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Marine reserves, areas permanently closed to all fishing, are frequently proposed as a tool for managing fisheries. Fishery benefits claimed for reserves include increases in spawning stock size, animal body size, and reproductive output of exploited species. Extensive field research confirms many of these predictions. Reserves worldwide have led to increases in abundance, body size, biomass and reproductive output of exploited species. Encouraged by these results, many countries and states have embarked upon initiatives to establish networks of marine reserves. We describe experiences that prove that success of marine reserves is not contingent on habitat type, geographical location, the kind of fishery involved, or the technological sophistication of management. We now have strong evidence that with the support of local communities, marine reserves offer a highly effective management tool. They will be most effective when implemented as part of a package of limits on fishing effort, designed to protect exploited species and their habitats.
This paper describes in detail the concept of Ecosystem-Based Management in marine capture fisheries. It is designed to identify the main issues and propose policies and implementation guidance to help resolve those issues. WWF has prepared these Policy Proposals and Guidelines to encourage and inform the global debate and provide an operational interpretation of how to apply the principles of Ecosystem-Based Management to marine capture fisheries. The Paper is designed to build on existing knowledge and approaches to develop the concept into a workable approach for implementation in individual fisheries, consistent with integrating global and regional policy requirements into national arrangements for on-ground and ‘in-water’ actions.
Fisheries scientist David Conover is leading the most extensive laboratory study to date on the effects of size-selective harvesting in fish stocks. Results have been striking - in five generations of this kind of selection, the different categories of fish greatly diverged in characteristics.
Fisheries have rarely been ‘sustainable’. Rather, fishing has induced serial depletions, long masked by improved technology, geographic expansion and exploitation of previously spurned species lower in the food web. With global catches declining since the late 1980s, continuation of present trends will lead to supply shortfall, for which aquaculture cannot be expected to compensate, and may well exacerbate. Reducing fishing capacity to appropriate levels will require strong reductions of subsidies. Zoning the oceans into unfished marine reserves and areas with limited levels of fishing effort would allow sustainable fisheries, based on resources embedded in functional, diverse ecosystems.
Marine reserves are a promising tool for fisheries management and conservation of biodiversity, but they are not a panacea for fisheries management problems. Their successful use requires a case-by-case understanding of the spatial structure of impacted fisheries, ecosystems and human communities. Marine reserves, together with other fishery management tools, can help achieve broad fishery and biodiversity objectives, but their use will require careful planning and evaluation.
This report compares and contrasts the design of networks of marine reserves for two different, commonly stated goals: (1) maintaining high yield in fisheries and (2) conserving biodiversity, in an idealized setting using simple models. It is initially demonstrated that cost considerations dictate that the conservation goal would be best met by reserves as large as practically possible. In contrast, the fisheries goal of maximizing yield requires that reserves should be as small as practically possible. Meeting the fisheries goal is ultimately more costly because it suggests a larger area of the coastline should be in reserves, but it also improves on conservation goals by enhancing sustainability for species dispersing longer distances.
Ecosystem-based management can be an important complement to existing fisheries management approaches. When fisheries managers understand the complex ecological and socioeconomic environments in which fish and fisheries exist, they may be able to anticipate the effects that fishery management will have on the ecosystem and the effects that ecosystem change will have on fisheries. This report explores how such an approach could be incorporated into fisheries management and the guiding principles which could form elements of an eco-system based management of fisheries.
No-take marine reserves offer a conservative, ecologically and habitat based, tool for fishery management. They can support sustainable fisheries by providing significant protection of species composition, abundance, size and age structure, fecundity and spawning potential. They offer particular potential for protecting stock genetics from detrimental selective effects of fishing and are ideal for species with few available data or that have little economic importance. Marine reserves also provide essential reference areas to assess fishing effects, interspecies interactions, and environmental effects on stocks. Although few exist, they are being created at an accelerated rate worldwide.
Kaipara Harbour is New Zealand’s largest enclosed waterway. There is increasing evidence of problems with fish stocks in the harbour, this has been of particular concern to Maori. Previous attempts of fisheries management has failed. This Study Group has worked for three years with stakeholders, particularly companies holding large quota in the area, to develop a strategy for a sustainable fishery. This strategy outlines a range of sustainable measures to sustainably manage fish stocks in the harbour, most notably a separate management area for the Kaipara.
This report addresses central government restrictive provisions in the marine environment. This includes restrictive provisions under the Fisheries Act 1996 and its associated regulations.
