Biological, economic and nutritional trade-offs in tropical information limited fisheries: Indonesia's demersal finfish

Providing tactical management advice for tropical information limited fisheries can be difficult due to the constraints and assumptions of available approaches and uncertainty in data input streams. This study presents a workflow which combines information limited fisheries approaches together with data input sensitivity analyses in a novel way to develop a range of plausible management scenarios and their respective bioeconomic trade-offs, with uncertainty, to inform decision theory. The study applies the approach to the commercial demersal finfish fishery across the Indonesian archipelago. Estimates of fishing mortality, biomass, forecasted catch, rebuilding times, profit, and nutritional outcomes were calculated at five different management reference points and for the status quo. For some species, estimated biomass was below the biomass associated with the limit reference point, and fishing mortality rates were higher than the fishing mortality rate associated with the target reference point. Under the status quo, the fishery is operating at a financial loss, predominately due to the biomass and current fishing mortality rate of the most targeted species, Lutjanus malabaricus, and its large contribution to the catch. The novel study approach provided a menu of policy considerations and their respective trade-offs that managers can use to make informed decisions that balance biological sustainability with economic and nutritional outcomes.