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.
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.