—We argue that the sustainable management of fisheries resources depends on an understanding of the taxonomy and systematics of fish. Toward this end, it is necessary for fisheries managers to understand and apply the various species concepts that have been developed by taxonomists and evolutionary biologists and to decide, based on a philosophical position, what is necessary and sufficient for...

Fish populations vary geographically in demography and life history due to environmental and ecological processes and in response to exploitation. However, population dynamic models and stock assessments, used to manage fisheries, rarely explicitly incorporate spatial variation to inform management decisions. Here, we describe extensive geographic variation in several demographic and life histo...

Empirical evidence indicates that environmental fluctuations have important effects on fisheries production. However, existing analytical solutions of stochastic fisheries models have been produced only under highly simplified economic and biological conditions. The main contribution of this paper is to derive under general conditions a policy function for the management of a stochastic fishery...

1 Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE) and Institute of Marine Research (IMAR), University of the Azores, Horta, Portugal, 2 Department of Oceanography and Fisheries, University of the Azores, Horta, Portugal, 3 Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Honolulu, HI, USA, 4 Hawaii Institute of M...

The interaction of seabirds with fisheries (particularly those using longline gear) has become an international issue, as demonstrated by the adoption of the FAO International Plan of Action for Reducing Incidental Catches of Seabirds in Longline Fisheries (IPOA-Seabirds), and resolutions and mandatory mitigation requirements by regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs). In 2004, the Ag...

Global fisheries are in a crisis, and so are the marine ecosystems upon which these fisheries depend. Major policy and management changes are required to halt and reverse the trends that have brought about this situation. Underlying these changes is the need for availability of data sets, pertaining to large areas, that unequivocally demonstrate any large-scale fisheries impacts on marine ecosy...

Recent changes in fisheries regulation in the U.S. North Pacific reveal how neoliberalism is constituted in practice, and the forms that neoliberalism takes when it engages with environmental management and ecological processes. Whereas neoliberalism can be taken as a political economic philosophy that posits that markets, without state involvement, can best allocate resources, the history and ...

Marine reserve design often considers potential benefits to conservation and/or fisheries but typically ignores potential revenues generated through tourism. Since tourism can be the main source of economic benefits for many marine reserves worldwide, ignoring tourism objectives in the design process might lead to sub-optimal outcomes. To incorporate tourism benefits into marine reserve design,...

Exploited ecosystems are characterised by exports of secondary production from each fished trophic level that reduce the energy available for upper levels at the ecosystem scale, thus impinging on overall secondary production. Depletion in secondary production is proposed here as a proxy for quantifying the ecosystem effects of fishing. Theoretical analysis of trophic web interactions permits t...

Both old and new information on the biology and ecology of Atlantic bluefin tuna have confronted scientists with research challenges: research needs to be connected to current stockassessment and management issues. We review recent studies on habitat, migrations and population structure, stressing the importance of electronic tagging results in the modification of our perception of bluefin tuna...