Precautionary control rules in US fisheries management: specification and performance

Recent legislation in the United States has established fisheries-management criteria that have been interpreted as being consistent with international agreements and criteria for precautionary approaches. Proposed guidelines for implementing the legislation have been translated into scientific and technical guidance for developing limit and target control rules, with some suggestions for defaults. The control rules specify management actions (fishing mortality rate), based upon current stock status. The nature of these control rules is presented and discussed, giving the rationale for their specification and nature of the relationships, and some implementation problems are identified.