Publications

Kate Richerson, Phillip S. Levin and Marc Mangel. Accounting for indirect effects and non-commensurate values in ecosystem based fishery management (EBFM). Marine Policy, 2009.

Many scientists, policymakers and environmentalists recommend that ecosystem-based management replace single-species fisheries management in order to maintain healthy ocean environments. An ecosystem-based approach to fishery management assesses the impacts of removing fish both directly on their population and indirectly on other living organisms, such as predators that eat the fish. Idly this approach allows managers to account for potential tradeoffs among species when setting catchlimits for a fishery, but in practice, calculating these tradeoffs can be difficult. For example, the number of fish caught is not easily compared to the number of young produced by birds that rely on the fish for food. Researchers Kate Richerson, Phillip S. Levin and Marc Mangel developed a method to account for such tradeoffs in setting catch limits, demonstrating with a case study that a modest reduction in fish catch can significantly boost numbers of seabird chicks.

• View the full Lenfest Ocean Program summary of the paper.
• View the PDF of the original paper.