Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Perception on definitions, implementations, and aspirations

PLOS ONE, Nov 2019

Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) was developed to move beyond single species management by incorporating ecosystem considerations for the sustainable utilization of marine resources. Due to the wide range of fishery characteristics, including different goals of fisheries management across regions and species, theoretical best practices for EBFM vary greatly. Here we highlight the lack of consensus in the interpretation of EBFM amongst professionals in marine science and its implementation. Fisheries policy-makers and managers, stock assessment scientists, conservationists, and ecologists had very different opinions on the degree to which certain management strategies would be considered EBFM. We then assess the variability of the implementation of EBFM, where we created a checklist of characteristics typifying EBFM and scored fisheries across different regions, species, ecosystems, and fishery size and capacity. Our assessments show fisheries are unlikely to meet all the criteria on the EBFM checklist. Consequentially, it is unnecessary for management to practice all the traits of EBFM, as some may be disparate from the ecosystem attributes or fishery goals. Instead, incorporating some ecosystem-based considerations to fisheries management that are context-specific is a more realistic and useful way for EBFM to occur in practice.

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Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Perception on definitions, implementations, and aspirations

January Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Perception on definitions, implementations, and aspirations John T. Trochta 0 1 2 Maite Pons 0 1 2 Merrill B. Rudd 0 1 2 Melissa Krigbaum 0 1 2 Alexander Tanz 0 2 Ray Hilborn 0 1 2 ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. 0 2 0 2 0 Funding: The funders in this study, including the Walton Family Foundation, the David and Luciele Packard Foundation, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, Environmental Defense, The Nature Conservancy, and several fishing companies (At-sea Processors Association, Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation, Freezer Longline Coalition , Groundfish Forum/Alaska , USA 1 School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America, 2 School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington , Seattle, Washington , United States of America 2 Editor: Heather M. Patterson, Department of Agriculture and Water Resources , AUSTRALIA Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) was developed to move beyond single species management by incorporating ecosystem considerations for the sustainable utilization of marine resources. Due to the wide range of fishery characteristics, including different goals of fisheries management across regions and species, theoretical best practices for EBFM vary greatly. Here we highlight the lack of consensus in the interpretation of EBFM amongst professionals in marine science and its implementation. Fisheries policy-makers and managers, stock assessment scientists, conservationists, and ecologists had very different opinions on the degree to which certain management strategies would be considered EBFM. We then assess the variability of the implementation of EBFM, where we created a checklist of characteristics typifying EBFM and scored fisheries across different regions, species, ecosystems, and fishery size and capacity. Our assessments show fisheries are unlikely to meet all the criteria on the EBFM checklist. Consequentially, it is unnecessary for management to practice all the traits of EBFM, as some may be disparate from the ecosystem attributes or fishery goals. Instead, incorporating some ecosystem-based considerations to fisheries management that are context-specific is a more realistic and useful way for EBFM to occur in practice. - Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Introduction Fishery effects on social-ecological systems are far-reaching and complex, with the potential for mismanagement leading to severe ecosystem impacts. For example, overfishing led to the collapse of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) off Labrador and northeastern Newfoundland in 1991 [ 1 ]. While the fishing moratorium was expected to lead to Atlantic cod population recovery, population growth from a drastically reduced state was slower than expected [ 2 ] due to competition with a shellfish-dominated ecosystem [ 3 ]. Change in ecosystem structure due to heavy exploitation may leave communities more vulnerable to invasion [ 4 ]. For example, due Seafood Coop, Icicle Seafoods, Pacific Seafood Processors Association, United Catcher Boats, American Seafood Group, Arctic Storm Management Group, Blue Harvest, Clearwater Seafoods, Glaciar Pesquera, Glacier Fish Company, Havfisk ASA, HB Grandi, Irvin & Johnson, Sea Harvest, Nergard AS, Nueva Pescanova, Ocean Choice International, Pacific Seafood Group, Parleviet & Van der Plas, Samherji hf., San Arawa S.A., Sanford Ltd., Sealord Group, Trident Seafoods Corp. and United States Seafoods LLC) provided partial funding to pay for the publication of this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: This work was financially supported by several fishing companies (At-sea Processors Association, Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation, Freezer Longline Coalition, Groundfish Forum/Alaska Seafood Coop, Icicle Seafoods, Pacific Seafood Processors Association, United Catcher Boats, American Seafood Group, Arctic Storm Management Group, Blue Harvest, Clearwater Seafoods, Glaciar Pesquera, Glacier Fish Company, Havfisk ASA, HB Grandi, Irvin & Johnson, Sea Harvest, Nergard AS, Nueva Pescanova, Ocean Choice International, Pacific Seafood Group, Parleviet & Van der Plas, Samherji hf., San Arawa S.A., Sanford Ltd., Sealord Group, Trident Seafoods Corp. and United States Seafoods LLC). This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. to trophic interactions between the invasive lionfish and native reef fish predators in the Gulf of Mexico, reducing harvest of commercially valuable snapper and grouper species may lead to lower lionfish densities in the future [ 5 ]. Traditional fisheries management has focused on single species sustainability for commercially valuable species. Single-species m (...truncated)


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John T. Trochta, Maite Pons, Merrill B. Rudd, Melissa Krigbaum, Alexander Tanz, Ray Hilborn. Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Perception on definitions, implementations, and aspirations, PLOS ONE, 2018, Volume 13, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190467