A stochastic age-structured population model was developed to explore biologically favourable levels of effort and closing periods within the sardine pelagic fishery in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Results suggested that the developed age-structured model captured the observed biomass fluctuations and catches reasonably well and represents the first comprehensive investigation of alternative ...

Historical perspectives on fisheries and related human behaviour provide valuable information on fishery resources and their exploitation, helping to more appropriately set management targets and determine relevant reference levels. In this study we analyse historical fisheries and fish trade at the north-eastern Baltic Sea coast in the late 17th century. Local consumption and export together a...

~ oastal zone management (CZM), ~ a multidisciplinary activity par excellence. involves branches of the natural and social sciences in which the concept of overfishing has no operational meaning. Thus, fishery biologists working alongside representatives of other disciplines are often hard-pressed to define this concept, which is of crucial importance to fishery management. This essay is an att...

The objective of U.S. fisheries management, as mandated by National Standard 1 of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, is to maintain fish stocks at levels sufficient to produce maximum sustainable yields (MSY). Mandated levels of fishing may be less than MSY but are not to exceed these levels. MSY, of course, has been a highly elusive goal (Larkin 1977). Operationally, National Standard 1 ha...

The Madison Swanson Marine Protected Area was established to protect gag grouper, Mycteroperca microlepis, spawning aggregations on high relief, deepwater habitat in the Gulf of Mexico. Fishery biologists observed a decline in the proportion of male individuals in the population. The decline led fishery managers to question the reproductive health of the gag grouper population. However, competi...

Southern bluefin tuna is a highly valuable, severely depleted species, whose abundance and productivity have been difficult to assess with conventional fishery data. Here we use large-scale genotyping to look for parent-offspring pairs among 14,000 tissue samples of juvenile and adult tuna collected from the fisheries, finding 45 pairs in total. Using a modified mark-recapture framework where '...

Depredation of southern rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) within fishing gear by the Maori octopus (Pinnoctopus cordiformis) has economic and ecological impacts on valuable fisheries in South Australia. In addition, depredation rates can be highly variable resulting in uncertainties for the fishery. We examined how in-pot lobster predation was influenced by factors such as lobster size and sex, se...