Pacific whiting (Merluccius productus) is commercially and ecologically one of the most important fishery resources in the Pacific coast of the United States. The fishery is currently going through a period of rapid and profound transformation that could cause a substantial redistribution of benefits among domestic users. Benefits from the Pacific whiting fishery consist of conflicting biological, social, economic and regional objectives. A major management issue is the problem of resource allocation between the domestic offshore and shore-based fleets. Economic analysis of fishery policy based on the single objective of maximizing present value of net revenues (PVNR) fails to realistically confront the Pacific whiting fishery management problem. This work proposes the use of the less restrictive concept of Pareto optimality as a criterion for efficiency in the fishery. The main objective of this dissertation is to develop a multiobjective bioeconomic policy model of the Pacific whiting fishery in the United States. The purpose of the model is to analyze the implications (trade-offs) of resource allocation alternatives on the level of three policy objectives PVNR, production, and female spawning biomass. Pareto optimal solutions for the three policy objectives were generated under various specifications of the model by means of generating techniques. Three policy instruments were considered: harvest quotas, fleet/processing capacity limits, and allocation between the shore-based and offshore fisheries. Results were presented in the form of trade-off curves. The analysis suggests that policy objectives in the case of Pacific whiting are non-complementary. Instead of a unique "optimal" policy solution the Pacific whiting fishery policy problem possesses an infinite number of [Pareto] "optimal" policy solutions. The principal characteristic of Pareto optimal solutions is that in moving from one to another, the objectives must be traded-off among each other. In spite of the uncertainties regarding the dynamics of the Pacific whiting fishery, the preliminary nature of the data and the simplistic specification of the model, the analysis in this work demonstrates the potential benefits of vector optimization for fishery policy development and analysis. / Graduation date: 1993