Valuing Changes in Frequency of Fish Stock Assessments

Updating stock assessments frequently and ensuring that the most recent fishery dependent and independent data is included is a costly endeavor. We use a management strategy evaluation for the mid-Atlantic summer flounder fishery to determine the economic returns to increasing update frequencies and decreasing the data management lag. We simulate the annual acceptable biological catch for the period 2015-2040 under a range of update frequencies and data lags. We calculate present value net economic benefits for the commercial and recreational fisheries for each scenario. Discounting, the timing of harvest quotas, species specific price flexibilities and fishing cost response to biomass and quota differences suggest that the benefits gained from frequent updating and reduction in data lags will vary by fishery. For summer flounder, we find the cost of more frequent updating (1 year versus 5 years), and reducing the data management lag (1 year versus 2 years), are more than compensated for by societal benefits generated by the fishery.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author