Science: Unit 4 Marine Science

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea Journal of Marine Science. Review article looking at data required from fisheries monitoring programmes substantially expand as management authorities transition to implement elements of ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM).

Article from Nature communications, 2020.
Climate change is impacting fisheries world wide with uncertain outcomes for food and nutritional security. Using management strategy evaluations for key US fisheries in the eastern Bering Sea we find that Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) measures forestall future declines under climate change over non-EBFM approaches.

An ecosystem approach is widely seen as a desirable goal for fisheries management but there is little consensus on what strategies or measures are needed to achieve it. Management strategy evaluation (MSE) is a tool that has been widely used to develop and test single species fisheries management strategies and is now being extended to support ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM). We describe the application of MSE to investigate alternative strategies for achieving EBFM goals for a complex multispecies fishery in south eastern Australia.

Fishery resources are important for hundreds of millions of people in the world. However, it has been facing serious threats in recent decades. In fact, Sustainable fisheries have already become a topic of concern. At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015, member states committed to conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas, and marine resources. Conservation and management measures, such as the precautionary approach, have already been developed. However, due to the lack of consideration of the ecosystem, the traditional single-species management approach has not effectively avoided the depletion of fishery resources. Scientists have reminded that if ecosystem-based fisheries management were not implemented, the global fishery resources might collapse around 2048 [1]. Therefore, Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) has gradually received attention.

Globally, many fish species are overexploited, and many stocks have collapsed. This crisis, along with increasing concerns over flow-on effects on ecosystems, has caused a reevaluation of traditional fisheries management practices, and a new ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) paradigm has emerged.

Abstract. A major decline in the catch of the banana prawn [shrimp], Penaeus (Fenneropenaeus) merguiensis, occurred over a six-year period in the Weipa region of the northeastern Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. Three main hypotheses have been developed to explain this decline: (1) prawn recruitment collapsed due to overfishing; (2) recruitment collapsed due to a change in the prawn's environment; and (3) adult banana prawns were still present, but fishers could no longer effectively find or catch them. Qualitative mathematical models were used to link population biology, environmental factors, and fishery dynamics to evaluate the alternative hypotheses. This modeling approach provides the means to rapidly integrate knowledge across disciplines and consider alternative hypotheses about how the structure and function of an ecosystem affects its dynamics.

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is now widely accepted as the best means of managing the complex interactions in marine systems. However, progress towards implementing and operationalizing it has been slow. We take a pragmatic approach to EBM. Our simple definition is balancing human activities and environmental stewardship in a multiple-use context. In this paper, we present case studies on the development and implementation of EBM in Australia.

Introduction to Ecosystem based fishery management.

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.

The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year

JSTOR article from Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, Spring 2005