Developing and integrating enhancement strategies to improve and restore fisheries

Abstract

Fisheries enhancements are management approaches involving the use of aquaculture and habitat technologies (in the broadest sense) to enhance or restore fisheries. The technologies most commonly used include hatchery rearing and release of aquatic animals and provision of artificial structures such as artificial reefs. Both are associated with distinct fields of knowledge and communities of practice. Recent calls to expand and broaden the role of aquaculture and habitat enhancements in marine conservation and an increasingly integrated view of living marine resource management have led to an aspirational broadening of concepts in this area. The 10th William R and Lenore Mote Symposium and 6th International Symposium on Stock Enhancement and Sea Ranching aimed to advance and integrate knowledge across enhancement technologies and practices. Substantial progress was noted in multiple technical areas such as understanding the potential and limitations for rearing organisms fit for release into the wild, and the design of artificial reefs to enhance local fish abundance. Crucial higher-level goals such as effectively enhancing or restoring fish abundance and fisheries at the stock level continue to receive insufficient attention across the enhancement sciences. Integration of enhancement strategies provides opportunities and challenges including a need to recognize, cross-discover, and engage other distinct areas of knowledge and communities of practice. A quick reference guide is provided to facilitate this process.

Biological life‐history and farming scenarios of marine aquaculture to help reduce wild marine fishing pressure

“…If aquaculture is mentioned in a fisheriesmanagement context, it is typically in relation to stock enhancement of wild populations through hatchery release efforts (e.g. Bostock et al, 2010;Lorenzen et al, 2021;Teletchea, 2017). Aquaculture has instead largely increased seafood supply, allowing global per capita consumption of aquatic protein to more than double in the last six decades, while total wild capture production has remained relatively stable (FAO, 2020b).…”

Estimating ecological carrying capacity for stock enhancement in marine ranching ecosystems of Northern China

“…Marine stock enhancement, as a set of management approaches involving the release of cultured organisms to enhance or restore fisheries, has been practiced to implement marine biological resource conservation. Furthermore, it plays an increasingly important role in food security and developing and enhancing recreational fisheries (Lorenzen et al, 2010;Kitada, 2020;Lorenzen et al, 2021).…”

“…The implementation of stock enhancement programs in open waters nowadays still often lacks the necessary scientific evidence to be carried out effectively due to a lack of knowledge of the environment, target species, and release locations. This makes it difficult to identify any potential negative ecological impacts of stocking such as a reduction in genetic diversity, negative effects on wild stock growth and survival, and impacts on ecosystem functioning (Cudmore-Vokey and Crossman, 2000;Taylor et al, 2005;Townsend, 2010;Taylor et al, 2017;Lorenzen et al, 2021). For example, the introduction of salmon into Lake Michigan resulted in significant changes in the food web structure, causing the planktivorous fish ratio to fall from 8:1 in the 1930s to 1.3:1 at the end of the 20th century (Cudmore-Vokey and Crossman, 2000).…”

Evaluating the Hatchery Program of a Highly Exploited Shrimp Stock (Fenneropenaeus chinensis) in a Temperate Marine Ecosystem

“…The depletion of fish stocks has been increasingly reported in many marine ecosystems (Link and Watson, 2019). In addition to controlling catch and fishing effort, hatchery programs have been widely applied to fisheries aiming to improve the health of threatened or endangered natural resources (Taylor et al, 2017;Lorenzen et al, 2021). Globally, hatchery programs, such as pink salmon in Prince William Sound and European eel in River Ceira, have been practiced for several decades (Amoroso et al, 2017;Félix et al, 2020).…”