Recontextualising inshore fisheries: The changing face of British inshore fisheries management

Inshore fisheries are coming under increasing pressure to account for wider environmental impacts and relations with other users of marine space. However approaches to inshore fisheries management across Britain’s devolved governments are becoming even more strikingly divergent. While in England the century old local Sea Fisheries Committees are to be replaced with modernised structures, and in Scotland there are efforts to move to a locally driven management system, in Wales there has been a retreat from local co-management. Not only do the reforms pose ongoing challenges for good governance, not least in the handling of cross-scale interactions and user group participation, but they may also fall short in providing for systematic and full integration of fisheries and marine environmental management.     

Corruption and regulatory compliance: Experimental findings from South African small-scale fisheries

Although corruption is often mentioned as an obstacle to fisheries management, its negative effects have seldom been investigated empirically in a systematic manner. This article examines the impact of corruption on regulatory compliance among South African small-scale fishermen. Results from scenario experiments with 181 participants confirm that perceived corruptibility of the enforcing authority corrodes the willingness to comply with regulations. Both grand and petty types of corruption have significant effects. Attitudes related to moral support of the regulations, perceived inclusion in the decision making leading to regulations and an individual record of law breaking all affect the willingness to comply. However, these effects are trumped by the relative size of the negative impact of corruption. These findings underline the importance of curbing corruption involving public officials in the small-scale fisheries sector.     

Tracing anthropogenic inputs to production in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan - A stable isotope approach

The Seto Inland Sea (SIS) receives waste runoff from ∼24% of Japan’s total population, yet it is also important in regional fisheries, recreation and commerce. During August 2006 we measured carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of particulate organic matter (POM) and zooplankton across urban population gradients of the SIS. Results showed a consistent trend of increasing δ¹⁵N in POM and zooplankton from the western to eastern subsystems of the SIS, corresponding to increasing population load. Principal components analysis of environmental variables indicated high positive loadings of δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C with high chlorophyll-a and surface water temperatures, and negative loadings of low salinities related to inputs from large rivers and high urban development in the eastern SIS. Anthropogenic nitrogen was therefore readily integrated into the SIS food web from primary production to copepods, which are a critical food source for many commercially important fishes.     

Who’s Winning the Public Process? How to Use Public Documents to Assess the Equity,Efficiency, and Effectiveness of Stakeholder Engagement

Abstract

It is widely recognized that stakeholder engagement processes produce advantages, but few studies acknowledge that they also can produce disadvantages. There is a global need to better assess stakeholder engagement processes by defining success and developing new methods to analyze stakeholder participation data. Our method of digitizing and coding stakeholder communications (1) produces a wide range of analyses, (2) tells the story of governance over time, (3) is comparable with other datasets, and (4) can be used wherever public documents exist. We demonstrate the utility of these integrated methods by examining statewide differences in public participation and success rates in Alaska’s Board of Fisheries’ (Board) proposal process. We determine that significantly different participation and success rates across the state indicate the existence of disadvantages and the need for further investigation into the equity, efficiency, and effectiveness of the Board process.     

An assessment of “fishing down marine food webs” in coastal states during 1950–2010

渔获物平均营养级（Mean trophic level of fishery landings,MTL）是目前评估人类捕捞活动影响的研究中使用最广泛的生物多样性指标之一。根据联合国粮农组织FAO提供的渔获生产统计数据,结合Fishbase提供的相关鱼种营养级数据,本文评估了1950-2010年太平洋、大西洋和印度洋各沿海国海洋渔业开发状态。研究发现,在全球三大洋75个主要捕捞国中,43个国家MTL呈显著下降趋势,发生了Pauly于1998年提出的“捕捞降低海洋食物网”现象;但是,仅16个国家MTL的下降是由于高营养级种类的衰退,而27个国家属于“捕捞沿着海洋食物网”的下降机制。此外,20个国家MTL呈恢复上升趋势,但是,该恢复上升趋势通常伴随着传统低营养级种类产量的大幅下降;在上述20个国家中,11个国家的低营养级鱼类产量呈显著下降趋势。需谨慎分析“捕捞降低海洋食物网”现象,掌握MTL的潜在变化机制。     

The Geography of Fish: The Use of Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis Tools in Fisheries Research

Rather than seeing the oceans as an expansive void, researchers using acoustic technologies can detect the heterogeneity of biological resources and view the marine environment as a three-dimensional landscape. Underwater remote sensing, using acoustics, provides high resolution maps of the spatial distribution of organisms in aquatic ecosystems. Analyzing the spatial pattern of species distribution within the water column and the impact of that organization on ecological processes bridges the fields of fisheries and spatial analysis. Tools and concepts familiar to geographers, such as remote sensing, GIS, and landscape ecology, contribute to the investigation of large lake and marine ecosystems.     

Economic tradeoffs in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem: Herring and whale-watching

This research attempts to quantify some of the effects of localized depletion of herring by examining the search times of commercial whale-watching vessels. Whale-watching vessels are indirect users of herring; whales feed on herring and may disperse when prey availability is low. A dataset of daily whale-watching outcomes is combined with fishing effort and oceanographic data to test the hypothesis that intensive fishing effort increases the search time of whale-watching companies. Our results suggest that fishing may have a detrimental impact on search time; however, the magnitude of this effect is fairly small. We find policy that the recently enacted policy which prohibits fishing for herring in whale-watching areas would decrease search times by a small amount. We find some evidence of a localized aggregation effect; search times are the lowest when herring are spawning in the inshore areas. These results should be of interest to policymakers in determining future fishing regulations in an ecosystem-based fisheries management context.     

陆地水体对周围空气比湿影响的初步研究

通过建立一个包含比较详细的地面和水体内物理过程的非静力近似中小尺度数值模式,模拟陆地水体对周围空气比湿影响的空间分布,模拟结果与实际情况比较接近。计算结果表明:水体在冬季和夏季都增加周围空气的比湿;增加的幅度是晴天大于阴天、夜间大于白天、冬季大于夏季;仅在夏季晴天正午时,由于水体强烈降温,近水面大气层结很稳定,水体附近空气比湿略有降低。空气比湿的改变主要发生在气流刚过水面的2—3km范围内;在岸上水体影响接近指数律减小,水体对空气比湿影响消失的距离为:在上风岸不到4km,下风岸可超过20km;水体影响空气比湿的高度为200—400m。     

Harvesters׳ perspectives on the management of British Columbia׳s giant red sea cucumber fishery

In recent decades, sea cucumber fisheries have rapidly expanded worldwide to meet rising demand in Asian markets. Catch trends have often followed a boom-and-bust trajectory and skyrocketing sea cucumber value has often spurred fishery development that outpaced adequate biological research for informed stock assessment. Currently, the dive fishery for Giant red sea cucumber (Parastichopus californicus) in British Columbia, Canada is considered moderately exploited. However, basic population parameters such as recruitment and mortality rates are still largely unknown, creating important sources of uncertainty in the fishery׳s stock assessment model. This study presents the results of an interview-based survey of experienced commercial harvesters׳ (1) perceptions of local trends in sea cucumber abundance, size, and fishing effort (CPUE), and (2) perceptions of management efficacy. The majority of harvesters perceived abundance (14/20) and CPUE (15/20) to have declined over their careers, and half of the harvesters reported decreased sea cucumber size. The harvesters most commonly cited overfishing as the most pressing problem facing the fishery (13/20), and the majority felt that Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) needed to lower licence and/or area quotas to avoid further declines. Despite many knowledge gaps in the fishery, almost all harvesters (16/20) perceived that they are not adequately consulted and their concerns are not adequately considered by DFO. These results suggest a disjoint between DFO forecasts and perceived local sea cucumber trends, and highlight that the fishery may lack a resource-rights framework with adequate checks to decouple fishing pressure from increasing global market value and demand. Maintaining the long-term health of the BC sea cucumber fishery may depend on working more closely with harvesters to inform future management decisions and, ideally, moving towards a harvester-owned-and-operated licencing system that can better integrate the feedback that comes from attachment to place.