Sustainable fisheries must ultimately reduce poverty while maintaining ecosystem productivity. On coral reefs, managing for 'concave' trophic pyramids might be a win-win for people and ecosystems, by providing higher-value fisheries and maintaining important ecological functions.

Anthropogenic disturbances are ubiquitous in the ocean, but their impacts on marine species are hotly debated. We evaluated marine fish statuses using conservation (Red List threatened or not) and fisheries (above or below reference points) metrics, compared their alignment, and diagnosed why discrepancies arise. Whereas only 13.5% of Red Listed marine fishes (n = 2952) are threatened, 40% and ...

There is increasing concern for the conservation of sharks among scientists, environmental conservation advocates, and the interested public, but misunderstanding among policy non-specialists about which conservation and management policies are available, and which might work best for certain situations, persists. Here we present a review of fisheries management and conservation literature rela...

The aim of the PhD research was to contribute to improving fisheries management. The overall purpose was to select applicable modeling techniques, develop models and simulate the dynamics of fisheries management with the aim of comparing different management strategies by looking at their impact on selected indicators. The indicators are biological, economic or social. The main contribution of ...

Commercial fisheries may impact marine ecosystems and affect populations of predators like seabirds. In the Southern Ocean, there is an extensive fishery for Antarctic krill Euphausia superba that is projected to increase further. Comparing distribution and prey selection of fishing operations versus predators is needed to predict fishery-related impacts on krill-dependent predators. In this co...

During the past century, commercial fisheries have expanded from small vessels fishing in shallow, coastal habitats to a broad suite of vessels and gears that fish virtually every marine habitat on the globe. Understanding how fisheries have developed in space and time is critical for interpreting and managing the response of ecosystems to the effects of fishing, however time series of spatiall...

Global marine fisheries are currently underperforming, largely due to overfishing. An analysis of global databases finds that resource rent net of subsidies from rebuilt world fisheries could increase from the current negative US$13 billion to positive US$54 billion per year, resulting in a net gain of US$600 to US$1,400 billion in present value over fifty years after rebuilding. To realize thi...

Background During the past few decades several international initiatives have been adopted to promote the implementation of an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM). The 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries has been developed as a reference framework for sustainable fisheries addressing ecosystem considerations, principles and goals needed for EAFM (Garcia & Cochrane, ...

Analogous to the recently emerging ‘slow food’movement for the protection of the right to taste (see www.slowfood.com), the concept of ‘slow fish’may be used to convey important messages for protection of fisheries and the right to fish. The slow food movement talks about striking the right balance of respect and exchange with nature and the environment, while enhancing eating pleasure. Similar...

There is great variation in discarding practice among fisheries in different parts of the world. Management systems result in some fisheries discarding mostly fish offal, much of which is macerated into small chunks, while other fisheries discard large (ca. 25 cm) whole fish. Scavenging seabirds consume high proportions of most categories of discarded fish and offal (typically 60 to 80% of disc...