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Schwach, V., Bailly, D., Christensen, A-S., Delaney, A. E., Degnbol, P., van Densen, W. L. T., Holm, P., McLay, H. A., Nielsen, K. N., Pastoors, M. A., Reeves, S. A., and Wilson, D. C. 2007. Policy and knowledge in fisheries management: a policy brief. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 798–803. The EU project Policy and Knowledge in Fisheries Management investigated the use of biological knowledge in various parts of the fisheries system, using North Sea cod as a case study. The project examined the way scientific advice was generated from technical and institutional perspectives, as well as the way claims about science appeared in both policy-setting and in public debate through the press. The results suggested that many people involved in the system want a new way to reflect about science in management. People from all major stakeholder groups are calling for a more interactive system of producing a common knowledge base. Such a system could bring uncertainty from its current marginal role as the leftovers of certainty to the heart of the science process. It would require stakeholders to help address uncertainty and to negotiate a more realistic placement of burden of proof.

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That recruitment of juveniles to the stocks of fish is subject to natural variations is considered a scientific truth, if not a truism, in marine science. However, in 1914, when the zoologist Johan Hjort (1869–1948) published the notion, it meant a basic change in the understanding of the biology of the sea fish. A century later, his insight is a topic still at the centre of interest in fish biology. Hjort based his concept largely on investigations of herring (Clupea harengus) and cod (Gadus morhua) in the North Atlantic. He was the mastermind, but worked with a small group at the Directorate of Fisheries in Bergen, Norway, and in cooperation with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The theory of natural fluctuations prompted an important step from migration thinking to population thinking, and gave the emerging fish biology and multidisciplinary marine science a theoretical basis. The article aims to explore the set of important facts and reasoned ideas intended to explain the causes for variations in year classes, and in this the fluctuations in the recruitment to the stocks. It argues that in addition to scientific factors, economic and political circumstances had an important say in the shaping of the understanding of stock fluctuations. The mere existence of a theory does not alone account for a breakthrough, and the article draws attention to the acceptance of scientific results.

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The 150th anniversary of Johan Hjort’s birth was celebrated by a symposium held in Bergen on 12–14 June 2019 to take a broad perspective on the origins of, and developments in, fisheries science and thereby examine current issues in fisheries science from different perspectives. To establish this type of non-traditional forum, historians of marine science and marine researchers from around the world met to explore potential new directions. The many transdisciplinary panel discussions, especially on subjects such as “the making of fisheries scientists”, revealed the pervading influence of family, educators, role models, and social circumstances. The 11 articles included in this symposium issue present a series of advancements in modern fisheries science, highlighting the contributions of Hjort and his contemporaries, Fyodor Baranov and Harald Dannevig. As expected, the effects of changing ocean climate were a dominant theme, which connected this symposium, and complemented, the 2014 symposium in honour of Johan Hjort's influential treatise released in 1914. Although no ground-breaking paradigms were presented, several new research directions were proposed in a creative atmosphere generated by participants. The social context of science had a key influence in Hjort’s day and continues to do so today and into the future.

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