ABSTRACT
There is a long history of fisheries on North Sea herring and these fisheries have been socially and politically very important to Northern Europe for the last 400 years. The management plan was an agreement between Norway and the EU to limit catches following a pre-agreed harvest control rule (HCR). This was one of the first applications of HCRs in the EU/Norway arena. The core objective of the entire series of management plans was to keep the spawning stock biomass (SSB) of North Sea herring above 800,000 tonnes. The revisions to the management plan were responses to new challenges to the sustainable and optimum exploitation of North Sea herring fisheries. Initially one primary concern was over catching of the total allowable catch (TAC), what was euphemistically called "implementation error" by the scientists that evaluated the plan. Thus the need for this last revision was caused by a change in the perception of expected stock variability.
