Fish populations tend to do better in places where rigorous fisheries management practices are used, and the more measures employed, the better for fish populations and food production, according to a new paper published Jan. 11 in Nature Sustainability.

The , led by of the 91̽��’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, draws upon the expertise of more than two dozen researchers from 17 regions around the world. The research team analyzed the management practices of nearly 300 fish populations to tease out patterns that lead to healthier fisheries across different locations. Their findings confirmed, through extensive data analysis, what many researchers have argued for several years.

“In general, we found that more management attention devoted to fisheries is leading to better outcomes for fish and shellfish populations,” Melnychuk said. “While this won’t be surprising to some, the novelty of this work was in assembling the data required and then using statistical tools to reveal this pattern across hundreds of marine populations.”

The research team used an international database that is the go-to scientific resource on the status of more than 600 individual fish populations. They chose to analyze 288 populations that generally are of value economically and represent a diversity of species and regions. They then looked over time at each fish population’s management practices and were able to draw these conclusions:

• In regions of the world where fish and shellfish populations are well studied, overall fisheries management intensity has steadily increased over the past half century
• As fisheries management measures are implemented, fishing pressure is usually reduced toward sustainable levels, and population abundance usually increases toward healthy targets
• If fish populations become depleted as a result of overfishing, a rebuilding plan may be implemented. These plans tend to immediately decrease fishing pressure and allow populations to recover
• If strong fisheries management systems are put in place early enough, then overfishing can be avoided and large, sustainable catches can be harvested annually, rendering emergency measures like rebuilding plans unnecessary

The study builds on previous work that found, by using the same database, that nearly half of the fish caught worldwide are from populations that are scientifically monitored and, on average, are increasing in abundance. The new paper takes a closer look at specific management actions and how they have impacted fishing pressure and the abundance of each population examined, Melnychuk explained.

“All fish populations have their own unique contexts that might dictate what management tools would be most helpful and promising to use,” he said. “Despite the great diversity in their management objectives and various strategies to meet those, we focused on key management tools in common to many fisheries around the world.”

The international research team chose to look at a spectrum of fish populations, such as hakes in South Africa and Europe, orange roughy in New Zealand, tuna species on the high seas, anchovies in South America and scallops off the Atlantic coast of North America. Most of the populations they examined had a history of being depleted at some point, usually due to historical overfishing.

For example, with U.S. mid-Atlantic population of black sea bass, a rebuilding plan instituted in 1996 brought fishing rates down from three times the sustainable level to below this mark, which led to a steady rebuilding of the fishery and full recovery by 2009.

“Fishers targeting black sea bass in the northeastern U.S. are finally reaping the rewards of harvest caps that allowed the population to rebuild,” said co-author of the University of Wisconsin—Madison. “The 2020 catch limit of more than 6,000 tons is the highest since catch limits were first imposed more than 20 years ago.”

This analysis omits fisheries that lack scientific estimates of population status, even though these account for a large amount of the world’s catch. These include most of the fish populations in South Asia and Southeast Asia — fisheries in India, Indonesia and China alone represent 30% to 40% of the world’s catch, most of which is essentially unassessed. Although fisheries in these regions could not be included in the analyses, the paper’s authors conclude that lessons learned can equally apply to data-limited fisheries: Greater investment in fisheries management systems is expected to lead to better outcomes for the fish populations upon which our fisheries are based.

Other 91̽��co-authors include , , , Maite Pons, Daniel Hively, Charmane Ashbrook, Nicole Baker and Ricardo Amoroso. A full list of paper co-authors is .

This research was funded by The Nature Conservancy, The Wildlife Conservation Society, the Walton Family Foundation and a consortium of Seattle fishing companies.

For more information, contact Melnychuk at mmel@uw.edu.

But Alaska salmon falls short and lags behind some of the world’s fisheries in how it benefits local fishermen, processing workers and nearby rural communities, according to a new assessment that ranks the vitality of a fishery by looking at its economic and community benefits as well as its ecological health.

The Fishery Performance Indicators are the most comprehensive, global tool that considers social factors in addition to the usual biological measures when gauging a fishery’s health, said , a 91̽�� associate professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and a lead author of a published May 6 in the journal PLOS ONE describing the new methodology.

“This tool is designed to help us evaluate a fishery system’s performance toward achieving economic, community and ecological sustainability – the ‘triple bottom line,'” said co-author James Anderson, director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Florida.

The authors found that globally, less healthy fish stocks usually lead to worse economic and community outcomes. However, they identified several cases where weaker stocks contribute importantly to the livelihoods of harvesters and their communities, and healthy fish stocks generated meager economic or community benefits.

“It is often assumed that economic and social benefits always follow healthy stocks, but this is rarely tested due to the lack of social data,” Chris Anderson said. “Our strategy was to develop a rapid assessment instrument that would organize the knowledge of local fishery experts to help us understand how harvesters and processors are performing economically and how the fishery is supporting its community. Economically effective management, access to high-value markets and having other income opportunities often play a larger role in human outcomes than stock health, especially in communities where fishing is a large share of the economy.”

Anderson and 26 co-authors at the World Bank and other universities and organizations around the world chose 61 fisheries as initial case studies to build the assessment tool.

Since 2010, they have visited and studied fisheries ranging from Alaska halibut and Oregon Dungeness crab to Norway cod, Louisiana shrimp, Nile perch in Uganda and blue swimming crabs in Indonesia to gather information and refine the tool.

Here’s how it works: The authors created dozens of measurable statements that capture the range of three performance indicators – ecology, economics and community. Example statements relate to the degree of overfishing, price trends, the capacity of processors to export to the U.S. and E.U., health care access for processing workers, captains’ earnings relative to other jobs in the region and the social standing of the crew.

Then, to characterize a fishery, the authors drew on the knowledge of local experts who work with fishermen, processors and community leaders, scoring each statement from one to five, with five being the best, based on carefully defined categories of performance. The responses in each category were then averaged.

The results are sometimes surprising. Alaska salmon ranks 4.88 (almost a perfect five) in its ecological performance, but it was a mere 2.86 in economics and 3.40 in community performance. Alternatively, Colombian artisanal shrimp only hit 2.25 for ecological performance but reached 4.20 for its community impact. (See the paper for a .)

In the case of Alaska salmon, nearly all of the money businesses make selling the fish is spent catching it. The fishery operates as a derby, deploying several times the boats needed to catch the fish, and it’s expensive and financially risky to operate seasonal processors in rural Alaska.

Alternatively, in many developing countries a fishery whose stock is at a low level might still provide a key source of income within a community where resources are few.

“This highlights the importance of selecting development and management strategies that not only sustain stocks but also sustain industries and communities,” Chris Anderson said.

The co-authors used several international workshops and pilot cases with different users to refine their final set of statements to make the instrument robust across many different fisheries. They plan to add data from more fisheries and associate differences in performance with fishery management and governance factors.

“An overarching purpose is to be able to compare fisheries systems across species, management approaches and nations. With our new metric, I would argue you can now compare fisheries systems in Ghana to those in Iceland,” James Anderson said.

As former lead of the World Bank’s global program for fisheries and aquaculture, he said these indicators could be very useful for institutions like the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and nongovernmental organizations that fund projects on fisheries reform in developing countries to monitor and evaluate progress.

“Researchers will be able to make meaningful comparisons between large-scale and small-scale fisheries, nearshore and offshore fisheries, operations in industrialized countries compared to ones in developing countries, seafood aimed at export markets versus seafood primarily consumed locally, and a host of other possibilities,” said co-author , a professor of environmental economics at Duke University.

Other primary co-authors are Jingjie Chu at the World Bank and Jennifer Meredith at the UW. (The of contributors is in the paper.)

Instrument development and case studies were funded by the International Coalition of Fisheries Associations, the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Walton Family Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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For more information, contact Chris Anderson at cmand@uw.edu or 401-450-6078 and James Anderson at james.anderson@ufl.edu or 401-480-9488.