Introduction This article summarizes key findings from two recently completed Pelagic Fisheries Research Program (PFRP) projects, each designed to examine change in Hawai‘i’s small-boat commercial handline fisheries. The first study focused on factors associated with diminished activity in the ika-shibi fishery, a long-standing and once-lucrative yellowfin and bigeye tuna fishery specific to Ha...

—Recent U.S. federal fisheries management actions aimed at reducing bycatch have established or proposed limits on the length of a pelagic longline set. However, such management measures are unenforceable if the criteria for measuring the length of a pelagic longline set have not been defined. Differences in the physical gear and deployment strategies suggest high variability among the several ...

There are indications that pelagic cnidarians and ctenophores (‘jellyfish’) have increased in abundance throughout the world, or that outbreaks are more frequent, although much uncertainty surrounds the issue, due to the scarcity of reliable baseline data. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed for the individual increases or outbreaks that are better documented, but direct experimental or mani...

The distribution of pelagic marine fishes and invertebrates varies seasonally. However, information on the seasonal variation of the distribution of most pelagic marine fishes and invertebrates is scarce. In this paper, seasonal changes in distribution ranges of commercially exploited pelagic fishes and invertebrates are predicted based on the existing Sea Around Us Project distribution, a pred...

The largest protected areas of any kind have all recently been established in the ocean. Since 2012, 5 protected areas that exceed 1 million km2 in size have been created, mostly in remote oceanic areas. The potential conservation and fisheries benefits of such reserves have been debated in the public, the media, and the scientific literature. Little is known about their effectiveness for com m...

Tunas and their relatives dominate the world's largest ecosystems and sustain some of the most valuable fisheries. The impacts of fishing on these species have been debated intensively over the past decade, giving rise to divergent views on the scale and extent of the impacts of fisheries on pelagic ecosystems. We use all available age-structured stock assessments to evaluate the adult biomass ...

Observers were placed on pelagic vessels in the Scottish fisheries for mackerel (Scomber scombrus), herring (Clupea harengus), “maatje” herring (herring caught just before their first spawning) and argentines (Argentina silus) to monitor by-catch composition and discarding practices. A total of 67 days was spent at sea, 11 on the argentine fleet, 28 on the herring fleet, 12 on the “maatje” herr...

The patterns of variations in fisheries time series are known to result from a complex combination of species and fisheries dynamics all coupled with environmental forcing (including climate, trophic interactions, etc.). Disentangling the relative effects of these factors has been a major goal of fisheries science for both conceptual and management reasons. By examining the variability of 169 t...

The three decades following World War ii were a period of rapidly increasing fishing effort and landings, but also of spectacular collapses, particularly in small pelagic fish stocks. This is also the period in which a toxic triad of catch underreporting, ignoring scientific advice and blaming the environment emerged as standard response to ongoing fisheries collapses, which became increasingly...