Concern about the global state of fisheries and fish resources has highlighted the three primary considerations in fisheries management: sustainable utilisation, economic efficiency and equity in access to resources. We appear to be failing in pursuit of all three goals. Living marine resources are particularly threatened by overfishing, leading to many of the world’s fish stocks being heavily, fully or over exploited. Similarly, the economic diagnosis is that costs of fishing exceeded the value of the world’s catch by about US$ 40 billion at the beginning of the decade. Statistics on equity are less available, but the necessary spread of limited access to fisheries frequently has the greatest impact on the small scale, traditional fisher.

This paper considers the reasons underlying the general failure of fisheries management and the solutions that are being proposed. Factors contributing to the problems include high biological uncertainty, conflict between the constraint of sustainability and social and economic priorities, poorly defined objectives, and institutional failures related to access rights and participation in management by the users. These issues point to the real complexity of fisheries management. It is argued that this complexity can be abused by all interest groups to avoid responsibility and to suit their own objectives. It is suggested that there are eight simple principles controlling fisheries management that are generally well-understood and, if properly considered in fisheries management systems, would lead to improved performances.

Responsible management will, however, only be effective if there is a genuine desire to achieve the objectives. Fishing capacity, frequently reflecting dependency of users on fisheries resources, is commonly in excess of the sustainable production of the resources. Excess dependency can preclude the political will to consider alternative strategies and only once it has been overcome, probably requiring solutions borrowed from outside fisheries, is effective management likely to be considered seriously. Thereafter, responsible management requires setting unambiguous objectives and management measures in co-operation with users and other interest groups. The agreed strategy must be included in legislation to ensure transparency and accountability and to constrain decision-makers. The performance of the strategy must be monitored and revised as necessary.

Reconciling sustainability, economic efficiency and equity in fisheries: the one that got away?

Foreword Preface 1. History of international co-operation in research Jurgen Alheit and Andrew Bakun 2. A short scientific history of the fisheries Alec D. Maccall 3. Habitats Dave Checkley, Patricia Ayon, Tim R. Baumgartner, Miguel Bernal, J. C. Coetzee, Robert Emmett, Renato Guevara, Larry Hutching, Leire Ibaibarriaga, Hideaki Nakata, Yoshioki Oozeki, Benjamin Planque, Jake Schweigert, Yorgos Stratoudakis and Carl D. Van der Lingen 4. Variability from scales in marine sediments and other historical records David B. Field, Tim R. Baumgartner, Vicente Ferreira, Dimitri Gutierrez, Hector Lozano-Montes, Renato Salvatteci and Andy Soutar 5. Decadal-scale variability in populations Jurgen Alheit, Claude Roy and Souad Kifani 6. Biophysical models Christophe Lett, Kenneth A. Rose and Bernard A. Megrey 7. Trophic dynamics Carl D. Van der Lingen, Arnaud Bertrand, Antonio Bode, Rick Brodeur, Luis Cubillos, Pepe Espinoza, Kevin Friedland, Susana Garrido, Xabier Irigoien, Todd Miller, Christian Mollman, Ruben Rodriguez Sanchez, Hiroshige Tanaka and Axel Temming 8. Impacts of fishing and climate change explored using trophic models Lynne Shannon, Marta Coll, Sergio Neira, Philippe Cury and Jean-Paul Roux 9. Current trends in the assessment and management of stocks Manuel Barange, Miguel Bernal, Maria Cristina Cergole, Luis A. Cubillos, Carryn L. Cunningham, Georgi M. Daskalov, Jose A. A. de Oliveira, Mark Dickey-Collas, Dave J. Gaughan, Kevin Hill, Larry D. Jacobson, Fritz W. Koster, Jacques Masse, Hiroshi Nishida, Miguel Niquen, Yoshioki Ooozeki, Isabella Palomera, Suzana A. Saccardo, Alberto Santojanni, Rodolfo Serra, Stylios Somarakis, Yorgos Stratoudakis, Andres Uriarte, Carl D. Van der Lingen and Akihiko Yatsu 10. Global production and economics Samuel F. Herrick, Jr., Jerrold G. Norton, Rognvaldur Hannesson, U. Rashid Sumaila, Mahfuzuddin Ahmed and Julio Pena-Torres 11. Human dimensions of the fisheries under global change Rosemary E. Ommer, Astrid C. Jarre, R. Ian Perry, Manuel Barange, Kevern Cochrane and Coleen Moloney 12.Mechanisms of low-frequency fluctuations in anchovy and sardine populations Alec D. MacCall 13. Research challenges in the twenty-first century Andrew Bakun 14. Conjectures on future climate effects on marine ecosystems dominated by small pelagic fish Pierre Freon, Francisco Werner and Francisco Chavez 15. Synthesis and perspective Dave Checkley, Andrew Bakun, Manuel A. Barange, Leonardo R. Castro, Pierre Freon, Renato Guevara-Carrasco, Samuel F. Herrick, Jr., Alec D. MacCall, Rosemary Ommer, Yoshioki Oozeki, Claude Roy, Lynne Shannon and Carl D. van der Lingen Index.

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Climate Change and Small Pelagic Fish

The pelagic fishery in South Africa targets mainly anchovy, Engraulis capensis, and sardine, Sardinops sagax, both of which have varied substantially in abundance during the history of the fishery. Since 1988, there has been progress in this fishery towards the use of management procedures as the basis for determination of management regulations, where a management procedure is defined as a set of rules, derived by simulation and normally implemented for three to five years, specifying how the regulatory mechanism is set, the data collected for this purpose and how these data are to be analysed and used. Advantages of management procedures include formal consideration of uncertainty, the ability to choose decision rules based on their predicted medium-term consequences and a saving in workload compared with annual assessments. This paper discusses the lessons learned in application of management procedures and their precursors in this fishery. The high variability in abundance of the two stocks, the trend in their relative abundance, the substantial uncertainties in information, strong pressure to meet socio-economic goals and the conflicting objectives which arose between the directed anchovy and directed sardine fishery are identified as major problems in implementation of procedures and management of the resources. However, the use of management procedures is considered to have led to greatly improved communication with the industry and to substantial input by them into the management process. The procedures and the simulations upon which they were based also enabled consideration of the major sources of uncertainty in understanding of the resource dynamics and facilitated the development of procedures that were robust to them. It is argued that biological uncertainty greatly exacerbated the problems in application of the procedures but probably cannot be markedly reduced in the near future. Management procedures must be robust to likely variability and uncertainty. Of equal importance are identification and selection of achievable objectives, and allocation to the political decision makers and not to the scientists, of responsibility for determining acceptable trade-offs between conservation and socio-economic goals. Other issues, including the importance of long-term rights and allowance for flexibility in fishing practice, are also highlighted

Management procedures in a fishery based on highly variable stocks and with conflicting objectives: experiences in the South African pelagic fishery

Large-scale, mass-balance trophic models have been developed for northern and southern regions of both the Benguela and Humboldt upwelling ecosystems. Four of these Ecopath models were compared and calibrated against one another. A common model structure was established, and a common basis was used to derive poorly known parameter values. The four resulting models represent ecosystems in which the main commercial fish species have been moderately to heavily fished: central-southern Chile (1992), northern-central Peru (1973–1981), South Africa (1980–1989), and Namibia (1995–2000). Quantitative ecosystem indicators derived from these models were compared. Indicators based on large flows (involving low trophic levels) or top predators were not well estimated, because of aggregation problems. Many of the indicators could be contrasted on the basis of differences between the Benguela and Humboldt systems, rather than on the basis of fishing impact. These include integrated values relating to total catches, and trophic levels of key species groups. Indicators based on integrated biomass, total production, and total consumption tended to capture differences between the model for Namibia (where fish populations were severely reduced) and the other models. We conclude that a suite of indicators is required to represent ecosystem state, and that interpretation requires relatively detailed understanding of the different ecosystems.

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Comparing the Benguela and Humboldt marine upwelling ecosystems with indicators derived from inter-calibrated models

Existing problems in fisheries management are generally well understood. Most of them arise from the high levels of uncertainty inherent in fisheries management. This uncertainty derives from poor knowledge of and ability to observe the biological resources, and also, at least equally importantly, uncertainty in the formulation and implementation of management systems. The approaches to risk assessment and management that are evolving to address these uncertainties tend to lead to greater complexity in the management system and place greater and greater demands on those involved in the management of fisheries. However, there is little evidence that these developments are having the desired results, even in the commercial, single-species fisheries for which they are being developed. Nevertheless, a danger exists that the model will be followed in multi-species fisheries, where the problems of assessment and management increase multiplicatively as the complexity of the fishery increases. An important corollary of the precautionary approach is that decreasing uncertainty in the management process should permit the allowable yield in a fishery to approach more closely the potential maximum yield. It is therefore suggested that all management measures and activities in a management system should be considered in terms of their benefits, through reducing uncertainty, and their costs, and only cost-effective activities included in a system. It is also recommended that the properties of different management measures and institutional arrangements be determined and catalogued, from analysis of their performance in practice, as started in a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Design of management systems based on careful consideration of the objectives for the fishery and the properties and real contributions of different measures and activities would lead to simpler but more effective systems than are currently evolving.

Complexity in fisheries and limitations in the increasing complexity of fisheries management

SUMMARY South Africa's offshore living marine resources are commercially the most valuable of its renewable marine resources They are herein defined as the demersal, pelagic and squid fisheries Reviews are given of the fisheries and the focus research has taken since Gilchrist's days, with accent on the present situation and understanding Progress has not always been smooth, but many of the developments in research on offshore living resources have placed South Africa at the forefront of fisheries management Looking to the future, options are explored and likely scenarios generated Certain is the fact that management of the offshore living marine resources has been and will continue to be exciting and, to some extent, even controversial

K. L. Cochrane

Papers

South africa's offshore living marine resources: the scientific basis for management of the fisheries