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Perhaps the greatest challenge facing global fisheries is that recovery often requires substantial short-term reductions in fishing effort, catches and profits. These costs can be onerous and are borne in the present; thus, many countries are unwilling to undertake such socially and politically unpopular actions. We argue that many nations can recover their fisheries while avoiding these short-term costs by sharply addressing illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This can spur fishery recovery, often at little or no cost to local economies or food provision. Indonesia recently implemented aggressive policies to curtail the high levels of IUU fishing it experiences from foreign-flagged vessels. We show that Indonesia's policies have reduced total fishing effort by at least 25%, illustrating with empirical evidence the possibility of achieving fishery reform without short-term losses to the local fishery economy. Compared with using typical management reforms that would require a 15% reduction in catch and 16% reduction in profit, the approach of curtailing IUU has the potential to generate a 14% increase in catch and a 12% increase in profit. Applying this model globally, we find that addressing IUU fishing could facilitate similar rapid, long-lasting fisheries gains in many regions of the world.

The concept of blue growth is the newest of many recent calls for more holistic management of complex marine social-ecological systems. The complexity of ocean systems, combined with limitations on data and capacity, demands an approach to management that is pragmatic-meaning goal-and solution-oriented, realistic, and practical. This article proposes and discusses five rules of thumb upon which to build such an approach. 1) Define objectives, quantify tradeoffs, and strive for efficiency. Understanding stakeholders' objectives, and the nature of tradeoffs between them, keeps management goal-oriented, aware of its full range of options, and maximizes the likelihood of finding win-win solutions. 2) The data you have can do more than you think. Crosssystem similarity, within-system complexity, and general first principles all add informational value to data collected both within and outside the system being managed. 3) Engage stakeholders, but do it right. Comanagement and citizen science can be important tools in the science and management toolbox, especially in data-and capacity-limited regions. 4) Measure your impact and learn as you go. This can increase short-term start-up costs but can prevent larger wastes of resources in the long-term. 5) Design institutions, not behaviors. Management does not directly control fishing efforts, pollution rates or other behaviors, but instead controls institutions under which stakeholders make choices. Each of these rules of thumb is inspired by real-world successes and case studies. Concrete examples are used to illustrate key concepts, with the aim of providing a digestible set of guidelines that any manager can follow.

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