Reply to Slooten et al.: Viewing fisheries management challenges in a global context.

Slooten et al. (1) claim the survey respondents from New Zealand, one of 28 countries considered in our paper in PNAS (2), were strongly biased toward the fishing industry. The six survey responses comprised a range of background experience: three government/science respondents (added here as coauthors), including the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s Chief Scientist–Fisheries, the government’s Principal Advisor–Fisheries Science, and an independent consultant working with government and the fishing industry; one (anonymous) university respondent; one (anonymous) environmental-nongovernmental organization (NGO) respondent; and a pair of respondents who consult for industry and collectively have experience in the seafood sector and community/environmental NGOs. We aimed for such diversity in respondent experience in all countries, and, on average, had reasonable representation across background categories (2). Those persons most familiar with the fishing industry should certainly be part of the sampling universe. Despite the variety of background experience, survey responses were strongly coherent across New Zealand respondents. Coherency is expected, given that most of the 46 survey questions related to specific management attributes rather than calling for subjective opinion (dataset S1 in ref. 2). We disaggregated overall responses by species and by respondent. For the six species with four or more responses, coefficients of variation (CVs) across respondents ranged from 1.4 to 8.4% (mean of 3.8%), which were similar to the CVs across species (ranging from 3.6 to 6.8%, mean of 5.1%) for the six respondents. This low variability is consistent with our global analysis showing that respondent background contributed to variation in overall responses but had weaker influence than countrylevel factors, such as per capita gross domestic product (2). The critique largely focuses on ecosystem impacts of fishing. Although we recognize the importance of ecosystem protections and broader management objectives (3, 4), we primarily focused on target species, as evident from our survey questions and article title (2). Regulating fishing pressure on target species will also limit impacts on nontarget species through effort restrictions and is considered a critical first step toward managing adverse ecosystem effects (5). New Zealand fisheries statistics cited by Slooten et al. (1) appear incorrect. In 2016, assessed stocks accounted for 72% of total landings by volume (79% by value), representing the majority of commercial fish species; 97% of assessed landings by volume were identified as having no sustainability issues for target species (6). The Quota Management System has generally been successful at reducing fleet overcapacity and fishing effort, eliminating harmful subsidies, maintaining productive stocks, and rebuilding previously depleted stocks (5–8). In any fisheries management system, there are competing values, and there is always room for improvements (4–9). Slooten et al. (1) highlight several challenges in New Zealand, which apply to many other fisheries around the world. However, they fail to recognize the positioning of New Zealand systems within a global context, as exemplified by comparative analyses (2, 4). Our findings that New Zealand fisheries management systems are among the world’s most successful at meeting objectives are consistent with previous findings (4, 5, 7, 8, 10). To improve fisheries management globally, the greatest gains to bemade are in the lower performing countries, where there are currently insufficient resources and attention to achieving basic management goals.