In the last decades, great efforts have been made to develop new approaches that incorporate ecosystem information into fisheries management. Few of these approaches have trinkled down into single-species assessment and advice, making the current basis for most fisheries management advise too simplistic and shortsighted for an effective management of aquatic populations and ecosystems. Incorporating ecosystem considerations are difficult to implement due to the lack of basic knowledge on ecosystem linkages to feed into models, the limitations of modelling tools, as well as the rigidness of institutional and management frameworks.
A step towards the implementation of a holistic approach in fisheries management could be the gradual integration of ecosystem aspects in the assessment and advice for single species. This could be bidirectional, i.e. recognising the effects of the ecosystem in the stocks (e.g. changes in productivity, predator abundance, etc.), but also the environmental impact of the fishery (e.g. bycatch levels, CO2 emissions, etc.).
This theme session welcomes contributions challenging the traditional fisheries management system by providing new approaches to integrate ecosystem considerations in fisheries management advice for single species. We invite contributions on the following topics:
- Integration of ecosystem aspects and the associated uncertainty in the assessment or forecast model of single-species stocks.
- Development of reference points that consider the health status of the ecosystem.
- Development of harvest control rules that are robust to ecosystem changes and/or make consideration of the fisheries environmental impact.
- Approaches that demonstrate trade-offs in yield vs ecosystem impacts of fishing.
