Abstract

Fisheries management is experiencing a trend in which harvest rates are being reduced as more of the principles of management are implemented, as more information emerges, and as more of the complexity of natural systems is taken into account. As recently as the late 1960s, there was overt and widespread acceptance of fishing mortality rates that were equivalent to natural mortality rates (F = M) – an outdated standard that is still occasionally implemented today. From this extreme, reductions in fishing mortality rates of target resource species have been based on a variety of arguments, not the least of which is consideration of other species (especially endangered species) and ecosystems. What are sustainable harvest rates if we implement management principles completely and fully account for complexity? If we project current trends into the future, how much would we reduce current harvest rates to embody full sustainability?

This chapter presents examples of the choice and use of empirical information for estimating harvest rates for fisheries so as to abide by established principles of management. We present measures of empirically observed rates of predation/consumption by various marine mammals as standards and reference points for fisheries management. These measures include recognized statistical parameters as well as maximized biodiversity. Such empirical standards are emergent from complexity and, through this emergence, fully account for the complexity behind their origin.

Chapters 10 through 12 represent additional steps toward fully holistic management; however the progress is of a different kind from that of the previous two sections. Rather than substantiate principles, the progress represented in this section involves a different kind of thinking, to apply the principles substantiated in the first two sections. Progress toward holism is achieved, in part, by asking every management question we can possibly ask. By carrying out management based on carefully chosen patterns that match those questions, we bring the field of macroecology to the realm of management – adding to the interdisciplinary nature of science brought to management. Management based on carefully chosen patterns accomplishes a key step toward holism. This is achieved through the infinitely integral nature of such patterns – no detail is left out. In taking this approach, management is reality-based to include not only individual species, ecosystems, and the biosphere, but all systems.

As such, this final section represents a substantial shift from the progress accomplished in current management practices. It represents a different kind of progress; it is not so much an extension of current advances as it is an alternative – an alternative that fully embraces holism by being pattern-based rather than being based on stakeholder opinion. Among the factors taken into account in pattern-based management is the diversity of evolutionary forces at play in natural systems.

Chapters 1 through 4 set the stage for the trend represented in this book; a trend in which more and more of the complexity of real-world systems is recognized and involved in management. The chapters of this section typify the sophistication brought to the process of science in support of management as it is currently implemented in many parts of the world. This sophistication often involves numerous elaborate models and complicated management plans. Such approaches exemplify a focus on ecological processes (e.g., predator–prey interactions, competition, trophic dynamics, and food webs) in which we humans inject ourselves by harvesting fish. Much of this work involves overt recognition of the complexity of natural systems and substantiates our understanding of complexity as a fundamental principle. Complexity is recognized, for example, in lists representing the numerous species with populations in ecosystems affected by human activities such as commercial fishing, pollution, and changes in acidity. Inherent to the factors important to the structure and function of ecosystems are environmental dynamics involving temperature, the circulation of currents, and a wealth of other physical and chemical factors. Such work is crucial to substantiating a variety of principles that are fundamental to progress toward more holistic management.

Abstract

Overfishing based on past management practices, combined with growing awareness of the complexity of the systems of which we are a part has motivated work toward management that is more holistic in its perspective. This book is a contribution to, and documentation of, progress being realized. It includes projections for significant next steps.

Progress certainly involves attention to marine ecosystems. We need to manage our harvests from populations of fish with an approach that is ecosystem based. Partial progress involves knowing the need for sustainability in harvests taken from groups of species, including the populations of species that are components of ecosystems. It is important that such harvests be taken with an approach that is ecosystem based. More progress involves knowing that harvests of biomass taken from ecosystems need to be sustainable. These also must be taken with an approach that is ecosystem based. We are only now beginning to see that, not only must harvests be ecosystem based, they must also be evosystem based. This is necessary to account for both ecological complexity and the complexity of evolutionary and coevolutionary impacts of fishing throughout the systems affected. Progress involves knowing that both ecosystems and evosystems are parts of the biosphere; holistic management must also be biosphere based in all of its applications so the harvests, the biosphere, and all ecosystems are sustainable.

The chapters of this book present a rich array of information and thinking that contributes to the principles upon which holistic management can be based.

This volume had its origins just after we published our joint paper on pattern-based policy (Belgrano and Fowler 2008). We were approached by Cambridge University Press with the proposal to publish a book on Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management in marine systems. In agreeing to do so, the title we proposed was: “Ecosystem-based Management for Fisheries: Linking Patterns to Policy.” To achieve holism, the mission of being interdisciplinary has been stressed throughout a growing body of literature that presents tenets, pillars, or commandments to which management should adhere. We both had an abiding interest in macroecology. It seemed time to weave macroecology into the folds of management in what we referred to as “pattern-based” management, or systemic management, wherein deviations or abnormality observed in macroecological patterns serves as the basis for restorative action, or standards for sustainable human interactions with the non-human. Management involves maintaining such sustainability. With this in mind, our plan was to produce an edited volume that would add macroecology to the other disciplines that were already being seriously considered. We circulated our proposal to prospective authors, stressing the objective of making use of macroecological patterns. We hoped to have chapters broadly representative – geographically, scientifically, and across the spectrum of academic, governmental, and non-governmental organizations and authorship.

The chapters that materialized accomplished many of these objectives. We fell short, however, in the objective of having a book in which most, or all, chapters dealt directly with macroecological patterns – particularly as they can be used in management.

Abstract

A primary objective of management is to achieve sustainable interactions and relationships. As individuals, this involves interactions with other individuals, other species, ecosystems, and the biosphere. It is the same for us as a species: management involves sustainable interactions – relationships with individuals, other species, ecosystems, and the biosphere (the non-human). Two crucial steps in carrying out such management are: (a) to ask clear management questions and (b) to carefully express matching research questions. Central to the message of this chapter is the point that the pairing of such questions must be tightly coupled. There must be a pair of questions for each of our many interactions with the non-human in order to achieve sustainability. The pairing of management questions and scientific questions must involve a consistency far beyond anything achieved in today's management. It must identify the kind of interaction and the levels of biological organization (e.g., individuals, species, and ecosystems) involved. Achieved effectively, the match between the two kinds of questions removes most of the barriers that currently exist between science and management – barriers of human origin that not only prevent achieving sustainability but have also led to many of the problems we face today.

Chapters 5 through 9 introduce a variety of details important to management. It becomes clear that among the details are factors that, collectively, are impossible to account for completely in conventional approaches. This becomes obvious whether such factors involve the management of harvests taken from individual species, species groups, ecosystems, or complete ocean basins. These details involve the implementation of management, governance, and the involvement of stakeholders of various categories. The need to expand our perspective – the demand to expand the boundaries of our thinking – to include such detail is made obvious. Such progress involves accounting for the unintended consequences of our action (including a way to account for the unknowable, the unforeseeable, and the overall issue of risks – an infinite variety of risks). Evolutionary, behavioral, and social factors (including those of the human elements of ecosystems) count among the kinds of details that we must take into account. The details of population dynamics and related elements of life-history strategy cannot be ignored.

In this section, the dilemma faced in conventional thinking begins to become obvious. The infinite set of factors we begin to acknowledge with work exemplified by Chapters 5 through 9 cannot all be included in models such as those described in the first section. It is impossible to accomplish a full accounting of all forms of complexity through conventional processes – the infinite eludes us in approaches.