Before I retired from the Fisheries Lab in Woods Hole, I served on the Habitat Plan Development Team which supported the New England Fishery Management Council's Habitat, Marine Protected Area and Ecosystems Approach Committee. Efforts to promote an ecosystems approach to fisheries management occurs within the framework of the Magnuson- Stevens Sustainable Fisheries Act which is not designed to work within an MSP, adaptive ecosystems based management framework (AEbM). Canada's Oceans Act has developed some pilot projects (i.e. Eastern Scotian Shelf Integrated Management plan or ESSIM) that try to incorporate fisheries management with other human uses of ocean space. Since ESSIM is managed by the Department of Fisheries & Oceans, it will be interesting to see how successful this endeavor is.
My sense is that for this to happen in the U.S. Congress would have to make changes in the M-S SFA to make it compatible with President Obama's recently released National Ocean Policy. I don't see the NEFMC's Habitat Committee moving seriously in this direction until changes are made in their underlying legislative mandate. The NEFMC is dominated by commercial fishing interests that are resistant to changes fisheries management which partly explains their resistance to NOAA's new sector management approach philosophy.
Given this situation I don't see the U.S. moving towards the fisheries management system used in Australia and New Zealand any time soon. We have a long way to go in matching the progress made in Canada under the Oceans Act. It has taken these foreign countries a long time to work with various constituencies that use the ocean to come up with workable approaches for MSP/AEbM which incorporate commercial fishing and saltwater angling as components of the system. If Walmart moves to selling fresh seafood that is MSC certified in 2011, it will place a lot of pressure on the Fishery Management Council's to develop "sustainable fisheries harvesting" practices, rather than the current scheme of contradictory national fishing guidelines to establish fishery management plans and recovery targets for stocks that are overfished or subject to overfishing.
As a retired oceanographer, I don't know the answer to how the MSA should be altered to incorporate fisheries management under the MSP/ AEbM philosophy. This is a legal and policy issue, not a scientific process. One has to keep in mind that we try to control the behavior of fishermen/women in harvesting living marine resources, so this process involves science, socioeconomics, politics, etc. which makes changes difficult. Since these are public resources, the wider society and other ocean users need input into this process from my perspective.
David Dow Retired Oceanographer On Aug 19, 2010, at 10:52 PM, Jennifer Rhemann wrote:
Ecosystem-based management, as in the case of CCAMLR in the Southern Ocean, can do a great deal towards fostering sustainability of fish stocks, however there are enormous challenges to implementation. One is the difficulty of getting comprehensive adherence to the management policies & practices. Criminals don't abide by the extensive number of conservation measures instituted by CCAMLR (including a regulatory framework related to the precautionary approach, port inspections, catch size limitations, licensing and inspection procedures, vessel monitoring systems, net regulations & prohibitions, restrictions on fishing practices such as bottom trawling & longline fishing, reporting systems for catch data and scientific data, regulations regarding certain species,temporal and spatial fishing regulations and restrictions, and a catch documentation scheme). These measures can be effectively implemented with regards to legal fishing operators, however illegal fishing activities r! emain unregulated and have serious impact on the effectiveness of the CCAMLR management regime. CCAMLR's work to implement sustainable management and conservation measures is phenomenal, however they're up against some very big challenges created by some very shady people, organizations and even countries. Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing presents a major impediment to the efforts to manage fisheries in a sustainable fashion and to conserve the marine ecosystem. IUU fishing is a global issue with detriments that go beyond the unsustainable pressure on marine ecosystems and species; it also results in subversion of labour standards, distortion of markets and enormous impacts on the economies of both developing and developed states. The lucrative nature of IUU fishing activities impedes efforts to eliminate it (The estimated global worth of IUU fishing is between US $10 billion and $23 billion per year.), and identifying the parties responsible is enormously challenging in this form of organized crime. Additionally, the resources required to combat IUU fishing and IUU-related economic losses are extremely burdensome on States and intergovernmental organizations such as CCAMLR. (For example, South Africa’s reported losses due to illegal fishing of toothfish are es! timated to be US$290 million since the 1990s.) In addition to diverting much needed resources to curb IUU fishing activities, IUU fishing impacts CCAMLR’s efforts to sustainably manage the stocks of living resources of the Southern Ocean by complicating the development of fish stock trends and impacting the conservation efforts for associated and dependent species (such as seabird populations, krill, etc.). Those impacts simply add to the complexity of the challenges that we are tackling, because IUU fishing is not the only threat to sustainable management of resources and conservation of ecosystems. Our ignorance is a threat, too: the enormity of complexities in the Southern Ocean biome – and all to which it is interconnected – imply that we will always be working with only partial knowledge. Despite recent advances in our understanding of the ecosystem dynamics and primary productivity, we don't have a comprehensive grasp of the processes driving changes in the ecosystem. Additionally, non-native species and diseases have impacted the Southern Ocean ecosystem, and the development of policies to mitigate those impacts – and the associated implementation protocols - are still very much works-in- progress. So, while a regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) can develop and work to implement ecosystem-based management practices, that doesn't guarantee sustainable stocks.! RFMOs aren't the only influential actors, and no management plan will account for every complexity. Despite the challenges to effective implementation, I'm of the view that ecosystem-based management is of vital importance to the survival and potential sustainability of any fish stock, and that it should be the base from which we address other issues and further develop policies. I'd be very interested in hearing other (especially differing) views on this. You put-forward a great question, Wendee... the answer(s) to it are most likely as convoluted as the challenges of developing an adequate ecosystem-based management system that sufficiently addresses criminal behavior, ignorance, etc. I'm excited to read your article when you finish!!!JenJennifer RhemannPolar Law MA Candidate, University of AkureyriAPECS Polar Policy/Law Discipline Coordinator (www.apecs.is)----------------------------------------From: [email protected] To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ECOLOG-L] Ecosystem-based fisheries management Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:21:21 -0500Just real quick - I've heard Antarctica mentioned a couple times but isn'tit true that the Patagonia toothfish and the bluefin tuna are bothcompletely devastated stocks? So how can that be sustainable? (and I'massuming that if somewhere is using ecosystem based management appropriately, then fisheries would be sustainable).This is tangential to the article I'm writing, so I was just curious. Butnow I'm ever more curious... Wendee Blogs for Nature from the Bering Sea ~ http://tinyurl.com/2ctghbl ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wendee Holtcamp, M.S. Wildlife Ecology ~ @bohemianone Freelance Writer * Photographer * Bohemian http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com http://bohemianadventures.blogspot.com ~~ 6-wk Online Writing Course Starts Sep 4 (signup by Aug 28) ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’m Animal Planet’s news blogger - http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jennifer Rhemann Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 6:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecosystem-based fisheries managementWendee, have a look at www.ccamlr.org for an example of ecosystem- basedmanagement. The Commission to the Convention on the Conservation ofAntarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) regulates fishing and otherresource-utilization activities in the Southern Ocean. (Patagoniantoothfish, Antarctic toothfish & southern bluefin tuna are some of the lucrative fisheries in the Southern Ocean.) Assessments by the Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management, the Working Group on Fish StockAssessment and CCAMLR’s Scientific Committee form the basis of theregulatory measures, and they are developed in accordance with an ecosystemapproach to management that acknowledges the interlinked and complexecological systems of the Southern Ocean biomes. The conservation principles that guide CCAMLR’s management include “prevention of decrease in the size of any harvested population to levels below those which ensure its stablerecruitment […]; maintenance of the ecological relati!onships between harvested, dependent and related populations of Antarctic marine living resources and the restoration of depleted populations […]; and prevention of change(s) or minimisation of the risk of change(s) in the marine ecosystem which are not potentially reversible over two or three decades, taking into account the state of available knowledge of the direct and indirect impact of harvesting, the effect of the introduction of alien species, the effects of associated activities on the marine ecosystem and of the effects of environmental changes, with the aim of making possible thesustained conservation of Antarctic marine living resources”.The incorporation of these principles into CCAMLR’s management practices is integral to CCAMLR’s aim to follow both a precautionary approach and an ecosystem approach to regulation of the harvesting of Antarctic marine living resources. In keeping with these principles, the CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Program (CEMP) was created in 1984 to “(i) detect and record significant changes in critical components of the ecosystem, to serve as a basis for the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources and (ii) to distinguish between changes due to harvesting of commercial species and changes due to environmental variability, both physical and biological”. The Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management coordinates the efforts of the CEMP. Standard methods for data collection and analysis were first established in 1987 and revised in 1997. Via these methods, CCAMLR has collected and analyzed ecosystem data from numerous sites, species and otherparameters.The CCAMLR Catch Documentation Scheme (CDS) for Antarctic toothfish is an example of application of an ecosystem approach and a precautionary approach to governance of living resources. The CDS aims to “(i) monitor the international toothfish trade (ii) identify the origins of toothfish imports or exports, (iii) determine whether toothfish catches have been made in accordance with CCAMLR conservation measures, and (iv) gather catch data forthe scientific evaluation of toothfish stocks”. This program promotesresponsible fishing techniques and accountability in the commercial fishing industry. The CDS operates in conjunction with CCAMLR monitoring programs for krill, finfish and sea birds in order to provide a more comprehensive view of the ecosystem health. Additionally, survey data (from fisheries and fishery-independent surveys) and strategic modeling are methods utilized bythe CCAMLR Scientific Committee to assess ecosystem status.If you want more info, I'd be happy to send you the references for the above info or the paper (from which the above text is culled... sorry if it's still a bit too much for this forum). The CCAMLR website is well- written, and you'll find a wealth of information there. For other regional fisheriesmanagement organizations, some good information can be found at the followingsites: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/research/eedp/current_projects/rfmo/ http://www.illegal-fishing.info/item_single.php?item=document&item_id=171&app roach_id=8http://www.sams.ac.uk/research/ecology/research/research-themes/pr operity-from-marine-ecosystemsBest of luck with your research on this. I hope to be able to read yourfindings! Cheers,Jen Jennifer RhemannPolar Law MA Candidate, University of Akureyri,IcelandAssociation of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) Polar Policy/LawDiscipline CoordinatorDate: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 20:43:07 -0500 From: Wendee Holtcamp Subject: ecosystem based fisheries managementAre there any fisheries in the world that are actually managed using an ecosystem approach versus single-species stock assessment models? I know there's debate over whether the Bering Sea fisheries could become thatway.The comprehensive research done there feeds into their regional fisherycouncil's decisions, but I don't think it's truly an ecosystem-basedapproach in terms of analyzing how many of say Pollock are needed not justto feed people but also to feed the fur seals, the seabirds, etc topreventecosystem collapse.But my question is not about the Bering Sea but about whether there is ANY fishery that is actually managed in an ecosystem approach or whether it'sstill theoretical at this stage? Wendee
