Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Perception on definitions, implementations, and aspirations

Abstract

Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) was developed to move beyond single species management by incorporating ecosystem considerations for the sustainable utilization of marine resources. Due to the wide range of fishery characteristics, including different goals of fisheries management across regions and species, theoretical best practices for EBFM vary greatly. Here we highlight the lack of consensus in the interpretation of EBFM amongst professionals in marine science and its implementation. Fisheries policy-makers and managers, stock assessment scientists, conservationists, and ecologists had very different opinions on the degree to which certain management strategies would be considered EBFM. We then assess the variability of the implementation of EBFM, where we created a checklist of characteristics typifying EBFM and scored fisheries across different regions, species, ecosystems, and fishery size and capacity. Our assessments show fisheries are unlikely to meet all the criteria on the EBFM checklist. Consequentially, it is unnecessary for management to practice all the traits of EBFM, as some may be disparate from the ecosystem attributes or fishery goals. Instead, incorporating some ecosystem-based considerations to fisheries management that are context-specific is a more realistic and useful way for EBFM to occur in practice.

Fig 1

A. Survey results for defining EBFM. The y-axis is the list of scenarios asked and the x-axis the score of the final response. We divided the scenarios by categories for different management actions (gray shading) and the respondents by profession or background (colored). Each tube represents the range of responses. B. Shows the average responses by survey for each respondent background.

Fig 2. Summary table of average criteria scores.

Scores belonging to either the ecosystem, social, or management process categories in columns and for each fishery in rows. The criteria belonging to these categories are listed to the bottom-right of the figure. Shading represents the relative magnitude of the score in each column (e.g. a gradient from white for 0, to black for 1). The font colors are different within the table to provide contrast with the background. The map at the top right shows the geographical locations of the fisheries considered in the study.