An Ecosystem Framework for Fisheries Management in the Southern Benguela Upwelling System

casted the increasing need for fisheries managers to take species interactions into account. It is now widely recognized that ecosystem effects need to be considered in managing fisheries (Pauly 1998, Beamish and Mahnken 1999, Gislason et al. 2000). Steele (1996) concluded that a “regime shift in fisheries management” is required if one is to manage fisheries successfully in the context of ecosystem changes. Since 1950, humans have been “fishing down the foodwebs”, in other words there has been a worldwide decline in the mean trophic level of marine and inland fish catches (Pauly et al. 1998, 2000b). This has been characterized by an initial increase in catches, followed by levelling or decreases in catches, indicating that current exploitation is unsustainable in many ecosystems (Pauly et al. 1998), and that fishing has caused changes in ecosystem structures. It is not known how these changes have affected and will affect ecosystem functioning and future catches. Until recently, management of fisheries has been from a single-species perspective (Pauly et al. 2000a). The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is a working example of a programme adopting ecosystem approaches to fisheries management, as opposed to management of single species in isolation (Scully et al. 1986). The ecosystem approach to management was defined by Larkin (1996) as “management of marine fisheries with awareness of ecosystem properties”. He considered such approaches to management to consist of holistic approaches to resources, taking into account multispecies interactions and their dependence on underlying ecosystem dynamics, and listed three essential components of ecosystem management: