Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) was developed to move beyond single species management by incorporating ecosystem considerations for the sustainable utilization of marine resources. Due to the wide range of fishery characteristics, including different goals of fisheries management across regions and species, theoretical best practices for EBFM vary greatly. Here we highlight the lac...

Marine fisheries and the ecosystems that sustain them are increasingly beset by environmental deterioration, and the problem is particularly acute in coastal zones where human populations are increasing. In the best of circumstances, fishery managers are faced with the multiple, often conflicting, demands of resource users, politicians, and scientists when considering strategies for resource ma...

Perhaps the most fundamental insight from fishery science is that ecosystems impose important and predictable constraints on food production from the sea. The familiar hump-shaped growth curve implies that the growth rate and carrying capacity of a species limit its production: Once stocks are depleted, further increasing fishing pressure will only lead to decreases in catch. This logic underpi...

The Goliath grouper, Epinephelus itajara, a large-bodied (approximately 2.5 m TL, > 400 kg) and critically endangered fish (Epinephelidae), is highly vulnerable to overfishing. Although protected from fishing in many countries, its exploitation in Mexico is unregulated; a situation that puts its populations at risk. Fishery records of E. itajara are scarce, which prevents determination of its f...

This paper considers the dynamic producer and consumer benefits from improving habitat that supports a commercial fishery under two different fishery management institutions. By coupling state equations that represent the effects of estuarine eutrophication on fish populations with a multispecies, two-patch spatial bioeconomic model that endogenizes output price through residual demand, the ana...

This paper provides an analysis of technical and economic interrelationships among species harvested in Hawaii’s pelagic longline fishery. The results indicate that this multispecies fishery is characterized by a joint production process, meaning that the regulation of one species would affect the harvest of other species. It implies that a single species regulation may not be appropriate in ma...

As a legacy of Namibia’s colonial past, the country inherited severely depleted fish resources at the time of independence. Today, Namibia’s fisheries are almost exclusively industrial. The hake fishery is the country’s most important fishery, which was restructured from a pre-independence foreign fishery into one that is characterized by locally based, vertically integrated fishing and process...

Cephalopods are of increasing importance as a fishery resource and many species are taken in directed and bycatch fisheries around the world. Owing to the short life-cycles and variable growth rates of most cephalopods, stocks may be highly volatile, both highly susceptible to recruitment overfishing and, conversely, capable of rapid recovery. Many species have protracted spawning seasons so th...

Modern-day discussions of fishery governance and management revolve around a number of key ingredients – the goals of sustainability and resilience, the widespread presence of uncertainty and complexity, the corresponding directions of a precautionary approach and an ecosystem approach, and implementation of these through avenues such as robust management. This paper explores the links among th...

Quantitative analyses of the pink shrimp (Farfantepenaeus brasiliensis and Farfantepenaeus paulensis) fisheries were carried out using data collected from July 1999 to July 2001 from the trawling operations of the fishing fleet based in Santos/Guarujá, SP. According to classical models, the fishery is at its maximum sustainable yield. Therefore, reduction of the fishing effort and adequate seas...