The impact of empowering scientific advisory committees to constrain catch limits in US fisheries

Following a 2006 revision to the US Magnuson-Stevens Act, the eight Fishery Management Councils that manage the nation's stocks have been restricted from setting regional catch levels that exceed the recommendations of their primary scientific advisory committees. This paper reviews the impact of that new requirement using principal-agent theory. After demonstrating that the advisory committees are still agents of the Councils, I show that the process of managing federal fisheries stocks now requires a lengthy dialogue between the two groups revolving around issues of risk tolerance, management buffers, and data availability that has resulted in the development of explicit rules for setting biological boundaries on catch.