Ecosystem processes are rarely included in tactical fisheries management

Abstract

Fish stock productivity, and thereby sensitivity to harvesting, depends on physical (e.g. ocean climate) and biological (e.g. prey availability, competition and predation) processes in the ecosystem. The combined impacts of such ecosystem processes and fisheries have lead to stock collapses across the world. While traditional fisheries management focuses on harvest rates and stock biomass, incorporating the impacts of such ecosystem processes are one of the main pillars of the ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM). Although EAFM has been formally adopted widely since the 1990s, little is currently known to what extent ecosystem drivers of fish stock productivity are actually implemented in fisheries management. Based on worldwide review of more than 1200 marine fish stocks, we found that such ecosystem drivers were implemented in the tactical management of only 24 stocks. Most of these cases were in the North Atlantic and north-east Pacific, where the scientific support is strong. However, the diversity of ecosystem drivers implemented, and in the approaches taken, suggests that implementation is largely a bottom-up process driven by a few dedicated experts. Our results demonstrate that tactical fisheries management is still predominantly single-species oriented taking little account of ecosystem processes, implicitly ignoring that fish stock production is dependent on the physical and biological conditions of the ecosystem. Thus, while the ecosystem approach is highlighted in policy, key aspects of it tend yet not to be implemented in actual fisheries management.

Recent changes in the diet and survival of Atlantic puffin chicks in the face of climate change and commercial fishing in midcoast Maine, USA

“…Intense fishing pressure reduces the abundance of forage fish populations and truncates their age structure, leading to range contractions or shifts (Bell et al 2014;Overholtz 2002). For wildlife such as puffins to survive, fisheries managers need to set management goals that include ample meals for them (Cury et al 2011;Skern-Mauritzen et al 2015).…”

Wind Conditions on the Great Barrier Reef Influenced the Recruitment of Snapper (Lutjanus carponotatus)

“…Physical forcings that affect larval mortality have previously been linked to the recruitment of commercially important species, where recruitment into the fishery occurs years after the larvae are spawned (e.g., Caputi et al, 1996;Wilderbuer et al, 2013). However, robust empirical models where physical conditions are good predictors of recruitment are rare and scarcely used in fisheries management (Skern-Mauritzen et al, 2016). There are exceptions, such as the use of an upwelling index in the models predicting the recruitment of Anchovy, Engraulis encrasicholus, to the Bay of Biscay in the northeast Atlantic Ocean (SkernMauritzen et al, 2016).…”

Lessons from the First Generation of Marine Ecological Forecast Products

“…However, the biological knowledge required to make this linkage is often either poor, or entirely absent; fisheries scientists, for example, have been trying to generate environmentallydriven predictions of fish stock recruitment for close to a century now with little success (e.g., Myers, 1998). In fact, just 15 out of 1,250 fish stocks globally (<2%) incorporate any form of environmental information in the generation of their tactical advice and management (Skern-Mauritzen et al, 2016). Nevertheless, the first generation of forecast products for applications to marine living resources is now appearing, starting in Australia nearly a decade ago (Hobday et al, 2011;Eveson et al, 2015) and more recently in North America (Table 1).…”