Maximum Sustained Yields from Fluctuating Environments and Mixed Stocks

Abstract

Using numerical models, effects of environmental variability upon yield were tested for six single-age fish stocks characterized by different kinds and degrees of density-dependent reproduction potential. The two levels of variability examined had extremes of yield standing in the ratios 7:1 and 18:1, respectively. Close regulation of fishing to the optimum percentage for each year's stock improves the long-term average catch taken, the improvement being the greater, the more variable the environment. With the higher level of variability, improvement in average catch among five of the stocks ranged from 26% to 79% increase. However this increase in mean catch is achieved at the expense of increased variability in catch from year to year—in fact, for some kinds of stocks there must be complete cessation of fishing in some years in order to get the long-term maximum. The yield of stocks, in which reproduction per spawner declines at low levels of abundance, is particularly improved by a close adaptation of fishing effort to the supply of fish available.When two or more populations of a species, characterized by different reproduction potentials, are fished in common, total potential catch is less than when each can be fished separately at its optimum level. If a common fishery cannot be avoided, the achievement of maximum average yield may find one of two originally-equal stocks as abundant or even more abundant than before the fishery began, while the other may persist only at a low level or even be exterminated completely.