit for a fishery and can provide rapid positive reinforcement for fishing com-munities fostering a culture of proactive management Fourth where rudimentary forms of data exist assessing levels of spawning-potential ratio (SPR) the ratio of spawning per recruit for the fished population to the spawning per recruit in an unfished population (Mace and Sissenwine 1993 Walters and Martell 2004) com-bined with rudimentary indices of abundance can provide a relatively simple and robust form of assessment and the basis for simple harvest strategies and decision rules (Berkes et al 2001)

Orensanz et al (2005) raise a valid concern about the ldquotragedy of the larval com-monsrdquo in which upstream sources of larvae are depleted to the detriment of down-stream sink populations Their concern is that incentives for conserving resources within a TURF may be weakened by the constant replenishment of a locally overex-ploited stock from outside sources (Orensanz et al 2005) but this difficulty should be avoided by universal adoption of a strategy under which local fishers preserve conservative levels of spawning in all local populations If the default assumption is changed to one of localized recruitment and conservative levels of spawning (40ndash50) are maintained in each component population within a metapopulation normal patterns of flow of individuals through the metapopulations can reasonably be assumed to continue and the distinction between sources and sinks will become less obvious

A Generic Software ToolboxmdashInspired by watching the way practitioners of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshops (Holling 1978 Walters 1986) have used a software toolbox to analyze resources as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Western Australian rock lobster fishery and building on the idea that the technical needs of spatially complex fisheries are generic Prince (2003ab) proposed that barefoot ecologists should be armed with a generic toolbox in the form of a laptop computer equipped with the software they need for any situa-tion This suggestion has also been made by others working on this issue (eg Berkes et al 2001)

The preceding discussion and supporting literature indicate the basic functions required of such software (1) mapping of fishing grounds catch effort size and patterns of SPR (2) a database for capturing storing and accessing spatially explic-it time-series data catch area swept effort size growth and breeding studies (3) modeling and assessment routines (4) a highly graphic user interface for visualizing and translating assessments analyses and simulations for stakeholders managers and researchers (5) remote access to the global literature so that default parameter estimates are always available from similar species elsewhere in the world (Berkes et al 2001)

Visualization of the results of resource modeling has tended to be neglected Models with easy-to-use and understandable graphical output are rare because resource modelers and biologists internally visualize much of their own analysis and have little personal need to represent their data visually (Walters et al 1998) but

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010208

where engaging the understanding and enthusiasm of local stakeholders is critical (Berkes et al 2001) the power of visualization should not be ignored (Sluczanowski et al 1992) Moving color pictures provide a powerful form of data compression Previous applications have demonstrated that presenting population dynamics in interactive moving color graphics makes complicated stock assessment immediately intelligible (Sluczanowski 1994 Sluczanowski and Prince 1994 Walters et al 1998) With reference to one such application Walters et al (1998 383) noted that fishers participating in the workshops ldquowere quick to appreciate how the data they collected were used to develop an understanding of such complex and dynamics systems The power of this type of graphical interface for communicating results was clearly obvious to every biologist in attendancerdquo

The vision is to develop the toolbox software as an open-source project and to train barefoot ecologists in the use of the same standard generic piece of software Then paralleling the process described by Berkes et al (2001) each time a barefoot ecolo-gist engages with a new marine resource the process of developing a new adaptation of the software is the same (1) Mine the international literature for what is known about parallel resources (2) Find and talk to the best local fishers (3) Use all avail-able knowledge and proxy parameters from the global literature to fill the gaps in the data needed to adapt the software locally and produce an interactive moving color graphic depiction of the local resource (4) Use the visualization to facilitate discus-sion and learning in stakeholder workshops cement understanding of resource pro-cesses and work to galvanize group action (5) Set up information-gathering systems and start accumulating time-series information (6) Discuss local management and develop understandable and supportable decision rules for using new information that becomes available through cooperative information gathering

Each local installation of the software would stay permanently in place belonging to the local fishers rather than to the barefoot ecologist The software would contain maps showing their stocks and survey systems complementary sheets for entering the fishery and survey data collected by the fishers and the latest fitting of the model accessible as an interactive visual computer simulator Over time with the accumu-lation of reliable time-series data models of the resource could become more so-phisticated and accurate and simulations of future stock levels should become more reliable Sluczanowski (1993) saw each local adaption of the software as becoming highly valued by stakeholders over time as their data accumulate and as simulations of catches and cash flow become more accurate In effect the locally adapted software is left in place to become the ledger for the communitiesrsquo businessmdashfish stock ac-counts (Sluczanowski 1993)

In this way approaching the issue of fine-scale complex fisheries as a generic issue might turn the sheer magnitude of the task before us from a weakness into a strength (Fig 2) The case study that follows illustrates how simple decision rules (Orensanz et al 2005) or diagnostic approaches (Ostrom 2007) can be applied to simple forms of spatially explicit information collected by fishers It also illustrates how engag-ing fishing communities in their own structured processes of local assessment can lead to improved management without rigorous quantitative assessments and to im-proved collection of spatially explicit data without increased research budgets

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 209

A Case Study

The Reef Scale Assessment of Australian Abalone Stocks

The Australian abalone fisheries are managed across the jurisdictions of five sep-arate states (New South Wales Victoria Tasmania South Australia and Western Australia) Each jurisdiction supports several regional fisheries known as zones each of which comprises several hundred kilometers of coastline Across states and zones management regulations have evolved along parallel paths over four decades as described by Prince and Shepherd (1992) Generally 15ndash40 divers share access to several hundred kilometers of coastline in filling their ITQs while observing some zonal legal minimum length regulations Under the existing Victorian Abalone Fish-ery Management Plan (Fisheries Victoria 2002) fisheries assessments are conducted annually by an Abalone Fishery Assessment Group This group includes participants from all major stakeholder entities A keystone of the regional assessment process is the prescribed use of a quantitative fisheries model of each zone to estimate the risk of reducing abalone biomass below zone-specific reference values corresponding to alternate levels of harvest (Gorfine et al 2001) The Abalone Fisheries Committee a subcommittee of the Fisheries Co-management Council is charged with using these results from formal Abalone Fishery Assessment Group workshops to formulate in-dependent advice about future zonal total allowable commercial catches (TACCs) that is communicated through the comanagement council to the Minister for Pri-mary Industries (Fisheries Victoria 2002) Ultimately the minister uses this advice in determining the annual TACC for each zone

The ecology of abalone has important implications for their assessment and man-agement (Prince 2004 2005) The small scale of the self-recruiting populations and the differences among populations of size at maturity make assessment and man-agement extremely complex Zonal minimum lengths and TACCs fail to protect component populations with relatively larger sizes at maturity so these populations may experience localized recruitment overfishing Conversely nearby abalone pop-

Figure 2 Schematic of the suggested solution to the problems of assessing and managing small-scale spatially complex fisheries Reproduced from Prince (2003a)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010210

ulations with relatively smaller sizes at maturity might remain virtually unfished The need for more spatially explicit assessment and management of abalone fisheries was identified more than a decade ago (Prince and Shepherd 1992 McShane 1995 Prince et al 1998) but attempts to model the fishery at reef scales have been im-peded by the lack of sufficient detailed spatial data

Since 2001 an industry initiative has been developing an alternative approach to assessing and managing this spatially complex fishery that uses principles of rapid visual assessment (RVA) decision rules and harvest policies (Prince et al 2008) The approach is novel in its use of qualitative morphometric markers (shell shape and appearance) to gauge fishing pressure at the scale of abalone reefs and because the local industry associations assess component populations and form and implement prescribed reef-scale harvest policies Harvest policies are being implemented with reef-scale voluntary minimum length limits and voluntary capping of catches from reef-scale areas so as to distribute the TACC set by government regulation for broad regions of the fishery In a reversal of the normal ldquotop-downrdquo approach to manage-ment this process of reef assessment by industry is increasingly being used to inform the fisheries agency of the state government during the process of setting regional TACCs

Central to the RVA technique is the proposition that the relative maturity of aba-lone can be gauged visually by the shape and appearance of their shells The use of shape and appearance in fisheries assessment and management is not entirely novel Morphometrics are used to distinguish between finfish stocks (Begg et al 1999 Swain and Foote 1999 Cadrin and Silva 2005) and Hickey (2007) records that vil-lagers in Vanuatu place taboos on picking turbo shells (Turbo spp) without encrust-ing growth as a way of protecting immature shells from collection Juvenile abalone live cryptically in the interstitial spaces within reefs and as subadults they emerge to join adult feeding and breeding aggregations on the surface of the reef (Prince et al 1988) Maturity and timing of emergence from the cryptic juvenile habitat are prin-cipally determined by age rather than size (Shepherd and Laws 1974 McShane 1991 Nash 1992) and predictable changes in the shape and appearance of abalone shells coincide with these processes (Prince et al 2008) Juvenile growth is primarily in shell length rather than weight Before maturity because juveniles remain wedged in dark interstitial reef spaces little if any epibiota colonizes the surfaces of their shells Thus juveniles and newly emerged maturing abalone can be recognized by shells that are flat oval and relatively clean of epibiotic growth In subadults linear growth slows while rapid growth in total weight continues Shells both widen relative to their length and become relatively deeper taking on an increasingly bowl-like shape (Fig 3) The result is an increase in both the ratio of width to length (Worthington et al 1995 Worthington and Andrew 1998) and that of height to length (Saunders et al 2008) On the surface of the reef as the abalone mature their shells become covered with the epibiota typical of the reef as they approach their maximum potential SPR

Rapid Visual Assessment of Abalone ReefsmdashRecognizing the coincidence between emergence and sexual maturity in abalone and understanding how shell shape changes with maturity and emergent living provide a powerful if somewhat crude tool for gauging the status of abalone populations and developing reef-scale harvest policies (Fig 3) Taken at its simplest the RVA technique and the associated reef-scale harvest policies are concerned with identifying populations that consist

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 211

almost entirely of abalone with clean flat oval shells which are predicted to have low SPR and to be at risk of growth and recruitment overfishing The objective is to manage each population in a way that moves it toward consisting principally of in-dividuals with rounded domed fouled shells which because they are approaching the asymptotic length of the population are likely to have produced approximately 50 SPR a biological reference point recommended for abalone by Shepherd and Baker (1998) which should preserve conservative levels of reproductive capacity This objective of RVA is still based on a relatively qualitative understanding of aba-lone stock-recruitment relationships growth and morphology but the approach is stimulating a body of research aimed at testing and refining the quantitative basis of the approach (eg Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) In practice the objective of RVA gains strong support from the abalone divers in each new area to which it is introduced because they benefit from a rapid gain in yield per recruit when management moves a reef from carrying mainly abalone with clean flat oval

Figure 3 An illustration of the principles underlying the rapid visual assessment of abalone aba-lone with low fecundity are identified by their flat oval shells which tend to be free of encrusting growths whereas fully mature abalone with high fecundity have deeper rounder shells which tend to be covered with encrusting growths similar to those on the reefs where they live Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010212

shells to one carrying large numbers of rounded domed fouled shells (Prince et al 2008)

By means of the principles of RVA any abalone population can be assessed visually through the examination of shells or more remotely by extension through commer-cial diversrsquo knowledge Abalone shells from a reef can be sampled from commercial catches or inspected in situ and examined with regard to three primary metrics First the size of maturity and emergence can be ascertained from measurements of individuals with clean flat shells Next the size of full maturity and approximately 50 SPR can be gauged from measurements of individuals with rounded bowl-like shells and surface fouling like that on the reef top Third the overall size distribution of the sample can be gauged relative to the size of first maturity 50 SPR and the legal minimum lengths With the RVA technique and the input of divers 100s of ki-lometers of abalone-carrying shoreline can be rapidly assessed over 5ndash10 d of inter-views or during several days of reef-assessment workshops facilitated by the decision tree in Figure 4 Divers who depend on their powers of observation and memory of reefs to fish efficiently readily learn the shell features used to appraise reefs We have also found that teaching the underlying principles to abalone divers is extremely ef-fective in motivating them to engage with the process of reef-scale management

The Reef Assessment Decision TreemdashThe logic underpinning the process of RVA has been codified into a decision tree (Fig 4) for use during reef-assessment workshops attended by quota owners and divers of a management zone The use of the decision tree has facilitated discussions and made the decision-making process more transparent thus increasing the communal support required for industry as-sociations to initiate voluntary action at reef scales The decision tree is used to place every reef into one of eight exploitation categories each of which has an associated

Figure 4 Decision tree for abalone used in reef-assessment workshops to apply rapid visual as-sessment principles in the development of management plans for individual abalone reefs Repro-duced from Prince et al (2008)

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 213

preagreed harvest policy The primary indicators used to assess the reefs are reef-scale effort and catch trends over the previous 5ndash15 yrs and the appearance of the abalone shells either on the reef or in the catch In practice sufficiently fine-scale ef-fort and catch data are not always available but we have found that groups of divers can reliably provide qualitative reports on whether effort and catch trends on a reef have been rising falling or stable The first two levels of decision are based entirely on effort or catch trends (Fig 4) First trends are identified as either unstable or stable At the second level stable trends are classified as either comparatively low or comparatively high and unstable trends as declining or rising Shell appearance is then used to distinguish population status further (Fig 4)

Development of the Reef Assessment ProcessmdashThe reef assessment work-shops began in 2002 when first the Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA the industry association for the Victorian Western Zone) and then in 2004 the in-dustry association (VADA) of the adjacent Central Zone engaged an ldquoexternal change agentrdquo to develop with them the basic methodology and then initiated a process of reef assessment and management using the decision tree described above (Prince et al 2008) The associations now hold two reef-assessment workshops each year to assess data from the previously finished year and to reassess reefs and prepare reef-scale harvesting plans The associations use the workshops to agree on voluntary size limits and catch levels for each reef so that the total allowable catch is distributed op-timally around their zone rather than focused on particular reefs To help facilitate the associationsrsquo self-management processes Fisheries Victoria has adapted their quota-reporting system so that it operates in real time As divers land and weigh their daily catches they use mobile telephones to report the weight from each reef to an automated system The progressive catch total for each reef then becomes im-mediately available on a Fisheries Victoria website Divers and the executive office of the industry associations can track progressive daily catches to guide selection of future diving locations The executive officers consult their executive committees when voluntary catch caps are reached on any reef and divers are notified by e-mail and telephone when the associations voluntarily close reefs

In recent years both WADA and VADA have concluded that zonal assessment models are overoptimistic and have requested and been given TACCs 24 and 19 respectively lower than those supported by the zonal models Both zones have used the catch reductions to implement temporary closures or substantially lower catches from specific reefs that their reef-assessment processes have identified as being of most concern

In July 2005 Australiarsquos federal government principal fisheries RampD fund granted four years of funding for continuing reef-assessment workshops with WADA and VADA and extended them to three additional zonal abalone associations the final zone of Victoria the New South Wales industry association and the South Austra-lian Central Zone association Almost all the other regional abalone industry as-sociations across Australia have also expressed interest in applying the approach Because the approach is still based on a largely qualitative understanding of abalone fisheries biology several quantitative studies have also been supported by funding bodies with the aim of testing and refining it To date the results of these studies confirm the basic validity and effectiveness of the approach (Saunders et al 2008 Saunders and Mayfield 2008) Before this quantitative confirmation of the approach

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010214

the support of collaborating agency scientists and managers had still been growing because of the increased understanding they themselves had developed through the reef-assessment workshops The access to the detailed spatial knowledge of the divers afforded by the workshops has enabled them to understand the resource more clearly and to become more confident of local assessment and management outcomes than they are of the regional quantitative assessments On the strength of the broad in-dustry interest in the approach Australiarsquos main funding body has indicated that it is prepared to continue funding the development and extension of the approach over decade-long time frames and has requested assistance in incorporating the approach into its broader RampD strategy

By engaging industry directly this approach to assessing and managing a spatially complex fishery is starting to overcome limitations on data collection Invariably as new industry groups engage with the principles underlying the RVA of reefs and be-gin making decisions at the scale of reefs based on whatever data are available they become increasingly interested in gathering better spatially explicit catch and size information for themselves Generally each group starts deeply antagonistic to col-lecting spatially explicit data because of their natural resistance to close monitoring but in the course of the process they become increasingly supportive of gathering data for their own use and move to initiate data-gathering programs This growing interest has promoted development and deployment of technologies that incorporate global positioning systems into collection of spatially explicit size catch and effort data In the Western Zone of Victoria WADA is now collecting a GPS position time stamp and size for every abalone taken and VADA one of whose members devel-oped the measuring machine began deploying the machines in 2002 on a voluntary basis with a subset of divers and collected its millionth measurement in 2007 To support this voluntary program VADA gives a carton of beer to divers and their deckhands in return for every 10000 data records

In its current form the abalone decision tree and the RVA of an abalone reef are basically qualitative or semiquantitative at best Some might argue that a more quan-titative approach is preferable and ask about species that do not present the handy visual markers used for abalone Where the fishers can be engaged in collecting size catch and effort data relatively simple assessment-decision trees can be constructed to adjust local catches incrementally until local targets based on SPR and relative abundance are achieved (Campbell et al 2007) Multiple assessments of this nature across a metapopulation could provide the basis of a scale-less stock assessment and inform local fishing communities about the exploitation rates being experienced by local resources

Conclusions

Recognition is growing that fine-scale spatially complex fisheries resources present a particular challenge to the centralized top-down model of assessment and manage-ment (Berkes et al 2001 Johannes 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005 Prince 2005) A tyranny of scale results from the implicit scale and cost of the top-down processes of central government which cannot be simply resized to address the complexity small scale low unit value and overwhelming number of compo-nent populations that comprise these resources (Prince 2003a 2005) Recognizing the misfit between institutional and ecological scales is a necessary first step toward

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 215

addressing this issue but the solution involves redesigning our model for data col-lection assessment and management (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a 2005) Ex-amination of the literature on this topic reveals that international experience with alternative management systems has produced a convergence of thinking about the solutions to this issue Central to the solution are governance systems that confer se-cure exclusive access rights on fishers (Johannes 1982 1984 Ostrom 1990 Ostrom et al 1999 Berkes et al 2001 Charles 2001 Dietz et al 2003 Hilborn et al 2004 Orensanz et al 2005) and therefore give them strong incentives to exercise steward-ship over their resources and to engage with processes of data collection assessment and management commonly thought of as the responsibility of central government (Berkes et al 2001 Prince 2003a Orensanz et al 2005) Spatially explicit forms of access rights such as TURFs seem particularly apposite for fostering stewardship of small spatially complex fisheries

Here I have argued that the next part of the solution is to recognize that the needs of small-scale spatially complex fish stocks are generic and that a generic ap-proach should be developed for local adaptation to each resource The generic ap-proach proposed revolves around the use of barefoot ecologists extension workers or change agents trained to work with both the social and biological dimensions of each resource to create social capital and empower local fishers to collect data and to make their own assessments and management plans To accomplish these tasks barefoot ecologists must be equipped with a generic set of skills and a toolbox An essential skill is the collection and use of fisher knowledge as exemplified by the body of Johannesrsquos work cited above This skill together with a level of ecological ldquocommon senserdquo can provide the basis for both an initial assessment of a resource and the design of simple data-collection and decision-making systems Incorporat-ing Johannesrsquos (1998b) ideas for dataless management and Orensanz et alrsquos (2005) recommendation to use simple data-driven decision rules I recommend adopting the default assumption that recruitment is localized until proven otherwise and de-signing simple harvest strategies and decision rules based on conserving local levels of spawning biomass

Acknowledgments

I thank the steering committee of the Seventh Florida State University William R and Lenore Mote International Symposium for their generous invitation to present this paper My gratitude also goes to C J Walters for many years of tuition inspiration and mentoring in addition to his constructive critique of this manuscript Thanks also to F Berkes for extremely helpful comments and directions

Literature Cited

Almanny G R M L Berumen S R Thorrold S Planes and G P Jones 2007 Local replen-ishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve Science 316 742ndash743

Begg G A J E Hare and D D Sheehan 1999 The role of life history parameters as indicators of stock structure Fish Res (Amst) 43 141ndash163

Berkes F R Mahon P McConney R C Pollnac and R S Pomeroy 2001 Managing small-scale fisheries alternative directions and methods International Development Research Centre Ottawa 309 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010216

Cadrin S X and V M Silva 2005 Morphometric variation of yellowfin flounder J Mar Sci 62 683ndash694

Campbell R J Prince C Davies D Kolody N Dowling M Basson P Ward K McLoughlin I Freeman and A Bodsworth 2007 Development of an empirical-indicator based harvest strategy for the Australian eastern tuna and billfish fishery Working Paper ME-SWGWP-4 presented to the 3rd meeting of the WCPFC Scientific Committee Honolulu 13ndash24 August 2007

Castilla J C P Manriquez J Alvarado A Rosson C Pino C Espoacutez R Soto D Oliva and O Defeo 1998 Artisanal ldquocaletasrdquo as units of production and co-managers of benthic inverte-brates in Chile Pages 407ndash413 in G S Jamieson and A Campbell eds Proc North Pacific Symp Invertebrate Stock Assessment and Management Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 125

Charles A T 2001 Sustainable fishery systems Blackwell Science Malden 370 pChristy F T Jr 1982 Territorial use rights in marine fisheries definitions and conditions FAO

Fish Tech Paper 227 FAO RomeCochrane K L 1999 Complexity in fisheries and limitations in the increasing complexity of

fisheries management ICES J Mar Sci 56 917ndash926Costello C S D Gaines and J Lynham 2008 Can catch shares prevent fisheries collapse

Science 321 1678ndash1681Dietz T E Ostrom and P C Stern 2003 The struggle to govern the commons Science 302

1907ndash1912Fisheries Victoria 2002 Abalone Management Plan Fisheries Victoria East Melbourne 66 pFolke C L Pritchard F Berkes J Colding and U Svedin 2007 The problem of fit between

ecosystems and institutions ten years later Ecol Soc 12 30Gonzalez J W Stotz J Garrido J M Orensanz A M Parma and A Zuleta 2006 The Chil-

ean TURF system how is it performing in the case of the loco fishery Bull Mar Sci 78 499ndash527

Gorfine H K B L Taylor and T I Walker 2001 Triggers and targets what are we aiming for with abalone fisheries models in Australia J Shellfish Res 20 803ndash811

Gulland J A 1969 Manual of methods for fish stock assessment Part 1 Fish population analy-sis FAO manual of fisheries science 4 FAO Rome 154 p

Heyman W D R T Graham B Kjerfve and R E Johannes 2001 Whale sharks Rhincodon typus aggregate to feed on fish spawn in Belize Mar Ecol Prog Ser 215 275ndash282

Hickey F R 2007 Traditional marine resource management in Vanuatu worldviews in trans-formation Pages 147ndash168 in N Haggan B Neis and I G Baird eds Fishersrsquo knowledge in fisheries science and management Coastal management sourcebooks 4 UNESCO Publish-ing Paris

Hilborn R J M Orensanz and A M Parma 2005 Institutions incentives and the future of fisheries Phil Trans R Soc B 360 47ndash57

_________ A E Punt and J M Orensanz 2004 Beyond band-aids in fisheries management fixing world fisheries Bull Mar Sci 74 493ndash507

Holling C S (ed) 1978 Adaptive environmental assessment and management Wiley Inter-national Series on Applied Systems Analysis Vol 3 Wiley Chichester 377 p

Jentoft S 2000 The community a missing link of fisheries management Mar Policy 24 53ndash59Johannes R E 1978 Traditional marine conservation methods in Oceania and their demise

Ann Rev Ecol Syst 9 349ndash364____________ 1981a Words of the lagoon fishing and marine lore in the Palau District of

Micronesia Univ California Press Berkeley 245 p____________ 1981b Working with fishermen to improve coastal tropical fisheries and re-

source management Bull Mar Sci 31 673ndash680____________ 1982 Traditional conservation methods and protected marine areas in Ocea-

nia Ambio 11 258ndash261

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 217

____________ 1984 Marine conservation in relation to traditional life-styles of tropical arti-sanal fishermen Environmentalist 4(suppl 7) 30ndash35

____________ 1994 Design of tropical nearshore fisheries extension work beyond the 1990s Pages 162ndash174 in R South D Goulet S Tuquiri and M Church eds Traditional marine tenure and sustainable management of marine resources in Asia and the Pacific Interna-tional Ocean InstitutemdashUniv South Pacific Suva Fiji

____________ 1998a Government-supported village based management of marine resources in Vanuatu Ocean Coast Manage 40 165ndash186

____________ 1998b The case for data-less marine resource management examples from tropical nearshore finfisheries Trends Ecol Evol 13 243ndash246

____________ 2002 The renaissance of community-based marine resource management in Oceania Ann Rev Ecol Syst 33 317ndash340

____________ 2003 Fishers knowledge and management differing fundamentals in artisanal and industrial fisheries Pages 15ndash19 in N Haggan B C Brignall and L Woods eds Put-ting fishersrsquo knowledge to work conference proceedings Fisheries Centre Univ British Columbia Vancouver

____________ and B Neis 2007 The value of anecdote Pages 41ndash58 in N Haggan B Neis and I G Baird eds Fishersrsquo knowledge in fisheries science and management Coastal manage-ment sourcebooks 4 UNESCO Publishing Paris

____________ and B Yeeting 2000 I-Kiribati knowledge and management of Tarawarsquos lagoon resources Atoll Research Bulletin No 489 Washington DC Smithsonian Institute 24 p

Larkin P A 1997 The costs of fisheries management information and fisheries research Pages 713ndash718 in D A Hancock D C Smith A Grant and J P Beumer eds Developing and sustaining world fisheries resources the state of science and management Proc Second World Fisheries Congress Brisbane JulyndashAugust 1996 CSIRO Publishing Melbourne

Lee K N 1993 Greed scale mismatch and learning Ecol Appl 3 560ndash564Mace P and M Sissenwine 1993 How much spawning per recruit is necessary Pages 101ndash

118 in S Smith J Hunt and D Rivard eds Risk evaluation and biological reference points for fisheries management Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 120

Macfadyen G P Cacaud and B Kuemlangan 2005 Policy and legislative frameworks for co-management APFIC Regional Workshop on ldquoMainstreamingrdquo Fisheries Co-management in Asia Pacific Siem Reap Cambodia 9ndash12 August 2005

McShane P E 1991 Exploitation models and catch statistics of the Victorian fishery for aba-lone Haliotis rubra Fish Bull (Amst) 90 139ndash146

____________ 1995 Recruitment variation in abalone its importance to fisheries manage-ment Mar Freshw Res 46 555ndash570

Makino M and H Matsuda 2005 Co-management in Japanese coastal fisheries institutional features and transaction costs Mar Policy 29 441ndash450

Mullon C P Freon and P Cury 2005 The dynamics of collapse in world fisheries Fish Fish 6 111ndash120

Nash W J 1992 An evaluation of egg-per-recruit analysis as a means of assessing size limits for blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra) in Tasmania Pages 318ndash338 in S A Shepherd M J Tegner and S A Guzmaacuten del Proacuteo eds Abalone of the world biology fisheries and cul-ture Fishing News Books Blackwell Scientific Publications Cambridge UK

Neis B D C Schneider L F Felt R L Haedrich J Fischer and J A Hutchings 1999 Fisher-ies assessment what can be learned from interviewing resource users Can J Fish Aquat Sci 56 1949ndash1963

Orensanz J M A M Parma G Jerez N Barahona M Montecinos and I Elias 2005 What are the key elements for the sustainability of ldquoS-fisheriesrdquo Insights from South America Bull Mar Sci 76527ndash556

Ostrom E 1990 Governing the commons the evolution of institutions for collective action Cambridge Univ Press Cambridge UK 280 p

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE VOL 86 NO 2 2010218

_________ 2007 A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104 15181ndash15187

_________ J Burger C B Field R B Norgaard and D Policansky 1999 Revisiting the com-mons local lessons global challenges Science 284 278ndash282

Pomeroy R S B M Katon and I Harkes 2001 Conditions affecting the success of fisheries co-management lessons from Asia Mar Policy 25 197ndash208

Prince J D 2003a The barefoot ecologist goes fishing Fish Fish 4 359ndash371_________ 2003b The barefoot ecologistrsquos toolbox Pages 401ndash408 in N Haggan B C Brig-

nall and L Woods eds Putting fishersrsquo knowledge to work conference proceedings Fish-eries Centre Univ British Columbia Vancouver

_________ 2004 The decline of global abalone (genus Haliotis) production in the late twenti-eth century is there a future Pages 427ndash443 in K M Leber S Kitada H L Blankenship and T Svasand eds Stock enhancement and sea ranching developments pitfalls and op-portunities Blackwell Oxford

_________ 2005 Combating the tyranny of scale for haliotids micro-management for micro-stocks Bull Mar Sci 72 557ndash577

_________ and S A Shepherd 1992 Australian fisheries for abalone and their management Pages 407ndash426 in S A Shepherd M J Tegner and S A Guzmaacuten del Proacuteo eds Abalone of the world biology fisheries and culture Fishing News Books Blackwell Scientific Publica-tions Cambridge UK

_________ H Peeters H Gorfine and R W Day 2008 The novel use of harvest policies and rapid visual assessment to manage spatially complex abalone resources (genus Haliotis) Fish Res (Amst) 94 330ndash338

_________ T L Sellers W B Ford and R Talbot 1988 Recruitment growth mortality and population structure in a southern Australian population of Haliotis rubra (genus Haliotis Mollusca Gastropoda) Mar Biol 100 75ndash82

_________ C Walters R J Ruiz-Avila and P Sluczanowski 1998 Territorial userrsquos rights in the Australian abalone fishery Pages 367ndash375 in G S Jamieson and A Campbell eds Proc North Pacific Symp Invertebrate Stock Assessment and Management Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 125

Ruddle K 2007 The collected works of R E Johannes publications on marine traditional knowledge and management International Resources Management Institute Study 2 Suites 1-3 16F Kinwick Centre 32 Hollywood Road Central Hong Kong 311 p

_________ E Hviding and R E Johannes 1992 Marine resource management in the context of customary tenure Mar Resour Econ 7 249ndash273

Satria A 2007 Sawen institution local knowledge and myth in fisheries management in North Lombok Indonesia Pages 199ndash220 in N Haggan B Neis and I G Baird eds Fish-ersrsquo knowledge in fisheries science and management Coastal management sourcebooks 4 UNESCO Publishing Paris

Saunders T M and S S Mayfield 2008 Predicting biological variation using a simple mor-phometric marker in the sedentary marine invertebrate Haliotis rubra Mar Ecol Prog Ser 366 75ndash89

_____________ S S Mayfield and A A Hogg 2008 A simple cost-effective morphomet-ric marker for characterising abalone populations at multiple scales Mar Freshw Res 59 32ndash40

Shepherd S A and J L Baker 1998 Biological reference points in an abalone (Haliotis laevi-gata) fishery Pages 235ndash245 in G S Jamieson and A Campbell eds Proc North Pacific Symp Invertebrate Stock Assessment and Management Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 125

____________ and L D Brown 1993 What is an abalone stockmdashimplications for the role of refugia in conservation Can J Fish Aquatic Sci 50 2001ndash2009

____________ and H M Laws 1974 Studies on southern Australian abalone (genus Haliotis) II Reproduction of five species Aust J Mar Freshw Res 25 49ndash62

PRINCE RESCALING FISHERIES ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT 219

Sluczanowski P R W 1993 Fish stock accountsmdashlinking tough decisions and eff ective sci-ence Pages 40ndash43 in D A Hancock ed Population dynamics for fi sheries management Proc Australian Society for Fish Biology Workshop Perth 24ndash25 August 1993

__________________ 1994 SharkSim raising awareness Agric Syst Inf Technol 6 43ndash44__________________ and J D Prince 1994 User interface adds value to fi sheries modelmdash

ABASIM Agric Syst Inf Technol 6 44ndash46__________________ R K Lewis J D Prince and J Tonkin 1992 Interactive graphics com-

puter models for fi sheries management Pages 71ndash79 in G T Sakagawa ed Assessment methodologies and management Proc World Fisheries Congress Th eme 5 Oxford amp IBH Publishing Co PVT LTD New Delhi

Stephenson R L 1999 Stock complexity in fi sheries management a perspective of emerging issues related to population sub-units Fish Res (Amst) 43 247ndash249

Swain D P and C J Foote 1999 Stocks and chameleons the use of phenotypic variation in stock identifi cation Fish Res (Amst) 43 113ndash128

Temby N K Miller and C Mundy 2007 Evidence of genetic subdivision among populations of blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra Leach) in Tasmania Mar Freshw Res 58 733ndash742

Uchida H and J E Wilen 2004 Japanese coastal fi sheries management and institutional de-signs a descriptive analysis Pages 1ndash11 in Y Matsuda and T Yamamoto eds Proc Twelfth Biennial Conference of the International Institute for Fishery Economics and Trade Inter-national Institute for Fishery Economics and Trade Corvallis Oregon

Walters C 1986 Adaptive management of renewable resources Macmillan New York 374 p_________ and S J D Martell 2004 Fisheries ecology and management Princeton Univ Press

Princeton 399 p_________ and P H Pearse 1996 Stock information requirements for quota management sys-

tems in commercial fi sheries Rev Fish Biol Fish 6 21ndash42_________ J Prescott R McGarvey and J Prince 1998 Management options for the South

Australian rock lobster fi shery (Jasus edwardsii) fi shery a case study of co-operative assess-ment and policy design by fi shers and biologists Pages 377ndash383 in G S Jamieson and A Campbell eds Proc North Pacifi c Symp Invertebrate Stock Assessment and Management Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 125

Wilson J A 2006 Matching social and ecological systems in complex ocean fi sheries Ecol Soc 11 9

Worthington D G and N L Andrew 1998 Small-scale variation in demography and its im-plication for an alternative size limit in the fi shery for blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra) in New South Wales Australia Pages 341ndash348 in G S Jamieson and A Campbell eds Proc North Pacifi c Symp Invertebrate Stock Assessment and Management Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 125

_______________ N L Andrew and G Hamer 1995 Covariation between growth and mor-phology suggests alternative size limits for the abalone Haliotis rubra in NSW Australia Fish Bull US 93 551ndash561

Yamamoto T 1995 Development of a community-based fi shery management system in Japan Mar Resour Econ 10 21ndash34

Available Online 26 February 2010

Address Biospherics PL PO Box 168 South Fremantle Western Australia 6162 Australia E-mail ltbiosphericsozemailcomaugt