The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Roadmap for the development and implementation of an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries: structure, state of development, and challenges

Abstract

The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Roadmap is the general framework aimed toward implementing an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) in NAFO. The core principles are: a) the approach has to be objective-driven, b) it should consider long-term ecosystem sustainability, c) it must be place-based, and d) the consequences of trade-offs in managing human activities have to be explicitly defined. The Roadmap is not a fixed plan; it evolves as different components are developed, refined, and implemented. Core elements of the Roadmap include the identification of ecosystem-based management units, a hierarchical approach to define exploitation rates by considering ecosystem, multispecies, and stock level sustainability, and the integration of impacts on benthic communities. The modular design of the plan has allowed NAFO to start implementing some components (e.g. closures to bottom fishing for the protection of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems), while work on others is still ongoing (e.g. multispecies modelling). Even though the Roadmap is far from being fully implemented, NAFO has made important progress towards EAF over the last decade. This paper summarizes the Roadmap structure and the current level of implementation, describes some of the challenges faced, and examines those still ahead.