If you are using management baskets to help avoid serial depletion in a multispecies fishery, from this point in the FISHE process only the representative species from each basket will be examined. This means that extreme care must be taken when selecting Performance Indicators (PIs) as well as corresponding Reference Points (RPs), and when interpreting the results of the assessments (Step 9 and 10).
After PIs have been selected based on goals and data available, ask yourself if trends in the data for the representative species on each PI are likely to characterize/ represent trends for the other species in the basket. In other words, will the various factors (e.g. fishing rate, gear used, etc.) influence all species in the basket in the same way they influence the representative species? Or is there some characteristic of the other species that makes it different, such that a given PI result will not mean the same thing as it does for the representative species? It may be necessary to consult with scientists, the fishermen, or other system experts to find answers to these questions.
If you determine that PI values for the representative species may not reflect changes for all species in the basket, it may be necessary to pick a different, or a second, representative species, or to select an alternate PI to assess. Alternatively, the same representative species and PI can be used, but RPs can be set at levels that are appropriate for the most vulnerable species in the basket.
In some cases, a given PI may be suitable for all species in a basket, but different RPs may be appropriate for some species. For example, if Spawning Potential Ratio (SPR) is the selected PI, the appropriate target RP may be 0.20 for fast growing species, and 0.40 for slow growing species. Thus, if a given management basket contains species with a wide range of growth rates managers must be careful to choose an RP for analysis that doesn’t put the slower growing species at risk, even if the representative species has a faster growth rate. In this example, an RP of 0.40 can be selected (regardless of the growth rate of the representative species) to be precautionary, or if managers have a slightly higher risk-tolerance, an RP of 0.30 could be selected as a mid-point between the fast and slow growing species’ SPR targets.
Finally, as described above in Step 6, we highly recommend considering species’ vulnerability to climate change, in addition to their current status and vulnerability to the fishery, when selecting representative species. Species that are especially vulnerable to climate change should be monitored against climate-relevant PIs and RPs to identify if and when climate-driven impacts begin to manifest. This means that some management baskets may have two different species being monitored and assessed against different types of PIs (for Fishery Sustainability or Climate Resilience), or that one species may be evaluated against both types at the same time. Information on climate resilience PIs can be used to trigger new management actions or stakeholder decisions, such as when to begin investing in infrastructure that supports fisher adaptability.