Development of a Decision Support Tool for Evaluating Fishing Creel Limits

Principal Investigator: James T. Peterson

Cooperators: Dennis Schmitt, Dave Partridge, and Jimmy Evans; Georgia Department of Natural Resources

Objective: To develop formal decision support tool for evaluating the effects of different creel and length limits a priori, (2) the relative influence of various sources of uncertainty, and (3) estimating the value of collecting additional data (e.g., monitoring).

Fisheries biologists often are faced with difficult decisions on how to satisfy the socio-economic needs of the public while maintaining or restoring properly functioning ecological systems.  Such decisions are fraught with complexity and uncertainty associated with both ecological systems and multiple fisheries management objectives and alternatives under consideration.  To aid the decision-making process, fisheries biologists need tools that formalize these complexities into a common framework consisting of relationships among management actions, sources of uncertainty, and management outcomes. Decision analysis is one such tool.

Decision analysis is the use of explicit, quantitative methods to examine the influences of various sources of uncertainty on (management) decisions. It allows fisheries biologists to examine the expected effects of different management strategies, determine the relative influence of various sources of uncertainty (e.g., variability), and estimate the value of collecting additional data (e.g., monitoring, experimentation). Additional advantages of using a decision analysis include the ability to incorporate empirical models, meta-analyses, and subjective probabilities from experts into a single model, integrate information from several disciplines, and incorporate multiple management objectives.  Thus, decision analysis provides an ideal framework for fisheries managers to create the most efficient and cost-effective strategies. This project will focus on developing prototype creel and length limit decision models for use by DNR biologists. The prototype will be used as a teaching tool for the Introduction to Decision Analysis Workshop at the annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society.

Complete a Georgia Largemouth Bass Anglers Survey

Project Status: ongoing