- Email: [email protected]
Fishery status reports 1994
ELSEVIER
Fisheries Research
28 ( 19%) 353-359
Book review
Fisheries assessment and management Methodologies and Management, Proceedings of the World Fisheries Congress, Theme 5 Sakagawa, T. Gary (Editor). Science Publishers, USA, 1995, 195 pp., &79, hard cover, ISBN 1-886106-10-X.
Assessment
Annual Report 1994-1995,
Fisheries Department of Western Australia 58 pp.
1994, McLaughlin, Kevin et al. (Editors), Bureau of Resource Sciences, Australia, 1995, 144 pp., A$20 soft cover, ISSN 1322-655X.
Fishery Status Reports
Of fisheries administration it is scarcely true that le plus $a change le plus que c’est la meme chose. In my young days a fisheries department report, while giving an account of personnel changes in the department and some statistics of catches taken, devoted most space to long lists of infringements of regulations by fishermen and of fishing gears seized. Its modem counterpart is more into managerialism and the jargon thereof, as can be seen in the second and third of the works reviewed here; the ground for what they are on about is to be found in the more substantial work listed first. The Western Australian Fisheries Department is much concerned to show how active it is and, under a title of Performance Indicators, gives long lists of action taken. The Bureau of Resource Sciences (of the Federal Government’s Department of Primary Industries and Energy) boldly presents detailed statements about each of seventeen Australian Commonwealth fisheries. The Sakagawa volume is one of six volumes developed from the papers and discussions of the World Fisheries Congress held in Athens in May 1992. It presents material relating to the Conference theme 5, which constitutes the title to the work. Volume 1 of the set was reviewed in Fisheries Research by McIntyre (1995). Considering the prestige of the occasion for which the papers were produced, and observing the breadth of geographic coverage (11 countries and regions), one could have hoped that from this volume one could take stock of the business of fish stock assessment. However, I must declare at the outset that I approached this work with 01657836/96/$15.00 Published PII SO1 65-7836(96)00505-X
by Elsevier Science B.V.
354
Book review
slightly distressed scepticism. I was sure that, despite the title, there would be little in it of methodology even if there were much about methods, and in fact this proved to be the case. And I was not optimistic about what I might find about management in these papers, and indeed there is little. Given these apprehensions I think it advisable to declare at once the paradigma criticorum of my examination of the 24 chapters of this work, as follows: In seeking to judge the current standing of fish stock assessment one should seek answers to questions such as the following: Where is stock assessment seen to stand in relation to A and M ‘? What evidence is there of use being made of results, with what effect? To what order of accuracy do the methods aspire, and what is expected of them by the clients? With what knowledge of the resource, and of the ecosystem of which it is a component, has the work been planned and carried out? What is the conceptual apparatus of observational methods, data analysis, and model representation? What tests are made of the logical validity of the computational methods? What arrangements are made to compare each assessment with subsequent outcome in the fishery and to revise the assessment scheme accordingly? Are the fishers consulted about the work, as to its methods and to interpretation of results, do they participate in the work, do they accept or challenge the resuits? Five papers (3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) in the Sakagawa volume deal with innovative equipment and practices for direct observations; they encourage one to believe that before long we shall have the hardware and software with which to make direct, real-time measurement of stock number and biomass. This implication for the future, however, throws into silhouette the inadequacies of current assessment programmes which, most often, have little more to say than the banalities of “over-exploited” and “underexploited”. In addition to reporting technical advances these papers contribute to improvement of the accuracy of data for assessments. Similarly, four papers (15, 16, 17 and 19) deal with data collection and analysis, chiefly with regard to stock characteristics, and give grounds for hoping for the eventual availability of reliable data for population models, to take the place of the “shonky data” once referred to by Sidney Holt. Paper 16 has a startling announcement that in estimating the abundance of total stock in inland waters attention has been given in recent years to catch-effort sampling, is this CPUE in new clothes? These papers suggest some improvement in the precision of the methods employed if not of accuracy. Papers 8, 9, and 10, dealing with computerisation; include the tour de force of number 9 which is an elaborate presentation on the theme that one picture is worth a thousand words. The material of those papers melds with papers 11, 12, 13 and 21, largely concerned with computer software. But the result is not very encouraging, considering the shop-floor sales talk in the summary of paper 11. The unfortunate paper 13 deals with so-called “depensatory mortality”. Apart from its infelicities of writing and the fact that the word depensation does not appear in the OED, one wonders
’ A and M, not Hymns Ancient and Modem but Administration
and Management.
Book review
355
whether what is taken to be “an increase in mortality rate at low biomass levels” might not instead be a result of changes in, say, fecundity, fertilisation, and embryonic development. The concave segment of a population growth curve might parallel the concave, learning phase segment of a fishery development curve, or signify a replay of the changes a species made in its conspiracy with other components of the ecosystem to secure its niche, the nichification that long before was its speciation. Papers 18, 20, 22, 23 and 24 report observations made of various stocks. Paper 14, which gives an account of the history of assessments of Pacific halibut stock makes salutary reading. Its tabulations of changes in the fishery itself, of changes in data collection, of stock assessment techniques, and of management conventions, from the establishment of the International Fisheries Commission in 1920 to now, is a vivid sketch of the path taken by fisheries research over most of this century. The editor of the volume presented eight conclusions which, in his view, had emerged from the discussions. He noted the limitations of methods, the ubiquity of error, the value of some technical innovations, and the numerous difficulties of data processing and of modelling. He then presented, in nine paragraphs, a synthesis of the recommendations which emerged from the discussions. The difficulty in accepting these recommendations arises from the distance between the published papers and the discussions, of which of course there is nothing in this volume. As they stand the recommendations are little more than a set of motherhood statements. They relate to statements of objectives, to the desirability of accuracy, to the need to monitor, to the importance of cooperation, to the gains to be won from use of computers, to deficiencies of training, and to the need to incorporate environmental information in stock assessment models. Of these recommendations, # 8, that “There is a critical need for retrospective analysis of major fisheries with a long history of data and with significant changes in production” must be viewed with one auspicious and one drooping eye. A retrospective analysis can indeed be useful; a catch time series carries the most reliable estimate of what a resource can yield and continue to yield, varying within a measured range of fluctuation; it can also provide the ground for planning a series of studies as to the origins of those fluctuations in environmental variables and innate properties of the species. Most fisheries biology has started at the other end - explaining stock fluctuations with symbols and then seeking to invest them with reality. On the other hand it is rather fanciful to suppose that evaluation of successes and failures of management recommendations will yield a better understanding of processes in exploited fishery resources. In brief, the papers of this volume do not give an impression of a highpowered effective discipline serving to promote efficiency in the conservationally reliable exploitation of resources. And this view is supported by the other two papers, both of which give the impression of persons “whistling in the graveyard” to drive off the black-bat indictments flying about their heads. To put it another way, most of the papers give the impression that the work reported is its own objective. The Annual Report 1994-1995 of the Fisheries Department of Western Australia is a curious document. For some it will be merely a boring administrative missive. For others it will be irritating in its use of modem media hype techniques and for the evidence it gives of the rise of managerialism, and they will be tempted to ask whether expenditure on the document can be justified. Readers of these groups are likely to be
356
Book review
irritated also by the pervasive looseness of language, for example, “management of fish resources” which stands for “management of fishing activities”; and “ . . . commercial fisheries all rely on.. . “; and barbarisms such as “outsourced”. For still others it will be terrifying for its evidence of the emergence of a centrally-controlled economy, with a threat of commissar mentality. The report is presented in three sections, or versions. First, 29 pages of text and tables, beginning with the Executive Director’s overview, a statement on the role of the Department and description of its structure, photos of its principal officers, a statement on corporate management, financial summary, sections on “Management of Fish Resources” and the Fisheries Research and Development Fund, followed by ten pages of performance indicators. There follow 18 pages, on thick blue paper, of financial statements and then (on white paper) nine pages of appendices. In all there are 12 distinct chapters, each under a large-type title, each likely to attract the attention of some particular group of readers. Thus, those interested in Government spending will examine closely the financial summary and the financial statements, reading those chapters against the chapters on the role of the Department, its structure and corporate management. This reviewer’s interest is in the Department’s view of its role and the evidence in the section on performance indicators of how the Department actually performs that (or some other) role. The Department’s mission is stated as: “To manage the use and harvesting of fisheries resources at ecologically sustainable levels, and manage the development of aquaculture, in order to maximise the economic benefits to the state, while conserving and protecting the state’s aquatic ecosystems for the benefit of the present and future Western Australian community.” The points of this statement are repeated in a statement of objectives and a claim is then made that the community is the beneficiary of this policy. The rest of this chapter on role is devoted to an account of the various commercial and recreational activities, aquaculture, aquatic environment, and the Australian Fisheries Zone. One could have expected, then, that the extensive chapter on performance indicators would provide evidence that the Department’s programme was securing benefits for the Western Australian community. It has to be said at once that the Department seems to have failed to understand what is expected as “Performance Indicator”. That term signifies “a measure of the degree to which some person, or unit, has performed a task assigned to it or of the progress it has made toward a designated objective”. In these tables there is no identification of person or unit whose performance was measured, nor any measurement. In respect of Objective One: ‘to have harvesting and fishing of fisheries resources at ecologically sustainable levels’ the table has indications, for each fishery, of whether stock assessment is complete, of the status of exploitation, and of the level of breeding stock, past and current catch projections are given alongside data on catch of the current season, and brief “comments on current season catch” are given in the last column. As a measure of performance of anyone, even of the Department itself, these tables fail completely. As an account of the state of WA fisheries they are quite inadequate. The first “indicator” was to be ‘the proportion of fisheries for which annual stock assessments have been completed’. The performer in this matter is the Department. It claims to have made stock assessments of 59% of fisheries, by number, and 90% by
Book review
35-l
value, but gives no indication of what is meant by “completed assessment” nor of the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and eventual effect of the product from such work. A similar claim is made of having measured ‘the extent to which breeding stock levels in major fishenes are maintained’ in two thirds of the major commercial fisheries. The third indicator is ‘the extent to which projected catch levels in commercial fisheries and particular levels in recreational fisheries are maintained’. In this case performance is shared between the Department - its success in making projections - and the fishery (or, was it the fishermen?) in respect of catches taken. A few examples can serve to show the usefulness, or otherwise of this exercise. The catch of Western Rock Lobster, the star in WA’s fishery crown, had previously been projected to be 10 1000 to 10 1600 tonnes, and for 1995/1996 the projection is 9600 to 10 1500 tonnes. Over the period 1964/1965 to 1989/1990 the average catch was 9949 tonnes with confidence limits from 8816 to 10 1171; from 1974/1974 to 1989/1990 the average was 10 I127 ranging from 9229 to 11 1025 (Bureau of Rural Resources, 1991). The time series had a small positive regression, 0.02% of average catch. Similarly for the Western King prawn, an average catch of 1513 tonnes ranging from 1360 to 1666 and a 3% regression; and for abalone an average catch of 154 tonnes ranging from 139 to 169, and a regression of 0.2%. The significance of these figures is two-fold: first the considerable steadiness of the catch rates of important species, second that the important, most real information about the state of the stocks is in the catch record, and does not come from any stock assessment. The reader is left to decide whether the performance examined, but not measured, was of the ecosystem, the fish stocks, the fishermen, or the Department. Objective Two, which is ‘to maximise the economic, social and other benefits from Western Australia’s aquatic biological resources’ will perhaps cause most apprehension in some readers in that the “indicators” relate to the Department’s performance in running the fisheries of Western Australia. The first indicator calls for measurement of ‘the extent to which the economic viability of commercial fisheries is maintained or enhanced through management measures’, the second has the same wording with regard to aquaculture and the third is ‘Departmental expenditure as a percentage of the value of fisheries’ which designates the departmental expenditure as overhead to this departmentally operated enterprise. Objective Three is ‘to increase the level of understanding of and support for departmental strategies for the management of fisheries’ which is, as to the first indicator, an examination of the Department’s PR set-up, and the second indicator (which does not belong under this objective) relates to the matter of compliance. The claims as to awareness (approximately 95%) and compliance (76%) while unsupported by evidence, seem remarkably precise and unreal. Performance in respect of Objective Four, ‘to minimise the adverse human impacts on the aquatic environment’, is to be assessed in terms of ‘the extent to which fisheries environmental management requirements are accepted by the Government in relation to human impact assessments on the aquatic environment’, that is, the evaluation is of the Department’s activity rather than of protection offered the environment. The last, Objective Five, ‘to assign access to aquatic biological resources in accordance with community priorities’, calls for measurement of the ‘proportion of multiuser stocks in which management plans are successful in minimising resource sharing
358
Book review
conflicts’, seems to be concerned rather with how to deal with problems arising from erroneous assignment of access than with identifying community priorities and granting access in accordance with those priorities. This occupies the greatest part of the tabulation of indicators and, as before, reports departmental action, not measurement of performance. The activities reported in this table are numerous and diverse. The foregoing examination of the Department’s report of its activities makes no reference to questions as to the appropriateness of those activities. No doubt validation of everything reported can be found in existing legislation but the activities fail to correspond to current ideas on the distinction between administration of a national resource and management of industrial and recreational activities; in the case of fishery resources administration is the work of government as factor for the owner of the resource, the community. Obsessedly engaged in making industry’s decisions the Department has little time to consider the need for a system of fishery resources law which would create property rights and place on industry (in collaboration with recreational fishers) responsibility for conservational practice. The confusion between these terms has the effect that the document here reviewed has the appearance of being the report of the executive board of WA Fisheries Inc. The Fishery Status Reports 1994 presents account of 17 Australian fisheries, a statement on Indonesian fishing in Northern Australia and a discussion of “Ecologically sustainable development and fisheries environmental issues”. The Director of the Bureau from which the report has come writes that his Bureau “is responsible for providing an independent assessment of the status of Commonwealth managed fish stocks” apparently unaware that neither his Bureau nor anyone else can manage stocks of fish in the seas. The exercise is, he declares “part of a larger evaluation of Commonwealth fisheries management”. In the four paragraphs of his Foreword he repeatedly insists, on both Commonwealth ownership and management, giving the reader a foretaste of the repetitious character of the entire report. There is a five page introduction with a two page table in which practically all that the report has to communicate is presented in telegrammatic mode. For each fishery there is indication of status, catch trend and amount and value of current catch, long term yield and TAC. The information presented in this table is repeated, almost word for word, at the beginning of each fishery chapter, some of it also appearing in introductory paragraphs at the head of each chapter. This material is followed by a section “About the fishery” which borrows much from the encyclopaediac Australian Fisheries Resources (Kailola et al.> from the same bureau. The raison d&e of the work then follows under the heading “Current Status”. Two fisheries are reported to be over-exploited and to yield about 23% of currently reported catch, three as fully exploited and yielding 38%, five as underexploited, 14% and five as uncertain, 25%; seven of these fisheries exploit single species, the rest are multi-species fisheries. In addition separate judgements are given for each of the species taken in two multispecies fisheries. Apart from reporting that assessments of various kinds have been made, and often frustrated, the document conveys little that is new and it is difficult to reach a conclusion as to for whom it has been compiled and published. Moreover,the text is oddly ingenuous in some places: for example, “Deviations from expected catches indicate a change in the status of the stock”, “Natural mortality, an important parameter in estimating sustain-
Book review
359
able yield.. . “. “The full extent of the breeding grounds is unknown, but may be restricted.” It would be unkind to ask “by whom?“. G.L. KESTEVEN 12 O’Briens Road Hurstville,
N.S.W. 2220 Australia
References Bureau of Rural Resources, 1991. Twenty-five Years of Australian Statistics. Working paper no. WP/ 14/9 Dept. of Primary Industries and Energy, Bureau of Rural Resources. McIntyre, A.D., 1995. The state of the world’s fishery resources. Fish. Res., 24: 79.
I.
Fisheries Research
28 ( 19%) 353-359
Book review
Fisheries assessment and management Methodologies and Management, Proceedings of the World Fisheries Congress, Theme 5 Sakagawa, T. Gary (Editor). Science Publishers, USA, 1995, 195 pp., &79, hard cover, ISBN 1-886106-10-X.
Assessment
Annual Report 1994-1995,
Fisheries Department of Western Australia 58 pp.
1994, McLaughlin, Kevin et al. (Editors), Bureau of Resource Sciences, Australia, 1995, 144 pp., A$20 soft cover, ISSN 1322-655X.
Fishery Status Reports
Of fisheries administration it is scarcely true that le plus $a change le plus que c’est la meme chose. In my young days a fisheries department report, while giving an account of personnel changes in the department and some statistics of catches taken, devoted most space to long lists of infringements of regulations by fishermen and of fishing gears seized. Its modem counterpart is more into managerialism and the jargon thereof, as can be seen in the second and third of the works reviewed here; the ground for what they are on about is to be found in the more substantial work listed first. The Western Australian Fisheries Department is much concerned to show how active it is and, under a title of Performance Indicators, gives long lists of action taken. The Bureau of Resource Sciences (of the Federal Government’s Department of Primary Industries and Energy) boldly presents detailed statements about each of seventeen Australian Commonwealth fisheries. The Sakagawa volume is one of six volumes developed from the papers and discussions of the World Fisheries Congress held in Athens in May 1992. It presents material relating to the Conference theme 5, which constitutes the title to the work. Volume 1 of the set was reviewed in Fisheries Research by McIntyre (1995). Considering the prestige of the occasion for which the papers were produced, and observing the breadth of geographic coverage (11 countries and regions), one could have hoped that from this volume one could take stock of the business of fish stock assessment. However, I must declare at the outset that I approached this work with 01657836/96/$15.00 Published PII SO1 65-7836(96)00505-X
by Elsevier Science B.V.
354
Book review
slightly distressed scepticism. I was sure that, despite the title, there would be little in it of methodology even if there were much about methods, and in fact this proved to be the case. And I was not optimistic about what I might find about management in these papers, and indeed there is little. Given these apprehensions I think it advisable to declare at once the paradigma criticorum of my examination of the 24 chapters of this work, as follows: In seeking to judge the current standing of fish stock assessment one should seek answers to questions such as the following: Where is stock assessment seen to stand in relation to A and M ‘? What evidence is there of use being made of results, with what effect? To what order of accuracy do the methods aspire, and what is expected of them by the clients? With what knowledge of the resource, and of the ecosystem of which it is a component, has the work been planned and carried out? What is the conceptual apparatus of observational methods, data analysis, and model representation? What tests are made of the logical validity of the computational methods? What arrangements are made to compare each assessment with subsequent outcome in the fishery and to revise the assessment scheme accordingly? Are the fishers consulted about the work, as to its methods and to interpretation of results, do they participate in the work, do they accept or challenge the resuits? Five papers (3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) in the Sakagawa volume deal with innovative equipment and practices for direct observations; they encourage one to believe that before long we shall have the hardware and software with which to make direct, real-time measurement of stock number and biomass. This implication for the future, however, throws into silhouette the inadequacies of current assessment programmes which, most often, have little more to say than the banalities of “over-exploited” and “underexploited”. In addition to reporting technical advances these papers contribute to improvement of the accuracy of data for assessments. Similarly, four papers (15, 16, 17 and 19) deal with data collection and analysis, chiefly with regard to stock characteristics, and give grounds for hoping for the eventual availability of reliable data for population models, to take the place of the “shonky data” once referred to by Sidney Holt. Paper 16 has a startling announcement that in estimating the abundance of total stock in inland waters attention has been given in recent years to catch-effort sampling, is this CPUE in new clothes? These papers suggest some improvement in the precision of the methods employed if not of accuracy. Papers 8, 9, and 10, dealing with computerisation; include the tour de force of number 9 which is an elaborate presentation on the theme that one picture is worth a thousand words. The material of those papers melds with papers 11, 12, 13 and 21, largely concerned with computer software. But the result is not very encouraging, considering the shop-floor sales talk in the summary of paper 11. The unfortunate paper 13 deals with so-called “depensatory mortality”. Apart from its infelicities of writing and the fact that the word depensation does not appear in the OED, one wonders
’ A and M, not Hymns Ancient and Modem but Administration
and Management.
Book review
355
whether what is taken to be “an increase in mortality rate at low biomass levels” might not instead be a result of changes in, say, fecundity, fertilisation, and embryonic development. The concave segment of a population growth curve might parallel the concave, learning phase segment of a fishery development curve, or signify a replay of the changes a species made in its conspiracy with other components of the ecosystem to secure its niche, the nichification that long before was its speciation. Papers 18, 20, 22, 23 and 24 report observations made of various stocks. Paper 14, which gives an account of the history of assessments of Pacific halibut stock makes salutary reading. Its tabulations of changes in the fishery itself, of changes in data collection, of stock assessment techniques, and of management conventions, from the establishment of the International Fisheries Commission in 1920 to now, is a vivid sketch of the path taken by fisheries research over most of this century. The editor of the volume presented eight conclusions which, in his view, had emerged from the discussions. He noted the limitations of methods, the ubiquity of error, the value of some technical innovations, and the numerous difficulties of data processing and of modelling. He then presented, in nine paragraphs, a synthesis of the recommendations which emerged from the discussions. The difficulty in accepting these recommendations arises from the distance between the published papers and the discussions, of which of course there is nothing in this volume. As they stand the recommendations are little more than a set of motherhood statements. They relate to statements of objectives, to the desirability of accuracy, to the need to monitor, to the importance of cooperation, to the gains to be won from use of computers, to deficiencies of training, and to the need to incorporate environmental information in stock assessment models. Of these recommendations, # 8, that “There is a critical need for retrospective analysis of major fisheries with a long history of data and with significant changes in production” must be viewed with one auspicious and one drooping eye. A retrospective analysis can indeed be useful; a catch time series carries the most reliable estimate of what a resource can yield and continue to yield, varying within a measured range of fluctuation; it can also provide the ground for planning a series of studies as to the origins of those fluctuations in environmental variables and innate properties of the species. Most fisheries biology has started at the other end - explaining stock fluctuations with symbols and then seeking to invest them with reality. On the other hand it is rather fanciful to suppose that evaluation of successes and failures of management recommendations will yield a better understanding of processes in exploited fishery resources. In brief, the papers of this volume do not give an impression of a highpowered effective discipline serving to promote efficiency in the conservationally reliable exploitation of resources. And this view is supported by the other two papers, both of which give the impression of persons “whistling in the graveyard” to drive off the black-bat indictments flying about their heads. To put it another way, most of the papers give the impression that the work reported is its own objective. The Annual Report 1994-1995 of the Fisheries Department of Western Australia is a curious document. For some it will be merely a boring administrative missive. For others it will be irritating in its use of modem media hype techniques and for the evidence it gives of the rise of managerialism, and they will be tempted to ask whether expenditure on the document can be justified. Readers of these groups are likely to be
356
Book review
irritated also by the pervasive looseness of language, for example, “management of fish resources” which stands for “management of fishing activities”; and “ . . . commercial fisheries all rely on.. . “; and barbarisms such as “outsourced”. For still others it will be terrifying for its evidence of the emergence of a centrally-controlled economy, with a threat of commissar mentality. The report is presented in three sections, or versions. First, 29 pages of text and tables, beginning with the Executive Director’s overview, a statement on the role of the Department and description of its structure, photos of its principal officers, a statement on corporate management, financial summary, sections on “Management of Fish Resources” and the Fisheries Research and Development Fund, followed by ten pages of performance indicators. There follow 18 pages, on thick blue paper, of financial statements and then (on white paper) nine pages of appendices. In all there are 12 distinct chapters, each under a large-type title, each likely to attract the attention of some particular group of readers. Thus, those interested in Government spending will examine closely the financial summary and the financial statements, reading those chapters against the chapters on the role of the Department, its structure and corporate management. This reviewer’s interest is in the Department’s view of its role and the evidence in the section on performance indicators of how the Department actually performs that (or some other) role. The Department’s mission is stated as: “To manage the use and harvesting of fisheries resources at ecologically sustainable levels, and manage the development of aquaculture, in order to maximise the economic benefits to the state, while conserving and protecting the state’s aquatic ecosystems for the benefit of the present and future Western Australian community.” The points of this statement are repeated in a statement of objectives and a claim is then made that the community is the beneficiary of this policy. The rest of this chapter on role is devoted to an account of the various commercial and recreational activities, aquaculture, aquatic environment, and the Australian Fisheries Zone. One could have expected, then, that the extensive chapter on performance indicators would provide evidence that the Department’s programme was securing benefits for the Western Australian community. It has to be said at once that the Department seems to have failed to understand what is expected as “Performance Indicator”. That term signifies “a measure of the degree to which some person, or unit, has performed a task assigned to it or of the progress it has made toward a designated objective”. In these tables there is no identification of person or unit whose performance was measured, nor any measurement. In respect of Objective One: ‘to have harvesting and fishing of fisheries resources at ecologically sustainable levels’ the table has indications, for each fishery, of whether stock assessment is complete, of the status of exploitation, and of the level of breeding stock, past and current catch projections are given alongside data on catch of the current season, and brief “comments on current season catch” are given in the last column. As a measure of performance of anyone, even of the Department itself, these tables fail completely. As an account of the state of WA fisheries they are quite inadequate. The first “indicator” was to be ‘the proportion of fisheries for which annual stock assessments have been completed’. The performer in this matter is the Department. It claims to have made stock assessments of 59% of fisheries, by number, and 90% by
Book review
35-l
value, but gives no indication of what is meant by “completed assessment” nor of the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and eventual effect of the product from such work. A similar claim is made of having measured ‘the extent to which breeding stock levels in major fishenes are maintained’ in two thirds of the major commercial fisheries. The third indicator is ‘the extent to which projected catch levels in commercial fisheries and particular levels in recreational fisheries are maintained’. In this case performance is shared between the Department - its success in making projections - and the fishery (or, was it the fishermen?) in respect of catches taken. A few examples can serve to show the usefulness, or otherwise of this exercise. The catch of Western Rock Lobster, the star in WA’s fishery crown, had previously been projected to be 10 1000 to 10 1600 tonnes, and for 1995/1996 the projection is 9600 to 10 1500 tonnes. Over the period 1964/1965 to 1989/1990 the average catch was 9949 tonnes with confidence limits from 8816 to 10 1171; from 1974/1974 to 1989/1990 the average was 10 I127 ranging from 9229 to 11 1025 (Bureau of Rural Resources, 1991). The time series had a small positive regression, 0.02% of average catch. Similarly for the Western King prawn, an average catch of 1513 tonnes ranging from 1360 to 1666 and a 3% regression; and for abalone an average catch of 154 tonnes ranging from 139 to 169, and a regression of 0.2%. The significance of these figures is two-fold: first the considerable steadiness of the catch rates of important species, second that the important, most real information about the state of the stocks is in the catch record, and does not come from any stock assessment. The reader is left to decide whether the performance examined, but not measured, was of the ecosystem, the fish stocks, the fishermen, or the Department. Objective Two, which is ‘to maximise the economic, social and other benefits from Western Australia’s aquatic biological resources’ will perhaps cause most apprehension in some readers in that the “indicators” relate to the Department’s performance in running the fisheries of Western Australia. The first indicator calls for measurement of ‘the extent to which the economic viability of commercial fisheries is maintained or enhanced through management measures’, the second has the same wording with regard to aquaculture and the third is ‘Departmental expenditure as a percentage of the value of fisheries’ which designates the departmental expenditure as overhead to this departmentally operated enterprise. Objective Three is ‘to increase the level of understanding of and support for departmental strategies for the management of fisheries’ which is, as to the first indicator, an examination of the Department’s PR set-up, and the second indicator (which does not belong under this objective) relates to the matter of compliance. The claims as to awareness (approximately 95%) and compliance (76%) while unsupported by evidence, seem remarkably precise and unreal. Performance in respect of Objective Four, ‘to minimise the adverse human impacts on the aquatic environment’, is to be assessed in terms of ‘the extent to which fisheries environmental management requirements are accepted by the Government in relation to human impact assessments on the aquatic environment’, that is, the evaluation is of the Department’s activity rather than of protection offered the environment. The last, Objective Five, ‘to assign access to aquatic biological resources in accordance with community priorities’, calls for measurement of the ‘proportion of multiuser stocks in which management plans are successful in minimising resource sharing
358
Book review
conflicts’, seems to be concerned rather with how to deal with problems arising from erroneous assignment of access than with identifying community priorities and granting access in accordance with those priorities. This occupies the greatest part of the tabulation of indicators and, as before, reports departmental action, not measurement of performance. The activities reported in this table are numerous and diverse. The foregoing examination of the Department’s report of its activities makes no reference to questions as to the appropriateness of those activities. No doubt validation of everything reported can be found in existing legislation but the activities fail to correspond to current ideas on the distinction between administration of a national resource and management of industrial and recreational activities; in the case of fishery resources administration is the work of government as factor for the owner of the resource, the community. Obsessedly engaged in making industry’s decisions the Department has little time to consider the need for a system of fishery resources law which would create property rights and place on industry (in collaboration with recreational fishers) responsibility for conservational practice. The confusion between these terms has the effect that the document here reviewed has the appearance of being the report of the executive board of WA Fisheries Inc. The Fishery Status Reports 1994 presents account of 17 Australian fisheries, a statement on Indonesian fishing in Northern Australia and a discussion of “Ecologically sustainable development and fisheries environmental issues”. The Director of the Bureau from which the report has come writes that his Bureau “is responsible for providing an independent assessment of the status of Commonwealth managed fish stocks” apparently unaware that neither his Bureau nor anyone else can manage stocks of fish in the seas. The exercise is, he declares “part of a larger evaluation of Commonwealth fisheries management”. In the four paragraphs of his Foreword he repeatedly insists, on both Commonwealth ownership and management, giving the reader a foretaste of the repetitious character of the entire report. There is a five page introduction with a two page table in which practically all that the report has to communicate is presented in telegrammatic mode. For each fishery there is indication of status, catch trend and amount and value of current catch, long term yield and TAC. The information presented in this table is repeated, almost word for word, at the beginning of each fishery chapter, some of it also appearing in introductory paragraphs at the head of each chapter. This material is followed by a section “About the fishery” which borrows much from the encyclopaediac Australian Fisheries Resources (Kailola et al.> from the same bureau. The raison d&e of the work then follows under the heading “Current Status”. Two fisheries are reported to be over-exploited and to yield about 23% of currently reported catch, three as fully exploited and yielding 38%, five as underexploited, 14% and five as uncertain, 25%; seven of these fisheries exploit single species, the rest are multi-species fisheries. In addition separate judgements are given for each of the species taken in two multispecies fisheries. Apart from reporting that assessments of various kinds have been made, and often frustrated, the document conveys little that is new and it is difficult to reach a conclusion as to for whom it has been compiled and published. Moreover,the text is oddly ingenuous in some places: for example, “Deviations from expected catches indicate a change in the status of the stock”, “Natural mortality, an important parameter in estimating sustain-
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able yield.. . “. “The full extent of the breeding grounds is unknown, but may be restricted.” It would be unkind to ask “by whom?“. G.L. KESTEVEN 12 O’Briens Road Hurstville,
N.S.W. 2220 Australia
References Bureau of Rural Resources, 1991. Twenty-five Years of Australian Statistics. Working paper no. WP/ 14/9 Dept. of Primary Industries and Energy, Bureau of Rural Resources. McIntyre, A.D., 1995. The state of the world’s fishery resources. Fish. Res., 24: 79.
I.