Marine Fisheries Ecology (eBook)

Simon Jennings, Michel Kaiser, John D. Reynolds (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
9781118688106 (ISBN)

Infos

This topical and exciting textbook describes fisheries exploitation, biology, conservation and management, and reflects many recent and important changes in fisheries science. These include growing concerns about the environmental impacts of fisheries, the role of ecological interactions in determining population dynamics, and the incorporation of uncertainty and precautionary principles into management advice. The book draws upon examples from tropical, temperate and polar environments, and provides readers with a broad understanding of the biological, economic and social aspects of fisheries ecology and the interplay between them. As well as covering 'classical' fisheries science, the book focuses on contemporary issues such as industrial fishing, poverty and conflict in fishing communities, marine reserves, the effects of fishing on coral reefs and by-catches of mammals, seabirds and reptiles. The book is primarily written for students of fisheries science and marine ecology, but should also appeal to practicing fisheries scientists and those interested in conservation and the impacts of humans on the marine environment.

• particularly useful are the modelling chapters which explain the difficult maths involved in a user-friendly manner
• describes fisheries exploitation, conservation and management in tropical, temperate and polar environments
• broad coverage of 'clasical' fisheries science
• emphasis on new approaches to fisheries science and the ecosystem effects of fishing
• examples based on the latest research and drawn from authors' international experience
• comprehensively referenced throughout
• extensively illustrated with photographs and line drawings

Simon Jennings and Michel Kaiser are the authors of Marine Fisheries Ecology, published by Wiley.

Inhalt

1. Marine fisheries ecology: an introduction.

2. Marine ecology and production processes.

3. Fished Species: life histories and distribution.

4. Population structure in space and time.

5. Fishing gears and techniques.

6. Fishers: socioeconomics and human ecology.

7. Single species stock assessment>.

8. Multi-species assessment and ecosystem modelling.

9. Getting the data: stock identity and dynamics.

10. Getting the data: abundance, catch and effort.

11. Bioeconomics.

12. Fishing effects on populations and communities.

13. Bycatches and discards.

14. Impacts on benthic communities, habitats and coralreefs.

15. Fisheries interactions with birds and mammals.

16. A role for aquaculture?.

17. Management and Conservation options.

References

Rezensionen

"The book is indeed a boon to both the student and teaching
communities."

Pashudhan

"...this book, better than any other single volume I know at
present, covers topics that will be important in future
ecosystem-based management of fisheries." Fish and Fisheries

"Well-written and thoughtfully put together" Professor Terry
Quinn (Alaska, Fairbanks)

"This book will be widely read and cited"

Professor Jeremy Collie (Rhode Island)

"Marine Fisheries Ecology is a work of art that provides a
broad, ecosystem-level understanding of the biological, economic,
and social factors affecting and motivating diverse fisheries at
global scales. This "must-read" is an extremely well-written and
expertly organized treatise. It will have significant appeal for
the established fisheries professional and the student and lecturer
alike, including informed members of the public interested in
marine ecology and production processes, patterns of fisheries
exploitation, socioeconomics, and the complexities of aquatic
resource politics and decisionmaking..." Carl V. Burger

Past President, American Fisheries Society -and- Chair of the
Executive Committee, 4th World Fisheries Congress, Vancouver, B.C.
Canada

Textauszug

1

Marine fisheries ecology: an introduction

1.1 Introduction

Humans have fished since prehistoric times, but in the last 50 years fisheries have expanded faster than ever before. Marine fisheries now yield around 90 million tonnes per year, more than 80% of global fish production. Catches have increased because a growing human population demands more food and because improved technology has simplified capture, processing, distribution and sale. Greater fishing power and increased competition between fishers, vessels or nations has led to the economic collapse of some fisheries that had flourished for centuries. The resultant reductions in fish production, income and employment are usually seen as undesirable by society. This is why governments intervene to regulate fisheries.

Effective fisheries management requires that managers work towards clearly specified objectives. These may be biological, economic and social. Thus, the fisheries scientist has to understand links between different disciplines and the ways in which science can usefully inform the manager. This chapter introduces the history and diversity of the world’s fisheries, their current status and the main problems they face. This provides a basis for suggesting why we need to conserve fisheries and the marine environment and identifies the main objectives of fishery management.

1.2 Fisheries of the world

1.2.1 History of fisheries

Fisheries in ancient civilizations

Humans living in coastal areas have always eaten marine organisms. Initially, animals and plants were simply collected by hand from the shore, but more effective fishing methods were soon developed. Fish hooks fashioned from wood and bone have been found at sites dated 8000 BC, and there are references to fisheries in Greek, Egyptian and Roman texts. In Egypt, nets and spears were in use by 2000 BC. As the Pacific Islands were colonized, fish provided protein on islands with few other animal resources, and the successful migration of Melanesian and Polynesian people often depended on their ability to catch reef fish. Fishers were aware of cycles in the abundance of species they caught, and the Greeks used storage ponds and fish farms to ensure a continuity of supply. Latterly, fish could be preserved by salting and drying, allowing fishers to work further from their home ports and fish products to be traded and exported.

Pre-industrial fisheries

As nations developed their seafaring skills and began to explore the oceans, they discovered abundant fish resources. Explorers reported that huge numbers of cod Gadus morhua (Gadidae) could be found off Newfoundand, and by the early 1500s, French and Portuguese fishers were already crossing the north Atlantic Ocean to fish for them. The cod were caught with baited hooks, dried and shipped to the Mediterranean countries and the Antilles where they were known as bacalao and fetched high prices. Subsequently, English vessels joined the fishery. The countries that fished for cod were the major sea powers of the time and fought to control trade routes. They were often at war and many fishing vessels were lost. In the Anglo-Spanish war of 1656–1659, 1000 English vessels were sunk. Cod were such a valuable commodity that the vessels were also targeted by pirates. Moroccan pirates would rob vessels returning to Mediterranean ports, and the Sallee rovers, French, Spanish and English pirates under the Turkish flag, attacked fishing boats in so many areas that the fishers eventually sailed in convoy for protection. In later years, the cod fishery on Georges Bank and Grand Bank was increasingly fished by boats from New England ports. By the midnineteenth century, cod were caught with hook and line from fleets of eight or more small dories that transferred their daily catches to a larger schooner for storage in ice and salt. In 1880, some 200 American schooners with eight or more dories were operating (Cushing, 1988a; Kurlansky, 1997).

In Europe, pre-industrial fisheries flourished in France and in countries bordering the North Sea. Sardines Sardina pilchardus (Clupeidae) were caught with fine nets off the French Breton coast from the seventeenth century. Initially they were sold fresh but with the development of the oil press, sardine oil was distributed all over Europe. Canneries were opened from 1822. There were around 3000 boats in the fishery at the end of the nineteenth century. A tunny Thunnus thunnus (Scombridae) fishery developed in the same area. Five hundred boats would spend up to 2 weeks at sea and catch tunny with trolled lures. The tunny could also be canned successfully. Swedish (Scanian) fishers started to catch Atlantic herring Clupea harengus (Clupeidae) from the North Sea in the eleventh century, and by the late sixteenth century, large fleets from Sweden, Holland, England and Scotland all fished for herring. The fish were caught in drift nets and preserved in barrels with salt. The fishing industry would move from port to port as they followed the shoals of herring on their seasonal migrations (Cushing, 1988a).

Industrialization

The power and range of fishing vessels increased rapidly at the time of the Industrial Revolution, as did the demand for fish and fish products. In the 1860s paddle tugs powered by steam were first used instead of sailing boats to drag fishing nets in the North Sea. Calm weather no longer limited fishing activities, and catch rates were four times those of sailing vessels. At much the same time, steamers started to fish for Atlantic menhaden Brevoortia tyrannus (Clupeidae) off the east coast of the United States. From the 1840s, there was rapid development of industry and growth of the US economy. A modern farming industry was needed to feed the growing urban population, and fishmeal was a potentially cheap and accessible source of high-protein animal feed. The first industrial fisheries began to catch small and abundant shoaling fish that were ground and dried to make fishmeal. In 1840, Charles Mitchell of Halifax Nova Scotia started to preserve fish in hermetically sealed tins. Such canned products could be distributed and sold throughout the world. The markets for fish became more accessible as rail and road transport improved and consumers were increasingly concentrated in cities where they sought work in factories and service industries.

Similar patterns of development followed elsewhere as farmers demanded fishmeal, and urban populations demanded food. Fishery landings rose rapidly and continued to do so until the present time. Although we have seen that European vessels fished across the Atlantic for several centuries, steel fishing vessels with diesel engines and cold storage facilities made all the oceans accessible to fishers who could remain at sea for months at a time. These were the so-called ‘distant water’ or ‘high seas’ fleets. Japanese vessels fished the tropical and subtropical oceans for tuna, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) fished for krill Euphausia superba (Euphausiidae) in the Antarctic, and Alaskan pollock Theragra chalcogramma (Gadidae) in the North Pacific. The greatest expansion in high-seas fisheries took place after World War II and the fleets, mostly from the former USSR, Japan, Spain, Korea and Poland, were catching between 7 and 8 million tonnes by the 1970s, over 10% of global landings at that time.

Control of the high seas

Traditionally, the oceans were regarded as common property and fishers were free to go where they liked. Although marine tenure systems were in place around many tropical islands, and fishers in temperate waters protected their local fisheries from outsiders, the ‘ownership’ of marine resources rarely extended more than a few miles from land. From the fifteenth century until the 1970s there was little restriction on where fishing took place in the world’s oceans and what was done. It may seem strange that countries fished so freely in oceans many miles from their home ports when hunters could not take terrestrial mammals from countries without invading them and evading or repressing the local people, but the perception that land is owned and that the sea is open to all has persisted in many societies and for many centuries.

The existence of ‘freedom of the seas’ had a powerful influence on the development of the world’s fisheries. It was formalized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when world powers decided to resolve ongoing and expensive conflicts over trade routes by allowing multinational access. In 1608, Hugo Grotius defended Holland’s trading in the Indian Ocean in Mare Liberum, and used fisheries to support his arguments for free access. He suggested that fish resources were so abundant that there would be no benefits from ownership and that large areas of national jurisdiction could never be defended. His argument prevailed and freedom of fishing became synonymous with freedom of the seas (FAO, 1993a; OECD, 1997).

However, as human populations grew and fisheries became more intensive, there was increasing conflict over fisheries. Scotland claimed exclusive national rights to inshore waters in the fifteenth century, and other countries followed. However, there was no international agreement on the size of territorial waters. The 1930 Hague Conference on the Codification of International Law decided that the claims to territorial seas were acceptable but did not suggest how large these claims could be. In practice, most countries claimed no more than a few kilometres of inshore waters while the high seas could still be fished...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.4.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Limnologie / Meeresbiologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• Themenwelt: Weitere Fachgebiete ► Land- / Forstwirtschaft / Fischerei
• Schlagworte: Ökologie / Aquatische Lebensräume • Aquaculture • Aquaculture, Fisheries & Fish Science • Aquakultur • Aquakultur, Fischereiwesen u. Fischforschung • aquatic ecology • Biowissenschaften • Book • broad • Concerns • describes • determining population dynamics • Ecological Interactions • environmental • Examples • Fischereiwesen • fisheries • Fisheries Exploitation • impacts • important changes • incorporation • Life Sciences • Ökologie / Aquatische Lebensräume • Principles • Role • Science • Tropical • Uncertainty
• ISBN-13: 9781118688106 / 9781118688106