As a management goal, the static interpretation of MSY (i.e., MSY as a fixed catch that can be taken year after year) is generally not appropriate because it ignores the fact that fish populations undergo natural fluctuations (i.e., MSY treats the environment as unvarying) in abundance and will usually ultimately become severely depleted under a constant-catch strategy. Thus, most fisheries scientists now interpret MSY in a more dynamic sense as the maximum average yield (MAY) obtained by applying a specific harvesting strategy to a fluctuating resource. Or as an optimal "escapement strategy", where escapement means the amount of fish that must remain in the ocean than the amount of fish that can be harvested. An escapement strategy is often the optimal strategy for maximizing expected yield of a harvested, stochastically fluctuating population.