Feedback Control in Pacific Salmon Fisheries

Feedback control, as defined in the field of control systems engineering, is the property of a system that Permits the Output (i.e., performance) to he compared with the input (i.e., objectives) when choosing an appropriate control action. Although similar principles are used in adaptive control, adaptive management, and management procedures, there are cases where it is not obvious how to implement feedback control, thereby limiting its use in practice. There are several advantages to incorporating feedback control in fisheries. It forces managers to be explicit about objectives and directly links management actions to those objectives. Furthermore, management performance is less sensitive to perturbations and long-term persistent changes because management actions are adjusted in response to those changes in order to achieve objectives. We apply feedback control to one case example, a sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) fishery, by using simulation modeling to identify tat-get harvest rules that achieve management objectives, accounting for uncertainties in the Outcomes from implementing those harvest rules. This type of feedback control system can be applied to other fisheries where Outcomes of management regulations do not match targets in order to improve managers' abilities to achieve their ob objectives.