Enhancing sustainability in marine recreational fisheries: a stakeholder- driven process for evaluating angling practices and management options for king mackerel in the U.S

Despite increasing importance of marine recreational fisheries, management goals and objectives have not changed from a focus on managing for commercially important objectives such as maximum or optimum sustainable yield. Additionally, recreational fishery stakeholders in several prominent U.S. fisheries have been frustrated by a perceived lack of inclusion of recreational views in fishery management decisions. Our objective was to provide a forum for representatives of stakeholder groups to explore consequences of policy alternatives, which could then be used in the management of recreational fisheries. We developed a stakeholderdriven process that allowed stakeholders to evaluate how well alternative options could achieve their goals through development of a simulation model over the course of four workshops. The first application of this collaborative process was to the king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla) fishery off the southeastern coast of the U.S. The workshops centered around developing objectives for the fishery, performance measures to gage whether objectives were reached, and options that could be used to reach the objectives. Goals identified by stakeholders included traditional and non-traditional goals such as maintaining high and stable catches and retaining the ability to catch large fish, and options included both voluntary changes in fishing practices (e.g., adoption of techniques that reduce catch and release mortality) and mandatory regulations (e.g., size limits or bag limits). Through an iterative process, stakeholders assisted in developing a model to allow them to compare how well the options they wanted to consider met their vision for a quality fishery.