The Effect of Stochasticity on Optimal Harvesting Strategies in Some Lumped-Parameter Fishery Models

This paper introduces some methods for anticipating the difference between optimal harvesting strategies in a fishery model with stochastic recruitment and for the analogous deterministic model with recruitment equal to its expected value. The results depend only upon the solution to the deterministic model, and consequently are of value in those fisheries in which the distribution of recruitment is unknown and/or difficult to ascertain. Two classes of lumped parameter models are disussed. In myopic models, the policy difference is likely to be insignificant. In more general models a heuristic measure is introduced that can suggest the direction and magnitude of the policy shift.