United States fisheries are managed by regional councils. Fishermen can participate in fisheries managed by multiple councils, and effort controls in one region could lead to effort leakage into another. Using difference-in-differences, we test for leakage across regional fisheries boundaries for a catch share program in New England. We find evidence that the New England groundfish sector progr...

Fisheries data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that global marine fisheries catches increased to 86 million tonnes in 1996, then slightly declined. Here, using a decade-long multinational 'catch reconstruction' project covering the Exclusive Economic Zones of the world's maritime countries and the High Seas from 1950 to 2010, and accounting for all fisheries, we...

Failures in fisheries management have been linked to our inability to embrace the inherent uncertainty of fisheries systems. Fisheries decisions should be made on the basis of integrated evaluations of strategy alternatives, where comparisons of comprehensive scenarios incorporate strategic biological and socio-economic objectives and constraints, and explicitly take account of system uncertain...

Recent reports suggest that most of the world's commercial fisheries could collapse within decades. Although poor fisheries governance is often implicated, evaluation of solutions remains rare. Bioeconomic theory and case studies suggest that rights-based catch shares can provide individual incentives for sustainable harvest that is less prone to collapse. To test whether catch-share fishery re...

Policy efforts to reduce fisheries impact have often created micro-management. Detailed regulations are restricting the fishing industry, and are also acknowledged to limit the progress towards sustainable management. Industry representatives, political bodies and scientists have therefore argued for more simplicity and transparency. Here, fisheries management is quantified in terms of trends i...

This Record of Decision (ROD) documents the decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service (hereinafter referred to as NOAA Fisheries) to select the Preferred Alternative set forth in the Alaska Groundfish Fisheries Final Programmatic Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (PSEIS) as its policy choice for the management of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) and Gulf of Alaska (G...

1 Sea Around Us, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2 Marine Fisheries Research and Development Division, Department of Fisheries, Bangkok, Thailand, 3 Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean, School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia, 4 Changing Ocean Research Unit, Nereus Program, Institute for the O...

and customary fishers mainly take white sharks as bycatch in gillnets, and occasionally on longlines (Duffy unpubl. data). Sport fisheries for white sharks in New Zealand are largely undeveloped and fishers often tag and release those they do catch (Mossman 1993; Wilson 2002). A protective beach meshing programme run by Dunedin City Council (DCC) operates seasonally off Brighton, St. Clair and ...

Recent reports suggest that many well-assessed fisheries in developed countries are moving toward sustainability. We examined whether the same conclusion holds for fisheries lacking formal assessment, which comprise >80% of global catch. We developed a method using species' life-history, catch, and fishery development data to estimate the status of thousands of unassessed fisheries worldwide. W...

Alaska fisheries are traditionally and economically important and, in 1992, fisheries subject to bycatch monitoring were valued at US$1.538 billion. Bycatch is the major seabird mortality factor and a serious conservation concern. Estimated average incidental mortality (1989-93) in selected fisheries was ca 11,200 birds annually. About 88% of the bycatch was in longline fisheries. Northern Fulm...