Fishing technology in the 21st century: integrating fishing and ecosystem conservation

摘要

(ⅰ) The symposium opened with a session on advances in survey gear, survey technology, and techniques, and it was generally concluded that much work remains to be done in this field. In addition, it was concluded that survey initiators are now being asked to answer an ever-wider range of questions and this, in turn, poses significant challenges to the scientific community. New tools and methodologies are currently under development, and this will help address gaps in our collective knowledge base. (ⅱ) This 2006 symposium focused largely on conservation engineering/gear technology, gear selectivity, and bycatch reduction studies, and the papers falling into this category comprised almost 40% of all submissions. (ⅲ) Despite the number of papers and considerable scientific work in the field of conservation engineering/gear technology, there was general concern over the lack of take-up or implementation of new fishing gears and strategies in commercial fisheries. However, gear technology development and improvement play important roles in sustainable harvesting, and the future challenges are to see their effective and widespread implementation in the commercial fisheries and to encourage development of tools to evaluate their performance. (ⅳ) Considerable effort has been directed towards developing environmentally friendly fishing gears. Many issues remain to be resolved, most notably partial loss of target species, and it is apparent that solutions need to be tailored to individual fisheries. It is also becoming increasingly obvious that expectations of such gears' structure and performance need to be realistic and clearly definable. (ⅴ) Although a number of presentations described and documented new and more sustainable fishing gears or practices, there is a widely held concern about the lack of real and tangible innovation on display. It is not clear if this signals a lack of innovative thinking within the scientific community or merely reflects the widely held belief among managers and regulators that simpler measures, such as area closures or other effort reduction strategies, are better and more effective than so-called "endless tinkering" with gear types.