Georges Bank haddock is a recently recovered fish stock in the New
England groundfish fishery. Due to federal constraints under the
Magnuson-Steven Act, however, this stock cannot be optimally exploited
due to the bycatch of other critical species like cod and yellowtail
flounder when exploiting haddock. This study models the fishery through
a yield-per-recruit multi-species model and examines the policy space of
higher haddock yield gained through improved gear technology like the
cod eliminator trawl. We aim to quantify a suite of stakeholder
objectives for the groundfish fishery, focusing on haddock as the
primary target species, through stakeholder interviews aided by
questionnaires. Our results quantify the policy space of stakeholder
consensus through specific management actions within the constraints of
the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The objective is to quantify management and
policy options based on a suite of stakeholder objectives for haddock in
the Georges Bank ground fishery using Nikki Jacobson's multi-species
model and Dan Georgianna's observer economic data. This talk will review
methods (and hopefully initiate a discussion on possible improvements)
as well as show some preliminary results.