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Owing to the collapse of several groundfish stocks in the Scotia–Fundy area of Atlantic Canada, the fisheries-management system has been critically reviewed and changes introduced. A fisheries-management model with eight components was used to structure the recommendations for change. The components are strategic planning, annual planning, fishing entitlements, catch and effort monitoring, enforcement, service delivery, socio-economic analysis, and resource analysis. For each component, a brief synopsis of the major problems identified during the review is provided, and subsequent changes (1995–1998) to address problems are summarized. In spite of unclear and conflicting objectives, the conservation objectives under a rebuilding strategy are generally being met for the open fisheries, at least recently. This is a direct result of improvements in the overall management system. By transferring responsibilities for several aspects of management to the fishing industry, there has been a reduction in institutional uncertainty. Introduction of a combination of enterprise allocations, individual transferable quotas and community quotas has permitted a reduction of fishing capacity without government assistance. However, the reduction in participation level in the open groundfish fisheries has led to social unrest as some participants received small quota shares. For fisheries that have been closed since 1993, little progress has been made in improving the management system. The resource base is not recovering owing to continued levels of poor recruitment, and there is a lack of scientific consensus on the relative contributions of fishing and ecosystem changes to the poor recruitment observed during the past decade. The groundfish fisheries-management system of the Scotia–Fundy area provides an interesting case history on the degree to which conservation objectives can be achieved despite considerable institutional and ecosystem uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]