Wiedenmann, J. and D.S. Holland. Tradeoffs in fishery management objectives when allowing catch limit carry-overs between years. ICES Journal of Marine Science. 

Fisheries managed with explicit catch limits often have catches below the total allowable catch (TAC) and individual quotas. Catches may also exceed catch limits if catch limits are not effectively enforced. Carry-over provisions allowing aggregate or individual carry-forward of catch underage or requiring pay-back of overages are included in many fishery management systems, but the ramifications of these provisions on different fishery management objectives such as average catch, variability in catch, and probability and degree of overfishing have not been evaluated. Here, we present an MSE simulation model that incorporates assessment uncertainty to explore performance of alternative carry-over policies assuming different life histories and under different assumptions about assessment error and frequency.  We evaluated the impacts of the carry-overs across a range of common management objects to understand the tradeoffs associated with different provisions amounts. We find that carry-overs can increase yield to the fishery but can also increase the risk of overfishing and becoming overfished, the risk of low catch, and the interannual variability in catch, all of which increase with the amount of carry-over allowed. However, some benefits of carry-over can be maintained and risks can be limited by restricting the maximum carryover allowed.

Management strategy evaluation to evaluate carry-over policies for fisheries

Wiedenmann, J. and D.S. Holland. Tradeoffs in fishery management objectives when allowing catch limit carry-overs between years. ICES Journal of Marine Science.