Fishing down the Mediterranean Food

These impacts of fisheries have led, in the late 1990s, to a growing interest in "ecosystembased management" (see e.g. NRC, 1999). Moreover, though the full implications of such form of management continue to remain elusive, there is a growing understanding that ecosystembased management must consider and maintain the structuring role of large predators in marine food webs. The demonstration by Pauly et al. (1998a) that the mean trophic level of fisheries landings has been declining in most parts of the world thus confirmed the widespread view that most of the world. fisheries are not sustainable in that they increasingly rely on organisms with low trophic levels, such as small fishes and invertebrates, Le., on the prey species of larger fishes and marine mammals.