Figure 1. Stakeholder-Centered Approach of FishSmart (2010)

At the end of the workgroup meetings, the stakeholders presented a 49-page final report to the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council outlining 17 consensus recommendations to improve the “long-term sustainability and quality of Atlantic king mackerel fisheries,” that would avoid unrecoverable exploitation of the fish stock from overfishing, while allowing year-round recreational fishing to continue (Final Report, 2008, p. 2). The recommendations also included four management principles to be adopted by the SAFMC in addition to the stock and catch quotients that suggest more involvement from the Gulf of Mexico king mackerel fisheries council and expanding the stakeholder process to continue to guide the SAFMC’s management decisions. The final recommendations from the stakeholder group to the SAFMC were actually more stringent and conservative than the Council’s own recommendations.

The current approach in many councils and states in the U.S. involves stakeholders on a short-term basis, and uses their participation to gather opinion-based recommendations from which to draw conclusions about assessments that have already been made by managers. The managers identify the problem and call for an assessment to be conducted. Scientific input plays a role in the beginning but only for the quantitative analysis that provides the managers with information. Figure 2 illustrates this process and indicates that the decision making is done by the managers as the scientists and stakeholders are no longer part of the discussion.