Fishery Management Problems Research Articles

The Management of High Seas Fisheries

A new and acute management problem, now the focus of a major U.N. conference, has arisen in recent years in international fisheries. The problem concerns the management of transboundary fishery resources, in the form of resources to be found in both the coastal state EEZ and the adjacent high seas. The resources are commonly referred to as straddling stocks. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the management issue. It reviews the historical and legal background and asks how far the now well developed economic analysis of the management of transboundary fishery resources in the form of resources shared by two or more coastal states will take us in examining this second and more recent transboundary fishery management problem. The answer is a very limited distance only. The article concludes by pointing to questions arising from this resource management issue demanding further research.

Applications of social science theory to fisheries management: Three examples

Abstract Funding support, and the realization by fishery managers that social science research has much to offer in the management process, have combined to create a framework for important research activity in recent years. This paper describes three projects of varying breadth, depth, and scope in which social scientific scholarship has both theoretical and applied value. The first project was a research effort in which funding first allowed for the construction of an appropriate theoretical model and hypotheses, and then supported the research, application, and evaluation. The second project illustrates how available theory and methods can be adapted to the solution of a basic problem in fisheries management, namely how to involve those who are affected by policies and regulations in the formation of those policies and regulations. The third project addresses the issue of conflict of fisheries management and locates marine resource conflicts within a larger conceptual context. This is also an area in which there has been a reluctance to face squarely the research needed to provide for more effective management.

Successes and failures of fisheries acoustics in the management of United States East Coast marine fisheries

The history of the use of acoustics in marine fisheries off the East Coast of the US is described in relationship to fisheries management. There has been limited use to date due to the nature of the fishery resource and fishery management problems on the East Coast. Use of fisheries acoustics in the future will increase slowly due to current financial constraints.

Development and fisheries management: The case of northwest Africa

The paper examines the state of fisheries and fisheries management in northwest Africa. Typical problems and constraints faced when attempting to manage a fishery resource are discussed. The particular fishery management problems faced by developing nations in general and with reference to countries in northwest Africa are addressed such as the inability, because of political constraints, to avoid short-term solutions which then place the resource-base at risk. Ironically, the relative effectiveness of other countries' management plans may place the resources of these less-developed countries at greater risk as fishermen weigh the costs of entering various fisheries and choose those with ineffective management. Internationalization of fisheries management presents the only tool that can effectively address these structural problems.

Biochemical genetics and fishery management: an historical perspective

This paper traces the development of applications of biochemical genetic methods to problems of fishery management over a period of four decades. In the 1950s, details of presumed genetic structuring offish species appeared destined for revelation through Mendelian characters identified by immunogenetic procedures. In the 1960s, immunogenetic methods were displaced by protein electrophoresis, with a proliferation of reports of genotypic and allelic data for protein‐coding loci. In the 1970s, disagreement about the biological significance of protein polymorphisms delayed acceptance of management applications of this variation. In the 1980s, management applications included identification of relationships among populations, analyses of mixed stock fisheries, and uses in fish culture, conservation biology and forensics. The complementary relationship between protein electrophoresis and nucleic acid technologies is stressed, with a plea to recognize the unique attributes of properly applied protein electrophoresis in fishery management.

Acceleration and deceleration effects of hatchery rearing on salmonid development, and their consequences for wild stocks

Cultivation, in maximising environmental advantages and minimising disadvantages, allows fish to develop more rapidly than in the wild. Farmed salmon tend to smolt and mature younger than wild-ones. Their developmental programme is genetically determined, but runs under environmental instruction. Their development may be altered by changing either the programmed (genetically) or the instructions (environmentally), or both. In practice both are changed, but to varying degrees. Abundant food improves opportunities, and so developmental processes are generally accelerated by this and by genetic selection for high growth rate. While early smolting is commercially desirable, concomitant early maturation is not. Later development may be decelerated by food restriction at critical seasons, and by selection for late maturity. The environmental manipulations per se, of fish which subsequently escape from rearing facilities have little biological significance for wild stocks, although the presence of large numbers of small mature fish may present fishery management problems. However, the genetic manipulations pose potential problems, since the genotypes of these fish have been altered to suit culture rather than wild conditions.

FISHERIES SCIENCE AND MODELING: A LOOK TO THE FUTURE

In this paper I forecast that the fisheries management problems we face as we enter the twenty-first century will have less to do with extractive conservation and more to do with protection of regional and global environments. I present two contemporary fisheries management case histories which tend to bear this out: (1) Pacific Northwest salmon, with particular reference to the Columbia River, and (2) the high-seas driftnet fisheries of the North Pacific. Characterizing these types of problems in a few words, I would say that their effects are long-term and perhaps irreversible, and that they lead to conditions that we have yet to experience. Because of the type of input needed from the scientific community in order to forge rational solutions, modeling becomes ever more important in translating scientific experience into a form that will enlighten and move decisionmakers.

Fish Population Dynamics: The Implications for Management

Stock assessment methods fish stock assessments and their data needs collecting fisheries assessment data length based methods of fish stock assessment the study of stock and recruitment some fishery management implications of recruitment variability Pacific salmon North Atlantic cod fisheries and management in the 1980s tropical penaeid prawns marine mammals small shoaling pelagic fish stocks multispecies fisheries of the Irish Sea fisheries research and the demersal fisheries of southeast Asia the ecological basis of multispecies fisheries and management of a demersal fishery in tropical Australia the problems of population dynamics and contemporary fishery management.

Application of CADCS Methods to a Problem in Fishery Management

The paper arises out of a collaborative project to investigate fishery management problems from the point of view of control engineering. A first stage of the investigation was to use software for Computer Aided Design of Control Systems, in the form of a linear quadratic design package (CTRL-C) in conjunction with a simulation package (SIMNON), to explore the quality of achievable performance under linear regulation. This application of CADCS proved to be a useful first stage of the project.

State Estimation in Regulating a Harvested Population

This paper arises out of a collaborative project to investigate fishery management problems from the point of view of control engineering.In managing a harvested population, control may be implemented by specifying an annual catch or quota. The harvested population is modelled as a dynamic system having quota as input. population size as state, and harvesting effort as output. The control objective is to regulate catch and harvesting effort to some equilibrium level with a minimum of perturbation in either.It is shown that a nonlinear control explicitly designed to achieve this objective performs better than other common control algorithms. The control needs to know current values of the state. If perfect information is not available then estimates based on noisy measurements must be used.Simulation of the resulting stochastic control of an uncertain fishery shows how the achievable quality of regulation depends on the quality of available information and indicates the need for a suitable nonlinear state-estimator.

A Linear Model Approach to Backcalculation of Fish Length

Abstract A common problem in fishery management is to infer the growth history of a population of fish from a single sample of fish. On each fish, one can measure its length at capture, age, and yearly increments between concentric annual rings in a scale. Linear models for growth from the scale increments are proposed. A method of inferring changes in length from the available data is then discussed. Results are illustrated by an example.

A Linear Model Approach to Backcalculation of Fish Length

Abstract A common problem in fishery management is to infer the growth history of a population of fish from a single sample of fish. On each fish, one can measure its length at capture, age, and yearly increments between concentric annual rings in a scale. Linear models for growth from the scale increments are proposed. A method of inferring changes in length from the available data is then discussed. Results are illustrated by an example.

"Any Comments on the Sociology Section, Tony?": Committee Work as Applied Anthropology in Fishery Management

I suppose this paper was provoked more than inspired.' In 1979 Miller and Van Maanen (1979) published an otherwise excellent article on Gloucester fishermen in which they sharply criticized the fishery management process established by the U.S. Fishery Conservation and Management Act (FCMA) of 1976 (Public Law 94-265). Though sympathetic to the local Regional Management Council, Miller and Van Maanen attacked the concept of "optimum y ie ld and the "gross insensitivity" of government policies (1979:384; 377) that engendered hostility, systematic law-breaking, and conflict among the fishermen themselves. I agreed with much of what Miller and Van Maanen had to say and welcomed their much-needed concrete, ethnographic data on the responses of fishermen to management measures. Nonetheless, I felt that their broadside against the management process unnecessarily tainted their arguments and would hamper rather than promote solutions to precisely the kinds of fishery management problems they so clearly and deftly documented. Moreover, by association I felt personally abused; I am one of those few anthropologists who are members of committees that advise regional fishery councils, noted by Acheson (1 98 1 : 304). Since 1978 I have been a member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (GMFMC), first as a member of a special Socio-Economic Committee, then, since 1979, a member of the Standing Committee. This essay is not about fishermen, fishing, or maritime anthropology; it is about applied anthropology in the rather specialized context of the fishery management committee on which I have served. "Maritime anthropology" has come of age, as evidenced by Acheson's recent (1 98 1) chapter in the Annual Review of Anthropology, and a few anthropologists have achieved considerable national visibility in fisheries management. Nonetheless, the involvement of anthropologists at the regional level, where fishery management plans are initiated, is rather anonymous and obscure. Thus, I am making this report to my colleagues. In effect this is a brief ethnographic report, perhaps "autoethnographic" report, on the role of an anthropologist in the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. As an applied anthropologist I present these remarks in the spirit of George Foster's (1969:91) now rather commonplace-seeming but nonetheless important dictum that "knowledge about the social and cultural forms of the innovating organization, about the structure and functions of bureaucratic institutions, is just as essential as knowledge about recipient peoples to successful planned change." My "findings" are based upon participant observation spanning a four-year period encompassing 12 meetings of the Committee, comprising some 22 days of activity, plus reading of an astounding number of reports, memoranda, and other documents. I have been very much more a participant than an observer. I have written not a single "field note" on my experiences, and now some of my own comments recorded in official minutes of meetings are incomprehensible even to me. The press of simply understanding the many issues before the Committee and performing responsibly as a Committee member precluded any detached field study of the Committee. Hence, it might be wisest to describe the basis for this paper as "participant-retroflection," to coin a phrase. The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is one of the eight Councils established by the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. The Gulf Council is one of the largest of the eight, having 17 voting members, the same as the New England Council and exceeded only by the MidAtlantic Council with 19 members. The Gulf Council is charged with developing management plans for the "fishery conservation zone" encompassed by the entire Gulf coast from the Florida Keys to the Mexican border. This region's fisheries "account for over 34 percent by volume and 21 percent by value of the U.S. commercial harvest" (GMFMC 1980:2). Commercial fishing on the Gulf Coast varies from beach seining and oyster tonging in the inshore fisheries to roller trawling and long-lining in the offshore fisheries. Likewise, the Gulf Coast attracts millions of recreational fishermen, ranging from those far out at sea in the wake of the Hemingway mystique searching for the dramatic blue marlin, to those humble souls like myself who are content to dangle a chicken neck from a bit of string in some shallow inlet hoping to snag a few blue crabs. As of June 1982 the Gulf Council with 1 1 plans led all the regional councils in number of fishery management plans in development, extending from corals to sharks (NMFS 1982:s-7). The Gulf Coast is a region of great human variety as well. Coastal communities range from sprawling metropolises to

Incorporating Economic Objectives in Goal Programs for Fishery Management

Allowing for the biological and economic complexities pertaining to a particular fishery requires a phased, hierarchical approach to fishery management. Mathematical programming models, particularly goal programs, are applicable to this type of management problem because they can readily accommodate the constraints and targets set in previous phases as well as any new ones that may be required There are a number of goal programming formulations that may be useful for modeling the objectives of fishery management problems. Furthermore, economic objectives can be interpreted in different ways. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a range of goal programming specifications into which alternative economic objectives have been incorporated.

Irreversible Investment and Optimal Fisheries Management: A Stochastic Analysis

In recent years, attention has been devoted to fishery management problems that arise because capital embodied in fishing fleets is often nonmalleable, having few if any alternative uses. This problem of irreversible investment was analyzed by Clark et al. (1979), using a deterministic model. In reality, however, most investment decisions must be made within an uncertain environment. This paper describes recent efforts to account for uncertainty in analyzing the problem of optimal fishery investment, where the uncertainty is caused by stochastic variability in the resource stock from year to year.

Use of An Age-Dependent Mark–Recapture Model in Fisheries Research

An age-dependent generalization of the Jolly–Seber mark–recapture model for fish populations subject to birth, death, and migration is illustrated using data from a study on northern pike (Esox lucius) in Dorset, England. These data show strong evidence of differential survival with age. We estimate the average annual survival rate to be 50% for the pike aged 2 or more years and 34% for those of age 1 yr. We believe that this age-dependent mark–recapture model could be very useful for a wide range of fisheries research and management problems. Often in fisheries work the assumption that survival is independent of age has not been examined critically. We present guidelines helpful in designing mark–recapture studies. This includes a useful design which increases precision and also allows population size estimation to be robust to unequal catchability (heterogeneity or trap response) within an age-class.

A mathematical consideration on the adaptation strategy of marine fishes

1) Selections of life history is examined quantitatively for marine fishes based on mechanical models on survival, growth and maturation. 2) For survival model, usual exponential model is applied and for growth modelvon Bertalanffy growth curve is used. 3) Total assimilation, total egg production, mean duration of generation and equilibrium catch of one year class throughout its life are calculated. Effects on these quantities of manipulating parameters are examined particularly forK ofBertalanffy's growth curve, life spanT and natural mortality coefficientM. 4) Three kinds of strategies are taken into consideration. They are to maximize (1) growth rate of population, (2) energy efficiency for egg production and (3) total egg production throughout the life. 5) Adaptation strategies are considered under the condition of no fishing. Strategists of first kind include anchovy and saury and have largeK andM values and smallT values. Strategiests of second kind include sardine and herring and have large values of allK, M andT. Strategists of third kind include tuna and flatfishes and have smallK andM and largeT values. 6) Referring to tuna, sardine and anchovy, three sets of parameter values are posturated and the effects of fishing are examined. Tuna type fish are most severely affected by fishing but sardine and anchovy type fish are affected moderately or slightly by fishing provided that only adult fish are exploited. Particularly anchovy type fish are considered to be quite tough against fishing. 7) Discussions are presented on such subjects as relation between environment and selection of life history, types of population fluctuation, and fisheries management problems.

The MEI Symposium—Overview and Observations

The morphoedaphic index (MEI), in both its original and derivative forms, is a powerful tool for certain aspects of fishery management and a challenging concept to fishery scientists. Its development and an appreciation of its applicability are still evolving but have reached the point where a state-of-the-art review and consideration of what the future might hold are appropriate. A concept similar to that of the MEI has been developed and tested for nutrient loading-phytoplankton standing crops in lakes. Links between the two models and associated ecological theory are evidence for the fundamental soundness of the MEIˈs theoretical basis. Successful applications demonstrate the utility of the MEI and similar relationships for several types of fishery management problems.

MATCHING FISHING CAPACITY TO THE CATCHES AVAILABLE: A PROBLEM IN RESOURCE ALLOCATION

Fish populations are examples of open‐access renewable resources, and they are harvested by hunting. Fishery management is analogous to the management of the cropping of a wood, in which the trees are invisible, and keep moving around. Economic factors drive fishing fleets to a state of excess capacity and zero return to capital employed. Some form of regulation seems to be essential to enable a viable fishing industry which can regenerate its own capital to survive. The problems of management are exacerbated by excess capacity: it would be desirable if the size of the fishing fleet were matched to that required to catch the fish available. A novel method for estimating the size of fleet for which full‐time fishing opportunities exist has been developed, but no mechanism exists to stimulate the development of the fleet towards that size. This, and the absence of a proper system of enforcement of internationally agreed quotas are the principal problems of fishery management.

Fisheries science now and in the future: A personal view

This paper is an attempt to come to grips with contemporary fisheries science; its established traditions, most common uses, and future directions. Reasons are hypothesised as to why fisheries science has often led management to fall short of its goals, and suggestions are given as to ,how fisheries science might evolve in the future. Particular reference is given to the contemporary New Zealand scene. It is suggested that, of highest importance to this evolution, is an awareness that the scientific approach used to tackle a fishery assessment and management problem depends on the nature of the individual fishery. In some fisheries, useful inferences can be made by concentrating attention on the exploited stocks themselves; in others, the structure of the exploited community and its relation to fish productivity and dynamics must be taken into account in order to realise effective management.