Responsible fisheries management is of increasing interest to the scientific community, resource managers, policy makers, stakeholders and the general public. Focusing solely on managing one species of fish stock at a time has become less of a viable option in addressing the problem. Incorporating more holistic considerations into fisheries management by addressing the trade-offs among the range of issues involved, such as ecological principles, legal mandates and the interests of stakeholders, will hopefully challenge and shift the perception that doing ecosystem-based fisheries management is unfeasible. Demonstrating that EBFM is in fact feasible will have widespread impact, both in US and international waters. Using case studies, underlying philosophies and analytical approaches, this book brings together a range of interdisciplinary topics surrounding EBFM and considers these simultaneously, with an aim to provide tools for successful implementation and to further the debate on EBFM, ultimately hoping to foster enhanced living marine resource management.

A key goal of fisheries management is to regulate extractive pressure on a resource so as to ensure social, economic and ecological sustainability. This text provides an accessible entry point for students and professionals to management science as developed in fisheries, in order to facilitate uptake of the latest ideas and methods. Traditional management approaches have relied upon a stock assessment based on existing understanding of resource status and dynamics, and a prediction of the likely future response to a static management proposal. However all such predictions include an inherent degree of uncertainty, and the last few decades have seen the emergence of an adaptive approach that uses feedback control to account for unknown future behaviour. Feedback is achieved via a control rule, which defines a relationship between perceived status of the resource and a management action. Evaluations of such rules usually include computer simulation testing across a broad range of uncertainties, so that an appropriate and robust rule can be selected by stakeholders and managers. The book focuses on this approach, which is usually referred to as Management Strategy Evaluation. The book is enriched by case study examples from different parts of the world, as well as insights into the theory and practice from those actively involved in the science of fisheries management.

This book offers an environmental-economic analysis of exploited ecosystems with a clear policy orientation. The study moves beyond traditional economic fishery analysis in two respects. First, several theoretical and numerical models are offered that combine economic and ecological descriptions of fisheries. Second, valuation and stakeholder concerns are addressed in empirical analyses employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The approaches, models and policy insights are sufficiently general and innovative to interest a broad audience.

This book offers an environmental-economic analysis of exploited ecosystems with a clear policy orientation. The study moves beyond traditional economic fishery analysis in two respects. First, several theoretical and numerical models are offered that combine economic and ecological descriptions of fisheries. Second, valuation and stakeholder concerns are addressed in empirical analyses employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The approaches, models and policy insights are sufficiently general and innovative to interest a broad audience.

Quantitative modeling methods have become a central tool in the management of harvested fish populations. This book examines how these modeling methods work, why they sometimes fail, and how they might be improved by incorporating larger ecological interactions. Fisheries Ecology and Management provides a broad introduction to the concepts and quantitative models needed to successfully manage fisheries. Walters and Martell develop models that account for key ecological dynamics such as trophic interactions, food webs, multi-species dynamics, risk-avoidance behavior, habitat selection and density-dependence. They treat fisheries policy development as a two-stage process, first identifying strategies for varying harvest in relation to changes in abundance, then finding ways to implement such strategies in terms of monitoring and regulatory procedures. This book provides a general framework for developing assessment models in terms of state-observation dynamics hypotheses, and points out that most fisheries assessment failures have been due to inappropriate observation model hypotheses rather than faulty models for ecological dynamics. Intended as a text in upper division and graduate classes on fisheries assessment and management, this useful guide will also be widely read by ecologists and fisheries scientists.

This report reviews the methods available for examining ecosystem dynamics and assessing the impact of interactions between ecosystems and human activities, particularly fisheries, and their implications for marine fisheries management. It focuses on the currently available models representative of general types such as bionergetic models, predator-prey models and minimally realistic models; with short descriptions given of model parameters, assumptions and data requirements. It discusses the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of each of the approaches; and concludes with some recommendations for the future development of multi-species and ecosystem models.

The book presents a collection of large-scale network-modeling studies on coastal systems in Latin America. It includes a novel description of the functioning of coastal complex ecosystems and also predicts how natural and human-made disturbances percolate through the networks. Coastal areas belong to the most populated ecosystems around the globe, and are massively influenced by human impacts such as shipping, mining, fisheries, tourism, pollution and human settlements. Even though many of these activities have facilitated socio-economic development, they have also caused a significant deterioration in natural populations, communities and ecosystems worldwide. Covering coastal marine ecosystems of Latin America such as the NE and SE Pacific, NW Atlantic and Caribbean areas, it discusses the construction of quantitative (Ecopath-Ecosim-Ecospace and Centrality of Node Sets) and semi-quantitative (Loop Analysis) multispecies trophic-network models to describe and assess the impacts of natural and human interventions like pelagic and benthic fishing as well as natural events such as El Niño, and La Niña. The book also features steady state (and/or near moving equilibrium) and dynamical models to support the management of exploited organisms, and applies and quantifies macroscopic indices, based on Ascendency (Ulanowicz) and Local Stability (Levins ́ Loop Analysis). Further, it discusses the determination of the Keystone Species Complex Index, which is a holistic extension of the classical concept of Keystone Species (Paine), offering novel strategies for conservation monitoring and management.

Recent scientific literature has raised many concerns about whether fisheries have caused more extensive changes to marine populations and ecosystems than previously realized or predicted. In many cases, stocks have been exploited far beyond management targets, and new analyses indicate that fishing has harmed other species—including marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, and sea grasses—either directly through catch or habitat damage, or indirectly through changes in food-web interactions. At the request of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Research Council conducted an independent study to weigh the collective evidence for fishery-induced changes to marine ecosystems and the implications of the findings for U.S. fisheries management. Dynamic Changes in Marine Ecosystems provides comprehensive information in regard to these findings.

This book explores how we can solve the urgent problem of optimizing the use of variable, uncertain but finite fisheries resources while maintaining sustainability from a marine-ecosystem conservation perspective. It offers readers a broad understanding of the current methods and theory for sustainable exploitation of fisheries resources, and introduces recent findings and technological developments. The book is divided into three parts: Part I discusses fish stock dynamics, and illustrates how ecological processes affecting life cycles and biological interactions in marine environments lead to fish stock variability in space and time in major fish groups; small pelagic fish, demersal fish and large predatory fish. These insights shed light on the mechanisms underlying the variability in fish stocks and form the essential biological basis for fisheries management. Part II addresses the technologies and systems that monitor changes in fisheries resources and marine ecosystems using two approaches: fishery-dependent and fishery-independent data. It also describes acoustic surveys and biological sampling, as well as stock assessment methods. Part III examines management models for effectively assessing the natural variability in fisheries resources. The authors explore ways of determining the allowable catch in response to changes in stock abundance and how to incorporate ecological processes and monitoring procedures into management models. This book offers readers a broad understanding of sustainable exploitation as well as insights into fisheries management for the next generation.