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Government management of fisheries has been little short of disastrous. In many regions, valuable fish stocks have collapsed as a result of overfishing. Ill-conceived regulation also means that every year millions of tons of edible fish are thrown back dead into the sea. While an absence of established property rights means that wild fish are vulnerable to overfishing, the problem is greatly exacerbated by large subsidies. State intervention has created significant overcapacity in the industry and undermined the economic feedback mechanisms that help to protect stocks. This short book sets out a range of policy options to improve outcomes. As well as ending counterproductive subsidies, these include community-based management of coastal zones and the introduction of individual transferable quotas. The analysis is particularly relevant to the UK as it begins the process of withdrawal from the European Union. After decades of mismanagement under the Common Fisheries Policy, Brexit represents a major opportunity to adopt an economically rational approach that benefits the fishing industry, taxpayers and consumers.

This book sheds light into the uneasy relationship between the 'IUU fishing' designation as a governance mechanism, and international law. Building on previous literature, this original study will be of interest to international fisheries governance academics and policymakers alike.

Gillnet fisheries are widely thought to pose a conservation threat to many populations of marine mammals, seabirds, and turtles. Gillnet fisheries also support a significant proportion of small-scale fishing communities worldwide. Despite a large number of studies on protected-species bycatch in recent decades, relatively few have examined the underlying causes of bycatch and fewer still have considered the issue from a multitaxon perspective. We used 3 bibliographic databases and one search engine to identify studies by year of publication and taxon. The majority of studies on the mechanisms of gillnet bycatch are not accessible through the mainstream published literature. Many are reported in technical papers, government reports, and university theses. We reviewed over 600 published and unpublished studies of bycatch in which causal or correlative factors were considered and identified therein 28 environmental, operational, technical, and behavioral factors that may be associated with high or low bycatch rates of the taxa. Of the factors considered, 11 were associated with potential bycatch reduction in 2 out of the 3 taxa, and 3 factors (water depth, mesh size, and net height) were associated with trends in bycatch rate for all 3 taxa. These findings provide a basis to guide further experimental work to test hypotheses about which factors most influence bycatch rates and to explore ways of managing fishing activities and improving gear design to minimize the incidental capture of species of conservation concern while ensuring the viability of the fisheries concerned. Se cree extensamente que las pesquerías que utilizan redes significan una amenaza para la conservación de muchas poblaciones de mamíferos marinos, aves marinas y tortugas. Las pesquerías con redes también sustentan a una proporción significativa de comunidades pesqueras a nivel mundial. A pesar del gran número de estudios sobre la captura incidental de especies protegidas realizados en la década reciente, relativamente pocos han examinado las causas subyacentes de la captura incidental y muchos menos han considerado el tema desde una perspectiva multi-taxón. Utilizamos tres bases de datos bibliográficas y un buscador para identificar a los estudios por año de publicación y por taxón. La mayoría de los estudios sobre los mecanismos de la captura incidental con redes de pesca no son accesibles por medio de la literatura publicada convencionalmente. Muchos estudios están reportados en artículos técnicos, reportes del gobierno y tesis universitarias. Revisamos más de 600 estudios publicados y no-publicados sobre la captura incidental, en los que los factores correlativos o causales fueron considerados e identificados dentro de 28 factores ambientales, operativos, técnicos y de comportamiento que pueden asociarse con las tasas altas o bajas de captura colateral de los taxa. De los factores considerados, once estuvieron asociados con la reducción potencial de la captura incidental en dos de los tres taxa, y tres factores (profundidad del agua, tamaño de la malla y altura de la red) estuvieron asociados con las tendencias de la tasa de captura incidental para los tres taxa. Estos hallazgos proporcionan una base para guiar más allá al trabajo experimental para probar hipótesis sobre cuáles factores influyen sobre las tasas de captura incidental y para explorar formas de manejo de las actividades de pesca y el mejoramiento del diseño del equipo para minimizar la captura incidental de las especies de interés de conservación, a la vez que se asegura la viabilidad de las pesquerías involucradas.

The International Ocean Institute - Canada has compiled more than 80 insightful essays on the future of ocean governance and capacity development, based largely on themes of its Training Program at Dalhousie University in Canada, to honor the work of Elisabeth Mann Borgese (1918-2002).

As the human population and demand for food grow 1 , the ocean will be called on to provide increasing amounts of seafood. Although fisheries reforms and advances in offshore aquaculture (hereafter ‘mariculture’) could increase production 2 , the true future of seafood depends on human responses to climate change 3 . Here we investigated whether coordinated reforms in fisheries and mariculture could increase seafood production per capita under climate change. We find that climate-adaptive fisheries reforms will be necessary but insufficient to maintain global seafood production per capita, even with aggressive reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. However, the potential for sustainable mariculture to increase seafood per capita is vast and could increase seafood production per capita under all but the most severe emissions scenario. These increases are contingent on fisheries reforms, continued advances in feed technology and the establishment of effective mariculture governance and best practices. Furthermore, dramatically curbing emissions is essential for reducing inequities, increasing reform efficacy and mitigating risks unaccounted for in our analysis. Although climate change will challenge the ocean’s ability to meet growing food demands, the ocean could produce more food than it does currently through swift and ambitious action to reduce emissions, reform capture fisheries and expand sustainable mariculture operations. Sustainable mariculture could increase seafood production under almost all climate-change scenarios analysed, but this would require substantial fisheries reforms, continued advances in feed technology and the establishment of effective mariculture governance and best practices.

Although climate change is altering the productivity and distribution of marine fisheries, climate-adaptive fisheries management could mitigate many of the negative impacts on human society. We forecast global fisheries biomass, catch, and profits to 2100 under three climate scenarios (RCPs 4.5, 6.0, 8.5) and five levels of management reform to (1) determine the impact of climate change on national fisheries and (2) quantify the national-scale benefits of implementing climate-adaptive fisheries reforms. Management reforms accounting for shifting productivity and shifting distributions would yield higher catch and profits in the future relative to today for 60-65% of countries under the two least severe climate scenarios but for only 35% of countries under the most severe scenario. Furthermore, these management reforms would yield higher cumulative catch and profits than business-as-usual management for nearly all countries under the two least severe climate scenarios but would yield lower cumulative catch for 40% of countries under the most severe scenario. Fortunately, perfect fisheries management is not necessary to achieve these benefits: transboundary cooperation with 5-year intervals between adaptive interventions would result in comparable outcomes. However, the ability for realistic management reforms to offset the negative impacts of climate change is bounded by changes in underlying biological productivity. Although realistic reforms could generate higher catch and profits for 23-50% of countries experiencing reductions in productivity, the remaining countries would need to develop, expand, and reform aquaculture and other food production sectors to offset losses in capture fisheries. Still, climate-adaptive management is more profitable than business-as-usual management in all countries and we provide guidance on implementing-and achieving the benefits of-climate-adaptive fisheries reform along a gradient of scientific, management, and enforcement capacities.

The establishment of marine protected areas is often viewed as a conflict between conservation and fishing. We considered consumptive and nonconsumptive interests of multiple stakeholders (i.e., fishers, scuba divers, conservationists, managers, scientists) in the systematic design of a network of marine protected areas along California's central coast in the context of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. With advice from managers, administrators, and scientists, a representative group of stakeholders defined biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic goals that accommodated social needs and conserved marine ecosystems, consistent with legal requirements. To satisfy biodiversity goals, we targeted 11 marine habitats across 5 depth zones, areas of high species diversity, and areas containing species of special status. We minimized adverse socioeconomic impacts by minimizing negative effects on fishers. We included fine-scale fishing data from the recreational and commercial fishing sectors across 24 fisheries. Protected areas designed with consideration of commercial and recreational fisheries reduced potential impact to the fisheries approximately 21% more than protected areas designed without consideration of fishing effort and resulted in a small increase in the total area protected (approximately 3.4%). We incorporated confidential fishing data without revealing the identity of specific fisheries or individual fishing grounds. We sited a portion of the protected areas near land parks, marine laboratories, and scientific monitoring sites to address nonconsumptive socioeconomic goals. Our results show that a stakeholder-driven design process can use systematic conservation-planning methods to successfully produce options for network design that satisfy multiple conservation and socioeconomic objectives.Marine protected areas that incorporate multiple stakeholder interests without compromising biodiversity conservation goals are more likely to protect marine ecosystems.

Contextualización: la pesca artesanal en el Pacífico colombiano se posiciona como una de las principales fuentes de ingresos de las comunidades asentadas en las costas. Existe una fuerte presión en los recursos pesqueros, con artes de pesca poco selectivos como el trasmallo y la línea de anzuelo de mano, capturando individuos que no han presentado eventos reproductivos y pertenecientes a capturas incidentales y de descarte. Vacío de investigación: en el Pacífico colombiano no se ha explorado las relaciones espacio-temporales entre las capturas objetivo y descarte según las variables ambientales. Propósito del estudio: Evaluar la dinámica espacio-temporal de la captura por unidad de esfuerzo y la sustentabilidad de la pesca artesanal asociada a las variables ambientales en la bahía de Tumaco, Pacífico colombiano. Metodología: se realizaron cuatro muestreos a lo largo del año 2020 y 2021, dos en época seca y dos en época de lluvia con los artes de pesca trasmallo y línea de anzuelo de mano, en las áreas interna y externa, asimismo se realizaron muestras de variables físico-químicas. Resultados y conclusiones: dentro de la captura objetivo, las familias Ariidae y Sciaenidae fueron las más representativas, Pristigasteridae y Gerreidae en la captura incidental y Engraulidae y Cynoglosidae en el descarte. En anzuelo, 94.60% fue captura objetivo, 3.90% incidental y 1.48% perteneció al descarte, mientras que, en trasmallo, 49.07% fue descarte, 41.78% fue captura objetivo y 9.15% fue captura incidental. El trasmallo capturó individuos de menor tamaño (17.49 ± 4.26 cm), lo cual puede indicar que es un arte poco selectivo al no respetar las tallas mínimas de captura. La CPUE total fue mayor con el arte de pesca de anzuelo de mano (8.84 ± 5.42 kg h-1). Las variables salinidad, sólidos totales disueltos y transparencia presentaron una correlación negativa con la captura por unidad de esfuerzo total en el trasmallo, mientras con anzuelo presentaron una asociación positiva. Se recomienda regular el uso de trasmallo en el área interna de la bahía y en época de lluvias por capturar especies comerciales juveniles que se descartan.

Bottom trawling is a fishing technique whereby heavy nets and gear scrape along the sea bed, and is shown here to disturb sediment fluxes and modify the sea floor morphology over large spatial scales. Sea-floor disturbance due to bottom trawling The direct impact of bottom trawling on local fish populations has received much attention, but trawling also affects other aspects of the ocean environment. This paper shows that bottom trawling — a commercial practice in which heavy nets and gear are dragged along the ocean floor — induces sediment reworking and erosion, causing the gradient of the sea floor to become smoother over time. This reduces the morphological complexity of deep-sea environments. The authors draw parallels between the effects of bottom trawling at sea and intensive agriculture on land, with the important difference that, on land, ploughing takes place once or twice a year, whereas, at sea, bottom trawling can be a frequent occurrence. Bottom trawling is a non-selective commercial fishing technique whereby heavy nets and gear are pulled along the sea floor. The direct impact of this technique on fish populations 1 , 2 and benthic communities 3 , 4 has received much attention, but trawling can also modify the physical properties of seafloor sediments, water–sediment chemical exchanges and sediment fluxes 5 , 6 . Most of the studies addressing the physical disturbances of trawl gear on the seabed have been undertaken in coastal and shelf environments 7 , 8 , however, where the capacity of trawling to modify the seafloor morphology coexists with high-energy natural processes driving sediment erosion, transport and deposition 9 . Here we show that on upper continental slopes, the reworking of the deep sea floor by trawling gradually modifies the shape of the submarine landscape over large spatial scales. We found that trawling-induced sediment displacement and removal from fishing grounds causes the morphology of the deep sea floor to become smoother over time, reducing its original complexity as shown by high-resolution seafloor relief maps. Our results suggest that in recent decades, following the industrialization of fishing fleets, bottom trawling has become an important driver of deep seascape evolution. Given the global dimension of this type of fishery, we anticipate that the morphology of the upper continental slope in many parts of the world’s oceans could be altered by intensive bottom trawling, producing comparable effects on the deep sea floor to those generated by agricultural ploughing on land.

This research was funded under the LIFE+ INDEMARES, LIFE 07 NAT/E/00732 (JB JMA) and MCyI project CGL2008-05448-C02/BOS (MG CS LJ). We also thank the financial support from the University of Barcelona to cover publication costs.