Empirically-driven feedback management incorporating multi-scale risk assessment and an experimental framework to facilitate adaptive improvement

Currently, several approaches to FBM have been tabled to CCAMLR – Risk Assessment (RA: Constable et al. 2016), experimental fishing (EF: WS-SM-18/05) and Decision Rule approaches (DR: Watters et al. 2016), and recently a more empirical approach using a combination of fishing fleet-collected acoustic data and predator foraging information (EMP: Nor/Chil/China 2017).   Each approach has substantial merit in terms of the utility of available data. However, none currently offers a holistic solution in their own right.  In 2017, the Scientific Committee encouraged coordination among the various approaches towards developing a practical FBM approach (SC-36 para.3.23).  We present a revised approach to that which was presented by Norway, Chile and China to SC in 2017, and provide a framework for incorporating aspects of each currently tabled approaches from RA, EF, DR and EMP into potentially one that can be developed to become relatively easy and quick to operationalize.  Finally, we propose a package of work that seeks to demonstrate the practicality of its implementation that could provide CCAMLR with a “dress rehearsal” of how an interim Stage 2 FBM approach could be rolled out.