CCAMLR process of risk assessment to minimise the effects of longline fishing mortality on seabirds

We describe the process used in the fisheries management system of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to minimise seabird bycatch, and the risk-assessment methodology developed to assist this. We examine the progress of several Regional Fishery Management Organisations in taking steps to address seabird bycatch. CCAMLR has the most advanced system of management among the RFMOS covered in this review, and has made the most demonstrable progress in reducing seabird bycatch levels in its longline fisheries. A combination of proven mitigation measures, extensive monitoring by independent observers, annual expert review of seabird bycatch rates and evolving fishery and mitigation practices have been instrumental in reducing seabird bycatch in CCAMLR fisheries.     

Rationalization of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab fisheries

In recent years, overcapacity in Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab fisheries has resulted in a dangerous race for crab. This paper examines a unique management program developed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council intended to alleviate these problems, while accommodating a variety of stakeholders dependent on the fisheries. The discussion concludes by identifying some of the most substantial hurdles that the program must overcome to succeed and some characteristics of the fisheries that contribute to the potential to overcome these obstacles.     

An Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management framework: the efficient,regional-level planning tool for management agencies

The value of applying a regional level, Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) framework, which is a step-wise, hierarchical, risk-based approach, was tested on the West Coast Bioregion of Western Australia. With structured stakeholder input, over 600 ecological, social, economic and governance issues were initially identified for the region. This complexity was reduced to a level useful for management by consolidating the individual risks into 60 regional-level risks, with a multi-criteria analysis used to integrate the ecological, social and economic risks into just 24 Departmental-level priorities, which ranged from very low to urgent. Given this success, EBFM-based priorities now form the basis for the Department’s budget planning process, plus the framework is providing a critical link between fishery level issues and the broader processes undertaken by other marine based agencies. The EBFM framework is a significant step forward for the integrated management of natural resources by enabling all assets and issues relevant to stakeholders and government to be holistically considered at a regional level.     

Constraints and solutions for managing Pacific Island sea cucumber fisheries with an ecosystem approach

The ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) is a holistic paradigm that considers stocks of exploitable species, marine ecosystems and stakeholders. Management agencies must strike a balance between their capacity constraints and the requisites of management measures. Most small-scale sea cucumber fisheries of Pacific Islands have been plundered while others are being opened to commercial exploitation. Data from fishery managers and a regional workshop were used to assess the current problems, institutional constraints and solutions to the management of sea cucumber fisheries in 13 Pacific Island countries (PICs). Technical capacity was often strong for some management actions such as developing marine reserves but weak for others, such as enforcement. Using multi-disciplinary indicators, half of the fisheries were diagnosed by their managers as being overfished or depleted, despite evidence of optimistic bias. Fishery governance varied greatly among the PICs, and co-management frameworks were not typical of any cultural region. Management objectives were prioritised differently among managers but most highly ranked was to protect ecological resilience. The fishery managers proposed different sets of regulatory measures and various management actions, such as surveys to collect socio-economic and fishery-dependent data, support for local governance and strong enforcement – all widely under-practised. Pacific sea cucumber fisheries exemplify how the transition to an EAF by management institutions must involve reorganisation of their technical and human-resource capacities among management tasks. Levies on exports need to be internalised to fund improved management. Management agencies should consider a shift in resources from developing marine reserves, conducting underwater surveys and aquaculture-based restocking to strengthening enforcement capacity, stakeholder involvement and communication with fishers. In concert with these actions, short fishing seasons, shortlists of allowable species and tighter enforcement at export points may serve to turn the tide on boom-and-bust exploitation and safeguard biodiversity.     

Fishery management as a governance network: Examples from the Gulf of Maine and the potential for communication network analysis research in fisheries

It has been suggested that the fisheries management process with multiple, informed stakeholders and socio-economic, political, and scientific complexity can be considered a governance network. This exploratory study applied communication network analysis (CNA) measures and methods to assess two cases of US federal fishery management in the Northwest Atlantic—Atlantic herring and sea scallop. Through questionnaires and interviews, CNA maps were constructed and quantitative measures of network structure and function (density, weighted average path length) and centrality measures for individual network members (degree, betweenness) were derived using InFlow software. The results show that fishery governance networks are horizontally and vertically integrated across levels of government and public–private–nonprofit sectors. The findings validated existing understanding of fisheries management as a contested, competitive management context among stakeholders, and provided new insights about the effectiveness of information sharing across the network and the critical role of bridgers connecting disparate subgroups. Fisheries management can be conceptualized and analyzed as governance networks, and the paper discusses additional research questions, refinements needed for application of the research methods, and ramifications for managers (e.g., can resource managers manage networks).     

The Magnuson-Stevens act (1976) and its reauthorizations: Failure or success for the implementation of fishery sustainability and management in the US?

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (1976), opened a new era of federal fishery management in the United States. It was enacted primarily to establish a system for conserving and managing fisheries in the new 200-mile (EEZ). The US assumed exclusive authority for managing all fisheries within the EEZ, except for highly migratory species such as tunas and billfishes. Within the framework of the Act, eight Regional Fishery Management Councils (Regional Councils) were created, which are responsible for preparing Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs) in federal waters under their jurisdiction. Each FMP must meet a series of National Standards (NSs) for conservation and management. The Act was reauthorized in 1996 with the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA), which aimed at fine tuning the fishery regulatory apparatus that was established under the original Act. This "fine tuning" involved increased attention to biological concerns, and removal of ambiguities within it. The Act was reauthorized again in 2007, mainly to provide for more clear directives and regulations to end overfishing. After more than thirty years since the Act was passed into law, the debate among conservationists, commercial and recreational fishery representatives, and politicians on the effectiveness of the Act in achieving its purported goals it still continues. Is the Act delivering on its promises? Do NSs reflect the most important priorities for the US fishery resources, conservation and sustainable exploitation? Do the Regional Councils represent all parties that should be involved in the fisheries resources management? The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis to answer these questions. This paper begins with a review of the Act and its background, followed by discussion and analysis of the Act's benefits and flaws. Finally, suggestions for the implementation of its structure and future directions in fishery management strategies are made.     

Current and future use of indicators for ecosystem based fisheries management

Implementing ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM) will require a suite of ecological indices to track the state of an ecosystem, in addition to monitoring species-abundance for both economically important species, as well as species that are not targeted for harvest. However, EBFM implementation requires an examination of current methods and applications of ecological indices that are being used. This paper identifies four key uses for ecosystem indices in the context of EBFM and discusses the implications of each: (1) motivation for socio-political action, (2) information for individual users to modify their behavior, (3) implementation of decision rules for management evaluation, and (4) discovery of ecosystem functions to advance scientific knowledge. In a fisheries management context, ecological indicators will be linked to decision rules based on the definitions of both “ecosystem overfishing” and the current single-species definitions of overfishing. Two components of common ecological indicators are species weightings (i.e. catch or abundance data by species) and the species-specific ecological attributes (e.g. mortality rates, body size, trophic level). We discuss statistical issues that arise from estimating the parameters in ecological index calculations from both fishery-dependent and independent data and the potential biases introduced by using catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) data, catch data, and abundance estimates. Given the range of biases that arise, often the best estimates of species weightings (abundances) are those derived from fish stock assessments. This implies that progress in EBFM may be best served by increasing the number of species for which single-species assessments are done and to expand the list of species to include species which may not be economically important. The policy framework exists to carry out EBFM; however, future works needs to focus on empirical management strategy simulations, as well as theoretical works to identify management criteria based on those indicators.     

Economic characteristics and management challenges of the Hawaii pelagic longline fisheries: Will a catch share program help?

To date, none of the fisheries in the U.S. Pacific Islands Region is managed under a catch share program. In light of the NOAA policy to encourage the use of catch shares as a fishery management tool, the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (WPFMC) listed six commercial fisheries, including the Hawaii pelagic longline fishery, the largest in the region, as potential candidates for catch share programs. This study examines the baseline economic characteristics and the main challenges facing the Hawaii pelagic longline fishery and evaluates the impact of these on the desirability and feasibility of a catch share program for this particular fishery.     

Who's who in the Kenai River Fishery SES: A streamlined method for stakeholder identification and investment analysis

The Kenai River Fishery is a unique social–ecological system (SES) with nearly 50 federal, state, local, and nonprofit groups influencing its political, ecological, and social structure. While ecological data exists for this fishery, the complexity of its stakeholder relationships has not been investigated. Stakeholder interactions can directly influence how science is integrated into management decisions and therefore affect the adaptive capacity of SES, such as the Kenai River Fishery. Drawing from the existing stakeholder literature, this methods identifies and ranks the key SES stakeholders and describes their roles. This study approached the question of which stakeholders should be included in a future SES adaptive capacity study by (1) identifying the key stakeholders within the Kenai River Fishery, (2) ranking each stakeholder’s investment within the fishery using eleven categories of interaction, and (3) using these eleven categories to characterize each stakeholder's role within the SES. The largest number of stakeholders fall into the secondary investment category, showing that a relatively small number of resource managers are interacting with a large number of diverse nonprofit organizations. The top ranking stakeholders in this study will be invited to attend participatory scenarios workshops that will build the foundation for a deeper scenarios-based analysis of SES adaptive capacity.     

Stakeholder objective preferences in Australian Commonwealth managed fisheries

Fisheries management is increasingly involving a wide range of stakeholders in the decision making process. However, in most fisheries, the set of management objectives are poorly defined, and the implicit importance placed on these objectives may vary considerably both between and within different stakeholder groups. This may lead to conflicts within management advisory groups where members from different stakeholder groups view potential management outcomes substantially differently, and inconsistencies in decision making when changes in stakeholder representation take place. In this paper, the institutional structure of fisheries management in Australia and the roles the different organisations play in shaping fisheries management plans are detailed. An explicit hierarchy of management objectives is developed in collaboration with key managers and policy makers. A large survey of stakeholders involved in Australian Commonwealth fisheries management was undertaken to determine stakeholder preferences relating to these objectives. The results highlight the differences in perspectives regarding the relative importance of the multiple objectives of fisheries management. While on average stakeholder preferences generally correspond with their expected preference set, the results also indicate that there is generally low coherence within stakeholder groups.     

A requiem for the IFQ in US fisheries?

Despite their apparent economic benefits to harvesters, individual fishing quotas (IFQs) have only been adopted in three US fisheries: Mid-Atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog; South Atlantic wreckfish; and, North Pacific halibut and sablefish. During the 1996 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, Congress temporarily blocked implementation of additional IFQ programs in US fisheries. In this paper, we argue that because of the emergence of an alternative, the cooperative, it is unlikely that new IFQs will be adopted in federally managed US fisheries. From an economic perspective, cooperatives offer the advantage of eliminating production externalities that may remain under an IFQ program with relatively large owner classes. More significantly, development of IFQ programs appears to be increasingly overwhelmed by the proliferation of both equity concerns and seemingly interminable rent-seeking behavior — both issues that can effectively block adoption of IFQs. Ironically (and paradoxically?), by reducing the scope of the equity issues acknowledged, the cooperative alternative narrows the pool of claimants and modifies the behavior of the remainder, making implementation more likely. A further irony exists in that IFQs are widely thought to be best designed at the local/regional level while part of the appeal of the cooperative model is that it appears to shortcut the often protracted nature of the local/regional political process by relying on direct intervention from Washington, DC, in the form of actions by Congress or the Justice Department.     

Fishing capacity management in China: Theoretic and practical perspectives

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Committee on Fisheries (COFI) adopted an International Plan of Action for the Management of Fishing Capacity, which calls for all member states to achieve efficient, equitable and transparent management of fishing capacity by 2005. Based on the theoretical review of fishing capacity management, this paper examines the major practices made by China's government in managing the fishing capacity of its marine capture fisheries. Finally, it categorizes the main practices and then analyses and evaluates their effects.     

The fishery conservation and management act of 1976: Organizational structure and conceptual framework

The author introduces a theoretical context for discussing the organizational structure and conceptual framework of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. He applies this to the Regional Fishery Management Councils established under the Act in order to assess the trends in their evolution and, in particular, to examine the balance between federal and regional authority over fisheries management. He concludes that structural and conceptual dichotomies within the Act provide a desirable flexibility, but could be counterproductive if the Regional Fishery Management Councils do not take specific action to commission the data that they require to fulfil the roles authorized by the Act. Without such action an imbalance could arise which would lead to their demise or subservience to federal authority and advice.     

Formalizing expert knowledge to compare alternative management plans: Sociological perspective to the future management of Baltic salmon stocks

Designing and implementing long-term management plans is difficult both because of the complexity of the fisheries system, and the behaviour of humans. We compared four alternative management plans for the Baltic salmon stocks through approaching experts who interpreted and expressed the views of different stakeholder groups on the options. The focus of the study was on stakeholders’ commitment to the alternative management plans. Committing enhances the probability of achieving the ultimate objective of a plan, while if stakeholders do not commit, the effects of the plan may be less predictable. Thus commitment is an important part of implementation uncertainty in fisheries management. We present how we coupled qualitative analysis with probabilistic Bayesian networks in analysing expert knowledge related to alternative long term management plans in terms of group commitment. Using a Bayesian net provides potential for creating a holistic picture of a fishery by combining the data describing fishers’ commitment with biological data regarding fish stock dynamics and with economic data analyzing economically sound fisheries management.     

Management of the commons for biodiversity: lessons from the North Pacific

The North Pacific has the world's largest groundfish fisheries, with a value in excess of $1 billion annually. The North Pacific also is home to the largest population of Steller sea lions (SSL), an ancient species that is now endangered. Decline of the western stock of SSL in the 1970–1990s coincided with the US nationalization and exponential growth in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands groundfish fishery.The article treats five aspects of the competition between the fishery and protection of the endangered species. First, we analyze competition of interests in the use, management, and preservation of the North Pacific commons, including offshore and near-shore fisheries, environmental organizations, governments (federal, state, and local), and the scientific community. Second, the article compares and contrasts provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Magnuson–Stevens Act (as amended in 1996 by the Sustainable Fisheries Act).Third, we examine the regulatory environment with a focus on the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and its relationship to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. We illustrate how NMFS establishes fishery management plans and the methods, such as crafting biological opinions and environmental-impact-statements, it uses to resolve conflicts. Fourth, we investigate how the dual pressures on the agency—to increase fisheries production for the benefit of the industry and to preserve endangered marine species—have affected its culture (behavioral norms and operational codes). Then, the article explains agency changes in terms of crises, competition among affected interests, and development of new scientific knowledge.The article concludes by drawing lessons from the SSL controversy in the North Pacific which may pertain to national and global biodiversity conflicts. These concern the role of law in biodiversity protection, the role of science, and agency capacity for change.     

Ecosystem-based fisheries management in small-scale tropical marine fisheries: Emerging models of governance arrangements in the Philippines

There has been a gradual evolution in fisheries management over the past decades from a focus on sustainability of a single species or stock and resources to a focus on marine ecosystems. Among the issues to be addressed for effective implementation of ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM) are the appropriate governance arrangements and scale for management. The purpose of this paper is to examine these issues of governance and scale as related to EBFM in tropical developing countries through an analysis of approaches being taken in the Philippines to manage fisheries on a multi-jurisdictional level. The management of fisheries and coastal resources in a number of bays and gulfs, which represent marine ecosystems, is presented. The opportunities and constraints to ecosystem based fisheries management in the Philippines are discussed and lessons for broader application of these governance structures in tropical developing country marine ecosystems are presented.     

Are input controls required in individual transferable quota fisheries to address ecosystem based fisheries management objectives?

This study examined the use of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) to effectively manage fishing impacts on all ecosystem components, as required under Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) principles. A consequence of changing from input controls to output-based (catch) management is that the control of the regulating authority tends to be reduced, which may affect the outcomes for ecosystem management. This study reviewed the use of input controls across six fishing methods in 18 ITQ fisheries, which have been independently accredited as ecologically sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (12 fisheries) or under Australian environmental legislation for Wildlife Trade Operation (six fisheries). Input controls were retained across a range of ITQ fisheries, with non-selective fisheries such as trawl, gillnet and line employing more input controls than selective fisheries such as purse-seine, pot/trap and dredge. Further case-studies confirmed the widespread and recent use of input controls (spatial and temporal closures) with the aim of managing ecosystem impacts of fishing. The retention of input controls, particularly closures affects the security (quality of title) characteristic of the fishing use right and the theoretical ability of fishers to manage their right for their future benefit. The security characteristic is weakened by closures through loss of access, which undermines industry trust and incentive for long-term decision making. By reducing the security of ITQs, individual fisher incentives and behaviour may separate from societal objectives for sustainability, which was one of the foremost reasons for introducing ITQ management.     

Stakeholder perceptions of the northern Gulf of Mexico grouper and tilefish individual fishing quota program

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council determined that previous management of the grouper and tilefish fisheries in the northern Gulf of Mexico were not meeting management goals, and developed a catch shares program using individual fishing quotas (IFQs) beginning in January 2010 in order to more effectively manage these fisheries. An IFQ is a management method in which individual fishers and corporations are allocated the right to harvest a percentage of a fishery's total allowable catch, thus specifying how much of a particular species each fisher can harvest. This study makes use of a mail out survey to document the perceptions of fishers, seafood wholesalers, fisheries managers, and academics with an interest in the (northern) Gulf of Mexico grouper and tilefish IFQ program. While fishers, seafood dealers, fisheries managers, and academics all acknowledge that the IFQ program will create some problems, commercial fishers and dealers were far more skeptical of the alleged benefits of IFQs. Moreover, larger commercial operators were more inclined to agree with managers and academics that the IFQ program will produce several benefits for their operations and the fisheries. Some smaller operators believe that they will be driven to ignore the new rules or be forced out of business. In the future, the Gulf Council might do two things: put a bit more effort into making fishers aware of the potential benefits of IFQs, and develop alternatives with more flexibility perhaps working more closely with communities of fishers, who prize their independent way of life above all else.     

The incorporation of traditional knowledge into Alaska federal fisheries management

Fisheries policy and management processes for federal waters off western Alaska currently lack consistent and considered integration of traditional knowledge (TK), TK holders, social science of TK, and subsistence information. The incorporation of these into fisheries work can lead to more informed, equitable and effective policy and management practices. This paper includes information and recommendations derived from previous work by the authors as well as from two community workshops with indigenous TK holders and fisheries experts. Discussions of TK and related concepts, TK research in the Bering Strait and Yukon River regions, and Alaska federal fisheries management-related institutions and processes as pertains to TK are presented. Substantive recommendations are provided for improving processes, increasing tribal representation, capacity building, effective communication, outreach and relationship-building, the incorporation of indigenous concerns and values, and regarding the development of a Fisheries Ecosystem Plan for the Bering Sea.