at a regional level the socioeconomic benefits from rebuilding stocks include protecting a way of life as well as maintaining employment in coastal communities where few alternatives exist in this context stable access to a well managed resource could decrease economic uncertainty and enable fish harvesters to secure access to capital to remain competitive leading to the production of higher quality and higher value fish products the paper is based on an invited plenary lecture to the ices annual conference and reviews eight case studies of successful and unsuccessful stock rebuilding programs from the us canada new zealand and the eu