The Role of Quantitative Ecosystem Indicators and Objectives for Fisheries Management in Reconciling Fisheries with Conservation

摘要

In an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF), maintenance of the overall ecosystem complexity is perceived as critical to the stistainability of its use. This overall objective, the so-called "ecosystem health," is quite vague as it needs to assemble objectives for exploitation, such as maximum sustainable yield (MSY), and constraints for conservation, such as minimum viable population size, which can be quantitative or qualitative, and are sometimes antagonistic. Reconciling fisheries objectives as well as assessing conservation priorities in marine ecosystems is a challenge. The challenge on the research side to define operational objectives includes 1) defining proper long-term, ecosystem-related, objectives, 2) determining meaningful reference values and indicators for desirable or undesirable states of the ecosystem, and 3) developing appropriate data collection, analytical tools and models.