Fisheries are in a state of crisis throughout the world. While there has been some success, truly effective fisheries management seems beyond our grasp. The knowledge needed for proper management contains a broad array of facts and connections from statistical stock assessments, to the information that allows government agencies to track compliance with rules and beyond.This book describes the state-of-the-art knowledge about fishery systems. Seldom seen in a scientific publication regarding fisheries science, this book presents a multidisciplinary perspective of fisheries management. Leading fisheries scholars with backgrounds in biology, ecology, economics and sociology ask how management institutions can learn and put their lessons to use. The Knowledge Base for Fisheries Management offers a unique overview of the world of fisheries management and provides the background to draw conclusions of what is needed to improve management.Covering a wide range of regimes, case studies and professional perspectives, this publication will be an obliged reference to anyone involved on fisheries management, assessment, policy making or fisheries development all over the world.* The only book on the market that analyzes fisheries in a biological, sociological and economic way* Fills a gap, focusing not only on the production of knowledge for fisheries management but also on how it is used in all steps of the management system and the decision making processes * Focuses on the hot topic: scientific knowledge and society-science based policies * Documents disseminated research from many different management systems, both European and world wide

The increase in commercial fisheries production over the last 50 years has been accompanied by an increase in the level of incidental catch and discarding of a number of species. Approximately one quarter of the marine commercial catch destined for human consumption is discarded at sea. This has raised the concern of a number of groups in society, including environmentalists, humanitarians and fishers themselves. In this paper, the economic incentives to discard fish are examined. The effects of different managemenet policies on these incentives are also investigated. The concept of an optimal level of discarding is discussed taking into account the externalities that can be created by discarding. Finally, the effectiveness of various measures to reduce the level of discarding is reviewed. these including technical, administrative and economic measures.

Increasingly, Australia’s agriculturalists are looking to the nation’s north to escape the decline in southern Australia’s water and soil resources. Booming mineral and gas development is also helping to drive the nation’s economic success. At the same time, the south’s conservation sector would like to see much of the north preserved as iconic wilderness. Both conservation and resource development interests alike are often at odds with the interests of the north’s traditional owners, many of whom remain trapped in welfare dependency and poverty. Indeed, to the ire of north Australians, the past five decades of north Australian history have indeed been characterized by these national-scale conflicts being played out in regional and local communities. This book explores these conflicts as well as the many emerging opportunities facing the development of the north, suggesting that a strong cultural divide between northern and southern Australia exists; one that needs to be reconciled if the nation as a whole is to benefit from northern development. The author first explores where these historical conflicts could take us without a clear forward agenda. A story-based personal narrative from his long and diverse experience in the north gives life to these themes. Finally, the book then draws on these stories to help shape a cohesive agenda for the north’s future.

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.

The world’s stocks of wild fish continue to decline, making the task of finding innovative, sustainable and socially acceptable methods of fisheries management more important than ever. Several new approaches from around the world have proved to be successful in stemming the decline whilst increasing fish catches, and under the editorship of McClanahan and Castilla this international team of authors have looked to these examples to provide the reader with carefully chosen case studies offering practical suggestions and solutions for problem fisheries elsewhere. Coverage includes: Community based fisheries Collaborative and co-operative fisheries management Coastal fisheries management The future for sustainable fisheries management Written by many of the world’s most experienced practitioners Fisheries Management: Progress toward sustainability is an important purchase for all fisheries scientists, managers and conservationists. All libraries in universities and research establishments where this area is studied and taught will find this book a valuable addition to their shelves.

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.

Judged by a dismaying track record and a consequent downturn in the reputation of fisheries scientists, fisheries management is certainly a candidate for calls for reinvention, with many of the world leaders in this area holding the view that no fishery has ever been properly understood or managed. With fisheries science in a state of flux, this extremely important book seeks a new paradigm that will place this flux of ideas in perspective and help us to choose those that will make fisheries management work. The book was planned at a symposium of over 100 fishery researchers at the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and is organized into five parts: Why does Fisheries Science Need Reinventing?; New Policies; The Role of the Social Sciences; Ecology; Modelling. Carefully integrated and edited by three of the world's leading fishery scientists, this stimulating book should find a place on the shelves of all fishery scientists throughout the world. It will be an invaluable reference source to those studying fish biology, fisheries and oceanography and all those involved in fisheries policy decisions in government and university research establishments.