The Social Assessment of Fisheries Resources (SAFR) Symposium explored potentials for more fully using the problem-solving abilities of social sciences in fishery management. The SAFR papers examine the theory, methods, and applications of economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophy in relation to the kinds of evaluations faced by fishery managers, particularly in North America's Great Lakes region. In this symposium overview, we consider whether a “total value framework” could be developed to assess all pros and cons of changes in fishery resources. We reject the notion of a perfect, uniform, quantitative total value assessment method, recognizing that existing assessment practices underrepresent some value elements and overrepresent others. Total value concepts must consider both basic human values (“held” values) and monetary or equivalent values, such as those in benefit–cost analysis (“assigned” values). Out total value framework illustrates the difficulty of reconciling these disparate types of human values in ways that lend practical guidance for evaluating fishery management choices. We survey the SAFR papers within this total value framework, considering the potential contributions and shortcomings of each discipline in evaluating human value changes.