Pah. Medley, A DECISION-THEORY CASE-STUDY - CHOOSING A SEASON OPENING FOR A SPINY LOBSTER (PANULIRUS-ARGUS L.) FISHERY, Fisheries research, 36(2-3), 1998, pp. 159-170
The present work illustrates a robust rational approach to making deci
sions under uncertainty. The optimal opening for the Turks and Caicos
Islands lobster season is estimated using Bayesian decision theory. In
formation from a variety of sources is combined to obtain posterior pr
obability distributions for two uncertain parameters used in a simple
bioeconomic utility model. A moult rate parameter posterior probabilit
y distribution is obtained from a subjective prior updated with size f
requency and tagging data. A natural mortality posterior is obtained f
rom a prior derived from published estimates and a fitted catch-effort
model. In the case of the size-frequency and catch-effort models, the
parameter likelihoods are generated using a Bayesian bootstrap techni
que which does not assume any particular likelihood model. (C) 1998 El
sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.