Social impact assessment methodologies and models have been developed and applied to environmental resource areas other than fisheries. Social impact assessments determine the costs and benefits of proposed conservation and management plans and assist in designing and administering policy. Support for assessments in fisheries has lagged behind that in forestry and water resource management. The lack of an understanding of the role of social impact assessment in fishery conservation and management has hampered the development of social and cultural data bases that can be used to examine the distributional consequences of fishery management plans. An integrated assessment and evaluation process provides a coordinated system for determining the costs and benefits of policy implementation and project outcomes. Social assessments can be used to explore the historical, cultural, economic-ecological, and demographic impacts of management plans. Adequate social impact assessments require comparative data bases on fishing production systems and an understanding of the fit of assessments in natural resource development.