Fisheries Theme Team

New Approaches to Fisheries Management

Background

The US is experiencing both a fisheries crisis (i.e., decline of wild stocks, habitat loss and damage, etc) and a fisheries management crisis. Current fisheries management practices and strategies are not working, because the crisis continues to worsen and the commercial fishing community continues to suffer as more fishermen leave the occupation, experience severe economic losses.

New approaches to fisheries management must be explored in the academic community, in the commercial and recreational fishing industries, in the regulatory agencies and councils, and in coastal resource management programs. Of highest priority in the search for new paradigms in fisheries management is the need for effective communication and genuine partnership among the diverse stakeholders in fisheries management. It is absolutely essential that we work toward closing the wide communications gap between fishermen, researchers, managers, and the interested public.

Cooperative research: The current enthusiasm for "cooperative research" (i.e., partnerships between researchers and commercial fishermen to conduct research) may provide an opportunity to explore new approaches to fisheries management. Cooperative research can include both commercial and recreational fishing groups working in partnership with academic and government scientists. Topics suitable to cooperative research efforts range widely from stock assessment, fish habitat and behavior, impacts of closed areas, environmental assessment, and coastal monitoring. Successful cooperative research efforts will require: consensus-building among all stakeholders in setting research agenda and protocols, use of privately-owned vessels and industry organizations to carry out research and data collection, and collaborative reporting of results. In order for cooperative research efforts to significantly impact fisheries management practices, fishermen must be involved in all aspects of the research - from discussion of research needs, design of testable hypotheses, collection and analysis of data, and interpretation and presentation of results. Only if fishermen are full partners in cooperative research efforts will we get the full benefit of their knowledge and ensure their ownership of the fisheries management practices.

Ecosystem-level understanding: There is immediate need to understand the mechanisms and processes and to develop predictive abilities of the links between changes in marine ecosystems and changes in abundance of commercially exploited marine species. We need to assess the health of a stock in relation to its carrying capacity, rather than its historic abundance or its demand by fishermen. Ecosystem-level approaches to fisheries management will not be a linear extension of single-species thinking. Rather, each species must be seen more in relation to the processes that affect ecosystems and less in terms of numbers of individuals. Recent research results and events have given new urgency to this change in fisheries management paradigms. Oceanographic and fisheries research efforts have demonstrated conclusively that climatic variation significantly impact commercial fish stocks by altering ecosystem dynamics, including predator and prey abundances, timing and successful of recruitment, etc. Also, recent fisheries management crises (e.g., Atlantic salmon and cod, Pacific herring, sardines, and coho salmon) clearly have shown that there are grave difficulties with current single-species management paradigms. With so much at stake, it is clear that - in the long run - it will be cost effective to study marine ecosystems.

Lessons from other countries:The results of past and present ground-breaking experiments to new approaches to fisheries management by other countries should be integrated into US efforts toward this same goal. Among numerous examples of useful experiments, we should ensure consideration of the experimental use of: 1) sentinel fisheries in eastern Canada, 2) individual transferable quota systems for most commercial fisheries, since 1986, in New Zealand, 3) comparative stock assessment studies performed by government researchers and the commercial fishing industry in Iceland, and 4) the time-honored practice of temporal/spatial separation of gear types in the Atlantic cod fishery of Norway.

Community-based management: Collaborative approaches to fisheries management are advancing on several levels, with model programs at the state level in Maine (e.g., the lobster councils and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance), California, and Florida. These efforts involve collaborative goal-setting, grassroots watershed actions, and collaborative design of management systems. Community-based approaches to fisheries management have the immediate and considerable advantage of including socio-economic impacts in the design and implementation plans for any management practice.

Marine reserves: Marine managed areas are being used as fisheries management tools in many coastal regions of the US. Marine reserves may provide refuges for over-exploited species; they may allow resident species to recover within their borders and enhance productivity outside the reserve. Marine reserves may offer other benefits, including protecting habitat and water quality and enhancing recreational opportunities. Experimental use of marine reserves should be evaluated in carefully designed studies involving appropriate monitoring and research to observe impacts and consequences over time. Marine reserves should be envisioned as one tool among the many useful approaches to fisheries management.

Research Needs

Sea Grant Involvement

Sea Grant should protect its valuable position as a neutral party in the fisheries and fisheries management crises. As a neutral party, Sea Grant can assist with conflict resolution and provide forums for bringing all stakeholders together. Sea Grant should strive to maintain excellent working relationships with industry, NMFS, the FMCs, environmental groups, etc. Sea Grant Programs should continue to develop collaborative problem-solving plans, explore strategies for conflict resolution (including e.g., "informal consensus", a method that has been successfully employed by the Northeast lobster industry).

It is important to recognize that the communication and coordination of relevant information for fisheries management may be as challenging as acquiring the understanding of how to do it. It is easier to make difficult decisions when people are well informed about what is known and what is not known. Sea Grant, with its established dual capabilities in research and information transfer, is ideally suited to be a catalyst in developing new paradigms for fisheries management and as a valued partner in their implementation through the capacity of the network to process and transfer research results to policy makers, resource managers, industry, and other stakeholders.

In order to enhance the varied roles of the national network - including catalyst, mediator, facilitator, educator, and communicator - in working toward new approaches to fisheries management, Sea Grant should:

White Paper draft February 12, 2000

Authors: Ann Bucklin* (UNH), Kurt Byers (UAF), Christopher DeWees (UC-Davis), Robin Alden (Maine DMR), Carlos Fetteroff (SGNRP)

*Please send comments to Ann Bucklin (fax 603-862-0243)