We're very big advocates of an approach to management decision-making that's commonly called structured decision-making. On the west coast I think the buzz phrase is management strategy evaluation. It used to be called decision analysis and adaptive management, but basically it's a way of going about making decisions with the things you don't know very clearly articulated and on the table and an assessment of the risk that attends them, having that as part of the management decision process.
I'll be fairly blunt here. Part of the reason it hasn't happened in a big way nationally is that a lot of folks with interests in a political process around management—and I'll be honest, that would include folks in elected offices as well as folks within the bureaucracy—like to be able to work with it. They don't necessarily want everything laid out. They want to be able to work with it.
It hasn't been a system that has worked terribly well, the old way of doing things. I'm sure if you got some other members of the commercial fishing industry or representatives of the commercial fishing industry from elsewhere in the country in this room, they'd tell you I'm crazy, that they don't like it either.
But from our perspective, and this is speaking with some experience, because we've managed to get this kind of approach brought to bear in the international decision-making process that we have to live with in some of the Great Lakes.... A total allowable catch, for example, with perch and walleye on Lake Erie is set by an international process, not by our local officials. They participate in that.
But we've managed to get the new management planning process opened up to stakeholders from both sides of the border, with a full facilitation from competent folks. We're going to come up with what we consider to be a real science-based management plan, with full transparency that our members can understand.
That's the answer, as far as we're concerned, that kind of an approach.