Ecosystem Based Management for Marine Fisheries: An Evolving Perspective

Description

Showing how big-picture patterns can help overcome the failures of conventional management, this book is ideal for students, researchers and professionals involved with marine fisheries. It explores not only the current practice of the 'ecosystem approach' to fisheries management but also its critical importance to even larger perspectives. The first section gives a valuable overview of how more and more of the complexity of real-world systems is being recognized and involved in the management of fisheries around the world. The second section then demonstrates how important aspects of real-world systems, involving population dynamics, evolution and behavior, remain to be taken into account completely. This section also shows how we must change the way we think about our involvement in, and the complexity of, marine ecosystems. The final chapters consider how, with the use of carefully chosen macroecological patterns, we can take important steps towards more holistic management of marine fisheries.

Andrea Belgrano is a Senior Scientist with the Swedish Board of Fisheries' Institute of Marine Research, Lysekil, Sweden. His research deals with applying concepts of macroecology, food web dynamics and complex systems theory, mainly to marine systems and fisheries management. Charles W. Fowler is Leader of the Systemic Management Studies Program at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. His research involves producing information to guide reality-based management toward sustainable human participation in ecosystems and the biosphere.

'... this book demonstrates that EA [ecosystem approaches] can be tools for greater understanding and better management of fisheries and the ecosystems that nurture them. The various chapters ... do an excellent job of pointing out, for the ecosystems they document, which component, judiciously chosen, would lead to improved fisheries management and ecosystem resilience. This approach makes the book ... an excellent compendium of case studies.' Ecology