Fishful Thinking: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Sea Before Us

Abstract

Fisheries science and management have been shrouded in controversy and rhetoric for over 125 yrs. Human reliance on fish through history (and even prehistory) has impacted the sea and its resources. Global impacts are manifest today in threatened food security and vulnerable marine ecosystems. Growing consumer demand and subsidized industrial fisheries exacerbate ecosystem degradation, climate change, global inequities, and local poverty. Ten commonly advocated fisheries management solutions, if implemented alone, cannot remedy a history of intense fishing and serial stock depletions. Fisheries policy strategies evaluated along five performance modalities (ecological, economic, social, ethical, and institutional) suggest that composite management strategies, such as ecosystem-based management and historically based restoration, can do better. A scientifically motivated solution to the fisheries problem can be found in the restorable elements of past ecosystems, if some of our present ideology, practices, and tastes can be relinquished for this historical imperative. Food and social security can be enhanced using a composite strategy that targets traditional food sources and implements customary management practices. Without binding laws, however, instituting such an ethically motivated goal for fisheries policy can easily be compromised by global market pressures. In a restored and productive ecosystem, fishing is clearly the privilege of a few. The realities of imminent global food insecurity, however, may dictate a strategy to deliberately fish down the food web, if the basic human right to food is to be preserved for all.

The Privilege to Fish

“…Pitcher and Lam (2010) argue that only with well-defined policy goals and composite management strategies, such as EBM and historically based ecosystem restoration, can the analyses of quantitative stock assessments, establishment of marine protected areas, comanagement arrangements, and other "fisheries management solutions" be effective in protecting the public's right to fish for food security. To sustain global fisheries, Lam (2012) argues for incorporating a harm principle in fisheries that is both instrumental and ethical, namely: (1) regulate the fishing industry with management tools that internalize the social and environmental costs of fishing, by requiring fishermen to pay for the privilege to fish via access and extraction fees, both scaled with fishing capacity; (2) develop fisheries policies with the explicit goal to reduce fishing harm so as to help achieve sustainable fisheries and marine conservation; (3) legislate binding laws to create and regulate societal norms that protect the public trust in fisheries; and (4) adopt a collaborative fisheries governance framework that shares the decision-making rights and responsibilities of marine stewardship among government, the fishing industry, and civil society.…”

Can Local Institutions Help Sustain Livelihoods in an Era of Fish Declines and Persistent Environmental Change? A Cambodian Case Study

“…The vitality of these natural resources are influenced by multiple environmental change factors, including climate variability [1] and fishery management [2]. Evidence of coastal environmental change include fluctuations in water temperature, precipitation and oceanographic variables (wave action, sea level rise), all of which can bring about significant ecological and bio-physical changes directly impacting people whose livelihoods depend on those ecosystems [3].…”

“…Yet, little analysis, other than a few working papers [22][23][24][25], has taken place regarding fishery decline, environmental change and the role of local institutions in Cambodia. There has been no assessment of: (1) past projects and practices; (2) what is doable at a local level compared to what needs to be addressed at other scales; or (3) priority areas of focus for funding. Our paper seeks to address this research gap.…”

Holistic Fisheries Management: Combining Macroecology, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology

“…Overfishing is recognized as a major challenge confronting management in marine environments (Jackson, 2008;Pitcher and Lam, 2010;Eikeset et al, 2011). Conventional measures of overfishing indicate that about 28% of the world's exploited stocks are either overfished or recovering rates of other predators indicate that nearly all current commercial fishing rates are far from sustainable (Belgrano and Fowler, 2011a).…”

“…As a step toward more holistic management, efforts of the last few decades have made progress toward including ecosystems, mostly through substantiating a few of the critical principles involving ecosystems (e.g., interconnectedness). However, achieving ecosystem-based fisheries management is only one of many essential elements on the path toward developing an objective and holistic form of management-long seen as a major goal in the effort to solve problems associated with overfishing (NRC, 2004;Pitcher and Lam, 2010).…”