Inshore Fisheries Management

Fishers' Knowledge in Fisheries Science and …, 2007

Great complaints are made against the use of the net called 'wondyrchoun' [beam trawl] which drags from the bottom of the sea all the bait that used to be the food of great fish… …[it] runs so heavily and hardly over the ground when fishing that it destroys the flowers of the land below the water and also the spat of oysters, mussels, and other fish upon which the great fish are nourished. .. …Through means of this instrument fishermen catch `such great plenty of small fish that they do not know what to do with them, but fatten their pigs with them'. UK Rolls of Parliament (1376/77) Today, 99% of the world's 51 million fishers are small-scale, producing over half of the global foodfish catch of 98 million tones. One billion people rely on aquatic resources as their main source of dietary protein (Berkes et al. 2001 and references therein). Globally, many fish stocks are depleted. Overall, our capacity to harvest fish continues to outpace our capacity to monitor the effects of fishing, let alone design, implement and enforce effective conservation measures. Fish populations once deemed inexhaustible (Huxley 1883), have been reduced to a fraction of their past abundance (Hilborn et al. 2003). High-level predators in the North Atlantic hover round 10% of their 1900 levels (Christensen et al. 2003; Myers and Worm 2003). Some sharks have suffered declines of over 50% since the mid 1980s (Schindler et al. 2003; Baum et al. 2002). Other species as diverse as marine turtles (Hays et al. 2003) and many species of whales hover at very low levels (Roman and Palumbi 2003). In too many cases, stocks are so depleted that conserving what is left would amount to sharing the present misery (Pitcher 2001). In these cases, the only meaningful option is recovery but we generally know even less about recovery than we do about conservation. 'Fisheries science' and 'management', as currently practiced, are relatively new phenomena. However, knowledge about marine and freshwater ecosystems and social institutions mediating human relationships with those ecosystems is ancient, being a necessity of survival as well as the product of natural human interest in the surrounding world. Together, these have led, throughout the world, to acute observation, experimentation, the formulation and testing of hypotheses, and the development of theories and practices as well as social institutions to regulate resource use and transmit knowledge from generation to generation (Berkes 1999). This book has brought together many case studies from different parts of the world where the knowledge of fishers, their institutions and often the fishers themselves is being actively integrated into fisheries science and management. The chapters represent different points on a number of continua; between contexts where mutual respect, cooperation and reciprocity (Stanley and Rice this vol.) are just evolving and those where formal co-management arrangements operate (Baird and other this vol.); between Indigenous management, state management, and state

2004

Technical reports contain scient ific and technical information that contributes to existing knowledge but which is not normally appropriate for primary literature. Technical reports are directed primarily toward a worldwide audience and have an international distribution. No restriction is placed on subject matter and the series reflects the broad interests and policies of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. namely. fisheries and aquatic sciences. Technical reports may be cited as full publications. The correct citation appears above the abstract of each report. Each report is abstracted in Aquatic Sciences and Fisherie s Abstracts and indexed in the Department's annual index to scientific and technical publications.

Fisheries Research, 2019

Recreational fisheries (RF) are complex social-ecological systems that play an important role in aquatic environments while generating significant social and economic benefits around the world. The nature of RF is diverse and rapidly evolving, including the participants, their priorities and behaviors, and the related ecological impacts and social and economic benefits. RF can lead to negative ecological impacts, particularly through overexploitation of fish populations and spread of non-native species and genotypes through stocking. Hence, careful management and monitoring of RF is essential to sustain these ecologically and socioeconomically important resources. This special issue on recreational fisheries contains diverse research, syntheses, and perspectives that highlight the advances being made in RF research, monitoring, management, and practice, which we summarize here. Co-management actions are rising, often involving diverse interest groups including government and non-government organizations; applying collaborative management practices can help balance social and economic benefits with conservation targets. Technological and methodological advances are improving the ability to monitor biological, social, and economic dynamics of RF, which underpin the ability to maximize RF benefits through management actions. To ensure RF sustainability, much research focuses on the ecological aspects of RF, as well as the development of management and angling practices that reduce negative impacts on fish populations. For example, angler behavior can be influenced to conform to conservation-minded angling practices through regulations, but is often best accomplished through growing bottom-up social change movements. Anglers can also play an important role in fisheries monitoring and conservation, including providing data on fish abundance and assemblages (i.e., citizen science). The increasing impacts that growing human populations are having on the global environment are threatening many of the natural resources and ecosystem services they provide, including valuable RF. However, with careful development of research initiatives, monitoring and management, sustainable RF can generate positive outcomes for both society and natural ecosystems and help solve allocation conflicts with commercial fisheries and conservation.

Ostrovsky, I., Zohary, T., Shapiro, J., Snovsky, G., Markel, D., 2014

Fish are at the top of aquatic food webs impacting on other biota. Removal of fish by fishing, or stocking the lake with desired fish species has the potential to modify fish populations (their size/age structure, abundance and biomass) and various other ecosystem components and thus affect water quality. Analysis of long-term data on the catches of commercially important fish species, stocking of fingerlings, lake water levels, and littoral modifications, allowed revealing the key factors affecting the fish populations, fishing pressure, and mass of landed fish. Long-term decreases in water level negatively affected reproduction and survival of natural/stocked fingerlings of some cyprinids (Mirogrex terraesanctae, Hypophthalamichthys molitrix, Cyprinus carpio) and cichlids (Sarotherodon galilaeus, Oreochromis aureus). In contrast, rapid rises in water level vastly enlarged the areas of inundated terrestrial vegetation and stony/rocky littoral and thus positively affected the reproduction and survival of these fish and their landing after a temporal lag. Fishing pressure on reproductively active large cichlids was enhanced at low water levels due to exposing these fish at spawning time (spring and summer) to fishermen. Such overfishing resulted in lowering the number of reproductively capable cichlids below a certain critical level, leading to a decrease in the reproductive capacity of the population and the collapse of its standing stock (i.e. “recruitment overfishing”). The endemic bleak, Mirogrex terraesanctae is the dominant pelagic zooplanktivore of Lake Kinneret. Large water level fluctuations impacted its reproduction and determined the abundance of this ecologically important species. Bio-manipulation, by mean of subsidized harvesting, implemented to suppress its abundance in critical years, was highly controversial, and was stopped in 2006. Of the stocked grey mullets, Mugil cephalus had lower natural mortality rate, higher growth rate, reached larger sizes, and thus had a higher market value than Liza ramada. Still, fingerlings of the second species were more readily available, such that L. ramada was stocked in larger numbers and was more abundant in the commercial catch. We argue that fish stock management in Lake Kinneret should focus on the restoration of native fish populations and their sustainable fishery. See also chapter: "Fish Biology and Ecology"

Science, 1997

The global marine fish catch is approaching its upper limit. The number of overfished populations, as well as the indirect effects of fisheries on marine ecosystems, indicate that management has failed to achieve a principal goal, sustainability. This failure is primarily due to continually increasing harvest rates in response to incessant sociopolitical pressure for greater harvests and the intrinsic uncertainty in predicting the harvest that will cause population collapse. A more holistic approach incorporating interspecific interactions and physical environmental influences would contribute to greater sustainability by reducing the uncertainty in predictions. However, transforming the management process to reduce the influence of pressure for greater harvest holds more immediate promise.

1998

The trophic cascade and food web management James Kitchell 17 Discussion Points of View-Theme 1 21 The control of undesirable introduced species in small freshwater lakes: what we should learn from past experiments Pierre Magnan 22 Constraints on the intensity of trophic linkages in lake food webs Bill Neill 23 Ecosystem management: the next step Daniel Pauly & Villy Christensen 24 The understanding and prediction of marine production: considerations for the future James Scandol 25 A new method to identify individual natal stream sources of salmonids and migration patterns of fish (poster) Sam Wang & R.Brown 26 Using mass-balance (ECOPATH) food web models to structure dynamic (ECOSIM) simulation models (demonstration)

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Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 1999