Stop-loss order for forage fish fisheries

Abstract

Recent literature has highlighted the exceptional importance of forage fish, which include some of the largest fisheries in the world and produce a sizeable share of the global wild marine fish catch (1). Forage species play an essential and valuable supporting role within marine ecosystems by serving as prey for larger species (2, 3). These findings underscore the importance of ( i ) furthering understanding of the determinants of forage fish collapses, and ( ii ) of devising exploitation strategies that will maintain their crucial ecological and economic roles. Essington et al. (4) significantly advance understanding on both counts, applying novel methods to uncover fishing’s fingerprint in regulating population fluctuations and demonstrating the effectiveness of a simple remedy to prevent collapses.

Metapopulation Tracking Juvenile Penguins Reveals an Ecosystem-wide Ecological Trap

“…These cascading impacts of localized forage fish depletion-unobserved in studies on adults-were only elucidated via broad-scale movement and demographic data on juveniles. Our results support suspending fishing when prey biomass drops below critical thresholds [12,13] and suggest that mitigation of marine ecological traps will require matching conservation action to the scale of ecological processes [14].…”

Macroscale drivers of Atlantic and Gulf Menhaden growth

“…In addition, fishery‐driven density‐dependent growth of forage fishes like Atlantic Menhaden may have trophic consequences that are overlooked in current ecosystem and multispecies models (Buchheister et al, ; Garrison et al, ; Nesslage & Wilberg, ). Careful examination of the patterns and potential causes of time‐varying growth for young forage fish is needed to refine our understanding of ecosystem impacts of fishing on forage species (Hilborn et al, ; Pikitch, ).…”

Forage fish fisheries management requires a tailored approach to balance trade‐offs

“…Different rules minimized collapses for each forage fish type (Figure a), highlighting the need for diverse management options depending on life history. Recommendations for forage fish management can be broad in order to mitigate risk (Cury et al., ; Pikitch, ) or they are tailored to specific stocks, based on the biology of a specific system (Punt, MacCall, et al., ). Here, we show that the “best” rule for maximizing performance of forage fish stocks might be one tailored to the life history of the species, the trade‐offs involved in the fishery, and stock‐specific uncertainties.…”

“…Different rules minimized collapses for each forage fish type (Figure 5a), highlighting the need for diverse management options depending on life history. Recommendations for forage fish management can be broad in order to mitigate risk (Cury et al, 2011;Pikitch, 2015) or they are tailored to specific F I G U R E 6 Per cent change in performance metrics when assessment is slow to detect a rapid change in biomass. The per cent change in each performance measure due to delayed detection was calculated as ( stocks, based on the biology of a specific system (Punt, MacCall, et al, 2016).…”

“…In terms of improving basic ecological metrics for control rule success, we found that hockey‐stick type rules were effective for reducing the risk and severity of collapses, even when detection was delayed (Figure ). These “stop‐loss” rules have been recommended for forage species previously (Pikitch, ; Pikitch et al., ) for these reasons, and are supported by multispecies and ecosystem approaches (Gaichas et al., ; Holsman, Ianelli, Aydin, Punt, & Moffitt, ; Worm et al., ). We found that they did come at a long‐term cost to catches and catch stability relative to other control rules (Smith et al., ), but that catches were high among years when the fishery was open, suggesting that a highly adaptable fishery might be able to take advantage of erratic catches while still minimizing the risk and severity of a collapse.…”