Sustaining Marine Fisheries (1999) / Chapter Skim
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5 Options for Achieving Sustainability
5 Options for Achieving Sustainability
Pages 77-116
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From page 77... ...
MANAGEMENT Previous chapters have suggested that management difficulties include a lack of scientific information; a lack of full appreciation and use of available scientific information; a risk-prone approach; a lack of appreciation for ecosystem and other nonfishery values; the need to balance many goals and values, some of which conflict and many of which are not clearly articulated; and space and time scales of management that do not coincide with the distribution of the target species, their ecosystems, or fishing communities. The committee concludes that to approach the goal of sustainability managers should adopt a conservative, risk-averse approach that recognizes ecosystem values.
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From page 78... ...
or plan amendments. They are implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
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From page 79... ...
6. Conservation and management measures shall take into account and allow for variations among, and contingencies in, fisheries, fishery resources, and catches.
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From page 80... ...
In early 1995, striped bass were declared by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to be fully recovered (NMFS 1996a)
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From page 81... ...
. The National Marine Fisheries Service has drafted a national bycatch plan (NMFS 1998)
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From page 82... ...
However, establishment of individual quotas for bycatch as well as for the target species appears to allow better control of results (Trumble 1996) : managers then have the option of keeping the target catch constant and reducing bycatch or of increasing the target catch while keeping bycatch constant.
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From page 83... ...
The NRC also endorsed the National Marine Fisheries Service regulations requiring the use of turtle-excluder devices, which are a form of BRD. Changing fishing gear could mean changing emphasis, for example from long-lines to trawls, or vice versa, depending on the nature and extent of the bycatch.
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From page 84... ...
, provide some protection from pollution, protect the marine landscape from degradation caused by destructive fishing practices, provide an important opportunity to learn about marine ecosystems and species dynamics, and protect all components of a marine community (Agardy 1994, Allison et al. 1998, Bohnsack 1998)
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From page 85... ...
For example, of the citations in Table 51, only about half of the studies compared target species before and after reserve establishment. The rest compared areas inside and outside reserves, which does not adequately control for differences attributable simply to habitat quality.
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From page 86... ...
Some Practical Considerations Despite the clear advantages of marine reserves as management, conservation, and research tools, their effectiveness depends crucially on how well they are matched to managers' goals as well as to management outside their boundaries. For example, if a reserve is designed to protect an individual species, is enough known about ecosystem processes to predict the result with confidence (e.g., coral reefs as described by Jackson [1997]
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From page 87... ...
There are very few marine areas in which all species and all aspects of the habitat are protected. How much of the marine environment should be included in marine protected areas for them to fulfill their primary functions of ameliorating environmental and management uncertainty, providing a source of eggs, larvae, and recruits to adjacent areas, and protecting critical habitat?
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From page 88... ...
. Current understanding of marine ecosystems and populations cannot rigorously defend this number against all criticism, but it does provide a rationale for adopting a marine reserve program of this magnitude.
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From page 89... ...
In all of the above cases, enforcement was a problem that could be solved only when local fishers were sufficiently committed to the reserves and sufficiently concerned about threats to their resources that they were willing to act together to enforce the rules and pre vent poaching. These cases demonstrate that even local fisheries using little modern technol ogy can devastate local marine ecosystems.
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From page 90... ...
An Economic Argument for Marine Protected Areas The establishment of MPAs has the potential to affect many fishers, especially to the degree that they lack mobility and the MPA excludes them from traditional fishing areas. It also might appear to impose a heavy cost on industry with no offsetting benefits.
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From page 91... ...
. Accordingly, one of the major institutional challenges to using ecosystem approaches is the construction, or reconstruction, of appropriate boundaries, tailored to each specific fishery and fishery-management issues.
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From page 92... ...
-- This agreement added to the UNCLOS framework provisions for international management of highly migratory fish species (e.g., tunas, billfishes) and fish stocks that cross international borders.
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From page 93... ...
all fishing activities must have prior management authorization and be sub ject to periodic review; g. an established legal and institutional framework for fishery management, within which management plans that implement the above points are instituted for each fishery, and h.
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From page 94... ...
. In addition, the workings of the regional councils tend to reflect and perhaps increase competition among fishing sectors and engender adversarial relationships with the National Marine Fisheries Service, as well as increased reliance on lawsuits and congressional involvement.
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From page 95... ...
Examples include Pacific halibut, walleye pollock in Alaska, and various cases where the controls became absolute (i.e., the fishery was completely halted, such as striped bass in waters of the eastern United States)
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From page 96... ...
The essence of the problem is that a fishery-management system that makes participants compete for shares of the resource does not provide incentives for efficiency and conservation. The alternative are fishery-management systems that assign exclusive rights or access privileges to a share of the resource.
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From page 97... ...
. The nature of the right or privilege may be a specific amount of catch, an annual share of a total allowable catch, a specific amount of fishing effort or units of fishing capacity, or a geographically defined fishing area.
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From page 98... ...
. Pacific herring live most of their adult lives in the ocean and return to San Francisco Bay only to spawn.
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From page 99... ...
There are examples of coastal communities that succeeded in managing fishery resources sustainably and avoiding overexploitation (Christy 1982, Cordell 1989, McGoodwin 1990, Hviding and Baines 1994, Pinkerton and Weinstein 1995, Leal 1996) , although in some cases, the demand for food can overwhelm the ability of coastal communities to manage their resources (Simenstad et al.
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From page 100... ...
Like many small-scale, fishery-dependent coastal settlements, virtual communities have the potential to provide the social framework for managing fisheries sustainably. The essence of community is mutual communication, shared understanding for the need to solve problems, and collective action.
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From page 101... ...
. Individual Transferable Quotas A popular, albeit controversial, management scheme for fisheries designed to alter economic incentives involves individual catch quotas.
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From page 102... ...
Described this way, ITQs -- being individual transferable quotas -- appear to represent a fundamentally different kind of ownership from virtual communities, in which ownership of the resource is collective. But since ITQs often develop into more than merely claims to catch shares, there is potential for ITQs and virtual communities to be complementary rather than conflicting (Scott 1993)
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From page 103... ...
provided an analysis of ways to adapt institutions and property-rights regimes to an ecosystem approach to fishery management that reflects attributes of the ecosystem and its human users, values ecosystem services, and coordinates interest groups and managers on a broad ecosystem scale (see also NRC 1996b)
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From page 104... ...
. Such institutional complexity is also necessary in managing the biological complexity of marine ecosystems (Ostrom in press)
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From page 105... ...
Ocean science can contribute the requisite information and must also be tapped to develop new tools for observing and managing fish populations and marine ecosystems. Fishery managers are required to use the "best scientific information available" (MSFCMA National Standard #2)
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From page 106... ...
Marine ecosystems are often defined by geographic boundaries, such as the Bering Sea. They can be large and can overlap geographic and political boundaries; their own boundaries are often not easy to delineate or define (Alexander 1990)
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From page 107... ...
They are also necessary to gain a better understanding of human and natural effects on fish populations and marine ecosystems, so that predictive and diagnostic models can be created and may indicate new research topics that should be pursued. Analysis of information collected at regular intervals over extended periods should lead to better understanding of patterns of variation and linkages between human population growth, utilization of resources, environmental degradation, and climate change.
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From page 108... ...
. Other types of monitoring that contribute to an understanding of marine ecosystems include satellite and in situ observations of oceanic conditions that enable estimations and predictions of physical, chemical, and biological factors that influence fisheries.
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From page 109... ...
It is especially important to understand regime shifts and alternative stable states of marine ecosystems and their component fish species. Modeling Obtaining reliable data from observations and experimentation is necessary to develop realistic ecosystem models.
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From page 110... ...
Environmental variability and uncertainty are rarely addressed adequately in the models of any fishery. In particular, information regarding the largest known source of interannual variability, the ENSO phenomenon, should be incorporated into models of fish populations and marine ecosystems.
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From page 111... ...
However, multispecies models require more information for success than single-species models, and should be considered as supplements rather than replacements for them. Another modeling approach deals with trophic interactions among the living elements of marine ecosystems, and drawing inferences about possible ecosystem responses to exploitation of various components from the structure and behavior of such models.
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From page 112... ...
Marine protected areas also can provide a great deal of information on the effects of fisheries, environmental fluctuations, and other factors on fishing if they are implemented adaptively (see, e.g., the study of Polovina and Haight [in press] described above)
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From page 113... ...
An ecosystem approach includes a recognition that many segments of society have many goals and values with respect to marine ecosystems and that pursuit of any one goal is likely to affect how well other goals can be achieved. It does not provide an excuse for ignoring the biology and economics of individual species, industries, interest groups, and other segments of society.
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From page 114... ...
The traditional view of a fishery narrowly fits into this framework with fishing as the only stress, the ecosystem response specified solely in terms of the effect of fishing mortality on a single species, and the outcome in terms of catch. One way of achieving an ecosystem approach is to incrementally add to the list of stresses, the scope of the ecosystem responses, and the type of benefits considered in fishery management.
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From page 115... ...
As described above, information is needed on community-based management; matching institutional scales of complexity to biological ones; the responses of individuals and institutions to a variety of economic, environmental, and political factors; how and whether ITQ and related management regimes can be designed to realize the benefits of market-based approaches to exploitation and stewardship; and so on. Humans are part of the ecosystem and an ecosystem-based approach to management requires information on humans and their systems as well as on the other parts of marine ecosystems.
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From page 116... ...
It seems unlikely that sustainability of marine fisheries will be achieved without a more pervasive and stronger commitment to the precautionary approach.
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