Setting allowable catch levels within a stock rebuilding plan

The essence of a stock rebuilding plan can be summarized in a harvest control rule that specifies the level of harvest that is to be permitted at each stock size over the relevant range from the current size to the target stock size, XTAR. The selection of an appropriate control rule is a policy decision based upon, among other things, tradeoffs between present and future benefits and the desired time in which to achieve XTAR. While the selection of the control rule is a critical part of building a successful SRP, the analysis here will focus on the implementation of the control rule taking into account that the information used to generate the control rule may not accurately capture the population dynamics of the fish stock, due to the limited ability to describe stock characteristics and project stock conditions. The purpose is to develop an analytical probabilistic framework to consider how the control rule harvest level can be modified to address the possible weaknesses in the construction of use of harvest control rules.