2019 Australian Marine Sciences Association Conference, 7-11 julio 2019, Fremantle, Western AProgress and challenges in attaining global fisheries sustainability

PARMA, ANA M.

Congreso; 2019 Australian Marine Sciences Association Conference; 2019

Global data on fish stock status are showing a turning ofthe tide in many fisheries, with marked reductions in fishing-induced mortality,followed in many cases by stock biomass recovery. These positive outcomes haveresulted from stronger legal mandates to maintain fishing pressure at or belowthe levels that maximize long-term yields, and to implement rebuilding plans foroverfished stocks. By in large these results provide empirical support to somebasic principles of fisheries science that predict how fish abundance willchange in response to fishing pressure controls. However, optimism in ourability to achieve fisheries sustainability targets globally needs to be temperedby the fact that these outcomes have been mainly documented for industrialfisheries in regions where there are effective management systems in place, ableto: (i) collect and analyze data to assess stock status, (ii) adjust harvest controlsin response to changes in abundance, and (iii) implement and enforceregulations.  Such command-and-controlapproaches cannot be expected to work in small-scale fisheries and/or in regionswith weak governance systems.  While muchattention has been focused on the fact that small-scale fisheries are typicallydata-limited, data limitations tend to go hand in hand with resource andcapacity limitations that hamper all three components of the management system.More encompassing assessment and management frameworks have been proposed, but noquick fixes exist and approaches that have potential are highly contextdependent. Thus, local successes cannot be scaled up simply by replication. Sustainedefforts need to be allocated to building local capacity to collect and analyzeinformation, and to identify strategies that may work given the specific constraintsof each fishery. Tools and processes are being developed to support suchengagements and to foster communities of practice that accelerate learning.