What Is the Status of Fish Stocks Around the World and the Role of Fisheries Management?
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What is the status of fish stocks around the world and the role of fisheries management? Ray Hilborn School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences University of Washington [email protected] Thanks to collaborators Thanks to unknown colleagues Thanks to the thousands who collect the data All fish gone by 2048 Science 2006 Science 2006 Source: Time magazine, November 2006 A new consensus on stock status www.ramlegacy.org What is in a stock assessment? • History of abundance • History of catch, recruitment, fishing mortality • Estimates of reference points 2009 Paper Stock Coverage Open access https://www.pnas.org/content/117/4/2218.short Trend in abundance and harvest rate Overfished and Overfishing overfishing Over Fully Under Fishing Pressure Fishing fished Exploited exploited Stock Size Yield lost from fishing too hard Yield lost by overfishing (red) and underfishing (yellow) From Hilborn and Costello 2017. Marine Policy. The potential for blue growth in marine fisheries yield, profit and abundance of fish in the ocean. Abundance of stocks (expert opinion) Summary of stock status • Some places never overfished • Some were overfished and now recovering • Some continue to be overfished • Where we don’t have assessment data we generally believe status is poor • Even in well managed places there are stocks in poor condition due to ineffective management and natural variability How are fisheries managed? Intensity of fisheries management Research Management • landings data • objectives and fishery management plan • body size or age data • regulations to limit fishing pressure • surveys to monitor trends in abundance • capacity to adjust regulations and fishing • stock assessments pressure Enforcement Socioeconomics • dockside monitoring /at-sea observers • controls on access and entry • penalties and compliance • transparency • protection of sensitive habitats • community involvement • discarding and by-catch measures • capacity-enhancing subsidies Overall intensity of fisheries management What do we know about the rest of the world? Where we don’t have assessments Source: Global Assessment Database (ramlegacy.org) www.ramlegacy.org Abundance of stocks (expert opinion) West coast Malaysia from TrawlBase Rebuilding requires reducing fishing pressure • This can be achieved in many ways – Hard TAC’s – Reducing fishing effort – Time area closures • BUT you have to be able to enforce the regulations • With VMS effort is easily monitored Take away message • Fisheries management works if applied • We have methods that work to – Sustainably produce food from the ocean – Protect sensitive biodiversity • The key to producing food and protecting biodiversity is to manage 100% of the ocean – Not to close 10% 20% or 30% of the ocean to fishing [email protected] www.ramlegacy.org https://rayhblog.wordpress.com/ https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/ https://sites.uw.edu/trawlingbp/ .