Minimizing the Impact of Fishing

Lenfest Published Paper April 26, 2016 Read time:

Projects: Calculating Sustainable Catch Limits for Data-Poor European Fisheries

Froese, R., Winker, H., Gascuel, D., Sumaila, U. R., & Pauly, D. (2016). Minimizing the impact of fishing. Fish and Fisheries. DOI: 10.1111/faf.12146

Key Findings

To achieve the goals of many regional, national, and international laws and agreements, fisheries management must shift from the approach of maximum acceptable ecological impact to minimizing the impact of fishing, according to this paper.
The authors propose three rules to achieve this shift:
- Humans should take less than nature. In other words, mortality caused by fishing should never exceed the rate of natural mortality.
- Populations should remain above half of their natural abundance. Below this level, populations may lose the ability to fulfill their ecosystem functions.
- Fish should be allowed to grow and reproduce before being caught.
- According to performance testing using two modeling frameworks and a wide range of parameters, these rules could help accomplish several objectives of ecosystem-based fisheries management, including rebuilding biomass of predator and prey species and reducing bycatch.

The full publication is open access and available here:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/faf.12146/abstract.