Why fisheries monitoring is essential

摘要

All of the theoretical principles discussed in our previous scries of introductory articles on fisheries management carry very little weight if they cannot be practically implemented and enforced. There are two problems involved. Unlike terrestrial resources, most fisheries management decisions are based on information about populations that are unob-servable. It is very difficult to convince fishermen to cut their quota when you cannot show them that the population is actually declining to dangerous levels.