Arreguín Sánchez, F. (2022). Managing Fisheries Under a Holistic Approach. Springer Cham (Ed.), Holistic Approach to Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management. Linking Biological Hierarchyes for Sustainable Fishing. Cap. 8, pp.99-112. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-96847-2_8.
Francisco Arreguín Sánchez 1
This chapter focuses on showing the importance of managing fisheries resources from a holistic perspective. The concept of dynamic sustainability is discussed, recognizing that currently, under the effects of climate patterns, populations adapt and ecosystems continually reconfigure. Under conventional approaches, changes in ecosystems assume fishing as the main source of changes in abundance, when part of them is due to natural variability such as climate. With this perspective, results of the management measures are not as expected. Emphasis is placed on the need for a truly holistic approach, that is, “from ecosystems towards individual stocks.” Under this approach, two clear examples of biased interpretations that, in the midterm (decades), were diagnosed as overfishing when the effect of the climate, without being considered, has played an important role in the present state of the exploited stocks. One case refers to top predators in the Gulf of California, and the other case refers to shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico. It is recognized that part of the problem is the inability to adapt management systems, including lack of knowledge, to conditions involving the continuous natural changes. Essentially, when a fishery is being exploited at the level of maximum production capacity and a climatic event occurs that consistently reduces biomass along the time, if the harvest rate is not adjusted to the available biomass, year to year along the trend, the result is overfishing. This seems to be the process that occurred in the examples mentioned, and evidently, the management measures adopted have not been as successful as expected in respect to the stocks’ recovery. Finally, the concept of ecosystem’ vulnerability is reviewed through a specific indicator, showing how vulnerability varies according to the type of ecosystem.
Palabras clave: ecosystem based fisheries management; Target species; non-target species; overfishing; Fisheries and climate effects; Fishing down the food web; ecosystem functioning; Ecosystem organization; Ecosystem vulnerability; dynamic sustainability; Ecosystem self-organization
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