Pursuit of the triple bottom line of economic, community and ecological sustainability has increased the complexity of fishery management; fisheries assessments require new types of data and analysis to guide science-based policy in addition to traditional biological information and modeling. We introduce the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs), a broadly applicable and flexible tool for assessing performance in individual fisheries, and for establishing cross-sectional links between enabling conditions, management strategies and triple bottom line outcomes. Conceptually separating measures of performance, the FPIs use 68 individual outcome metrics—coded on a 1 to 5 scale based on expert assessment to facilitate application to data poor fisheries and sectors—that can be partitioned into sector-based or triple-bottom-line sustainability-based interpretative indicators. Variation among outcomes is explained with 54 similarly structured metrics of inputs, management approaches and enabling conditions. Using 61 initial fishery case studies drawn from industrial and developing countries around the world, we demonstrate the inferential importance of tracking economic and community outcomes, in addition to resource status.

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The ocean, which regulates climate and supports vital ecosystem services, is crucial to our Earth system and livelihoods. Yet, it is threatened by anthropogenic pressures and climate change. A healthy ocean that supports a sustainable ocean economy requires adequate financing vehicles that generate, invest, align, and account for financial capital to achieve sustained ocean health and governance. However, the current finance gap is large; we identify key barriers to financing a sustainable ocean economy and suggest how to mitigate them, to incentivize the kind of public and private investments needed for topnotch science and management in support of a sustainable ocean economy.

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The mopane worm, which is the caterpillar form of the Saturnid moth Imbrasia belina Westwood, is – like other edible insects and caterpillars – a vital source of protein in southern African countries. The worms live and graze on mopane trees, which have alternative uses. With increasing commercialization of the worm, its management, which was hitherto organized as a common property resource, has been degraded to almost open access. This paper uses a bioeconomic modelling approach to show that for some optimal allocation of the mopane forest stock, the restrictive harvest period policy advocated by community leaders may not lead to sustainable harvesting of the worm.

Studies of compliance with fishing regulations have been based on fishery crimes where the offender faces a one-period decision problem of maximizing an expected utility. Moreover, the returns from the crimes are uncertain because the offender may lose them if caught. This paper extends these models by considering a fishery crime that generates a flow of returns until the offender is caught and then punished. Consequently, it incorporates into the existing model the influence of dynamic deterrence in which the discount rate affects violation levels. The predictions of the model are tested on data from an artisanal fishery in Ghana.

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