Abstract

Information is key to responsible and effective fisheries management, but for many fisheries, particularly within small-scale fisheries, the necessary data are often absent due to a lack of human and financial resources. The Participatory Fisheries Stock Assessment (ParFish) methodology aims to address this issue by enabling a rapid stock assessment and also has the specific purpose of encouraging involvement of local fishers in the decision-making and management of the resource. ParFish is designed to be an adaptive and ongoing management process that can provide resource managers an opportunity to determine the likely status of the stock while developing data collection programs necessary to reduce the level of uncertainty in the results. The ParFish process can be summarized in six key steps: understand the context of the fishery; identify key stakeholders and agree objectives of management; undertake an assessment of the stock using existing stock assessment models; provide feedback and management planning; assist in the management planning; and, evaluate the ParFish process. Each of these steps is designed to encourage and facilitate/maximize the involvement of resource users and other stakeholders in the process. This paper introduces the ParFish methodology and describes real-world examples taken from pilot studies to illustrate each step in the process.

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