Indicators to support an ecosystem approach to fisheries

Indicators are needed to support the implementation of an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF), by providing information on the state of the ecosystem, the extent and intensity of effort or mortality and the progress of management in relation to objectives. Here, I review recent work on the development, selection and application of indicators and consider how indicators might support an EAF. Indicators should guide the management of fishing activities that have led to, or are most likely to lead to, unsustainable impacts on ecosystem components or attributes. The numbers and types of indicators used to support an EAF will vary among management regions, depending on resources available for monitoring and enforcement, and actual and potential fishing impacts. State indicators provide feedback on the state of ecosystem components or attributes and the extent to which management objectives, which usually relate to state, are met. State can only be managed if the relationships with fishing (pressure) and management (response) are known. Predicting such relationships is fundamental to developing a management system that supports the achievement of objectives. In a management framework supported by pressure, state and response indicators, the relationship between the value of an indicator and a target or limit reference point, reference trajectory or direction provides guidance on the management action to take. Values of pressure, state and response indicators may be affected by measurement, process, model and estimation error and thus different indicators, and the same indicators measured at different scales and in different ways, will detect true trends on different timescales. Managers can use several methods to estimate the effects of error on the probability of detecting true trends and/or to account for error when setting reference points, trajectories and directions. Given the high noise to signal ratio in many state indicators, pressure and response indicators would often guide short-term management decision making more effectively, with state indicators providing longer-term policy-focused feedback on the effects of management action.

[1]  Jake C. Rice,et al.  Evaluating fishery impacts using metrics of community structure , 2000 .

[2]  Tim Gerrodette,et al.  A POWER ANALYSIS FOR DETECTING TRENDS , 1987 .

[3]  Robin Cook,et al.  Estimating uncertainty in fish stock assessment and forecasting , 2001 .

[4]  H. Browman,et al.  Perspectives on ecosystem-based approaches to the management of marine resources , 2004 .

[5]  André E. Punt,et al.  Review of progress in the introduction of management strategy evaluation (MSE) approaches in Australia's South East Fishery , 2001 .

[6]  John G. Pope,et al.  Gauging the impact of fishing mortality on non-target species , 2000 .

[7]  Serge M. Garcia,et al.  Viability theory for an ecosystem approach to fisheries , 2005 .

[8]  R. Peterman.  Statistical Power Analysis can Improve Fisheries Research and Management , 1990 .

[9]  J. Link.  Translating ecosystem indicators into decision criteria , 2005 .

[10]  Ian F. Spellerberg.  Monitoring Ecological Change: Monitoring Ecological Change , 2005 .

[11]  J. Rice,et al.  Environmental health indicators , 2003 .

[12]  Chuck Hollingworth,et al.  Ecosystem Effects of Fishing Preface , 2000 .

[13]  Jason S. Link,et al.  Marine ecosystem assessment in a fisheries management context , 2002 .

[14]  Tim Gerrodette,et al.  The Uses of Statistical Power in Conservation Biology: The Vaquita and Northern Spotted Owl , 1993 .

[15]  G. J. Piet,et al.  Performance of precautionary reference points in providing management advice on North Sea fish stocks , 2004 .

[16]  Mark N. Maunder,et al.  A BAYESIAN ANALYSIS TO ESTIMATE LOSS IN SQUID CATCH DUE TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A SEA LION POPULATION MANAGEMENT PLAN , 2000 .

[17]  Simon Jennings,et al.  Testing candidate indicators to support ecosystem-based management: the power of monitoring surveys to detect temporal trends in fish community metrics , 2004 .

[18]  Chuck Hollingworth,et al.  Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem , 2004 .

[19]  Trevor Ward,et al.  Indicators for assessing the sustainability of Australia's marine ecosystems , 2000 .

[20]  Jason S. Link,et al.  Ecological Considerations in Fisheries Management: When Does it Matter? , 2002 .

[21]  Jake C. Rice,et al.  Patterns of change in the size spectra of numbers and diversity of the North Sea fish assemblage, as reflected in surveys and models , 1996 .

[22]  C. Walters,et al.  Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment , 1992, Springer US.

[23]  J. Rice,et al.  A framework for selecting a suite of indicators for fisheries management , 2005 .

[24]  S I Rogers,et al.  A UK perspective on the development of marine ecosystem indicators. , 2005, Marine pollution bulletin.

[25]  André E. Punt,et al.  Which ecological indicators can robustly detect effects of fishing , 2005 .

[26]  V. Trenkel,et al.  Which community indicators can measure the impact of fishing? A review and proposals , 2003 .

[27]  P. Degnbol.  Indicators as a means of communicating knowledge , 2005 .

[28]  K. Zwanenburg,et al.  The effects of fishing on demersal fish communities of the Scotian Shelf , 2000 .

[29]  Steven J. D. Martell,et al.  Fisheries Ecology and Management , 2004 .

[30]  M. Sinclair,et al.  Indicators for ecosystem-based management on the Scotian Shelf: bridging the gap between theory and practice , 2005 .

[31]  John G. Field,et al.  Using size-based indicators to evaluate the ecosystem effects of fishing , 2005 .

[32]  Gerjan J. Piet,et al.  Response of potential fish community indicators to fishing , 2005 .

[33]  André E. Punt,et al.  Design of operational management strategies for achieving fishery ecosystem objectives , 2000 .

[34]  Jake C. Rice,et al.  Guidance on the application of the ecosystem approach to management of human activities in the European marine environment , 2005 .

[35]  C. Walters,et al.  Quantitative fisheries stock assessment: Choice, dynamics and uncertainty , 2004, Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.

[36]  Gerjan J. Piet,et al.  Long-term trends in the trophic structure of the North Sea fish community: evidence from stable-isotope analysis, size-spectra and community metrics , 2002 .

[37]  V. Trenkel,et al.  Performance of indicators derived from abundance estimates for detecting the impact of fishing on a fish community , 2003 .

[38]  Simon Jennings,et al.  The ecosystem approach to fishery management: A significant step towards sutainable use of the marine environment? , 2004 .

[39]  M. D. Nicholson,et al.  The statistical power of monitoring programmes , 1992 .

[40]  Simon Jennings,et al.  Reference points and reference directions for size-based indicators of community structure , 2005 .

[41]  T. M. Ward,et al.  Factors affecting the catch rates and relative abundance of sea snakes in the by-catch of trawlers targeting tiger and endeavour prawns on the northern Australian continental shelf , 2000 .

[42]  Steven A. Murawski,et al.  Definitions of overfishing from an ecosystem perspective , 2000 .

[43]  Aileen C. Mill,et al.  Size structural change in lightly exploited coral reef fish communities: Evidence for weak indirect effects , 2004 .

[44]  Villy Christensen,et al.  Quantitative ecosystem indicators for fisheries management , 2005 .

[45]  Simon N. Stuart,et al.  2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: A Global Species Assessment edited by Jonathan E.M. Baillie, Craig Hilton-Taylor & Simon N. Stuart (2004), xxiii + 191 pp., IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. ISBN 2 8317 0826 5 (pbk), £18.50. , 2005, Oryx.

[46]  John G. Pope,et al.  Are the slopes of size spectra a useful tool for measuring the impact of fisheries in multispecies systems , 2004 .

[47]  Julian Di Stefano,et al.  How much power is enough? Against the development of an arbitrary convention for statistical power calculations , 2003 .

[48]  Ian F. Spellerberg.  Monitoring Ecological Change: Index , 2005 .

[49]  J. Pope,et al.  An Ecosystem Based Approach to the Common Fisheries Policy : Defining the Goals , 2000 .

[50]  H. Caswell,et al.  Declining survival probability threatens the North Atlantic right whale. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[51]  D. Pauly,et al.  Fishing down marine food webs , 1998, Science.

[52]  Simon Jennings,et al.  Power of monitoring programmes to detect decline and recovery of rare and vulnerable fish , 2005 .

[53]  Colin W. Clark,et al.  Bioeconomic Modelling and Fisheries Management. , 1985 .

[54]  Simon Jennings.  The ecosystem approach to fishery management: a significant step towards sustainable use of the marine environment? : Perspectives on eco-system-based approaches to the management of marine resources , 2004 .

[55]  R. J. Fryer,et al.  The power of a contaminant monitoring programme to detect linear trends and incidents , 1993 .

[56]  Rainer Froese,et al.  Keep it simple: three indicators to deal with overfishing , 2004 .

[57]  Laurence T. Kell,et al.  Do climate and fishing influence size-based indicators of Celtic Sea fish community structure? , 2005 .

[58]  Andrew A. Rosenberg,et al.  Uncertainty and Risk Evaluation in Stock Assessment Advice for U.S. Marine Fisheries , 1994 .

[59]  Pierre Jouventin,et al.  Population dynamics of wandering albatross Diomedea exulans and Amsterdam albatross D. amsterdamensis in the Indian Ocean and their relationships with long-line fisheries: Conservation implications , 1997 .

[60]  André E. Punt,et al.  Ecological indicators of the ecosystem effects of fishing: final report , 2004 .

[61]  Ian F. Spellerberg,et al.  Monitoring Ecological Change: Biological indicators and indices , 2005 .

[62]  André E. Punt,et al.  Experiences in the evaluation and implementation of management procedures , 1999 .

[63]  Eric Benoît,et al.  A continuous model of biomass size spectra governed by predation and the effects of fishing on them. , 2004, Journal of theoretical biology.

[64]  R. E. Johannes,et al.  The case for data-less marine resource management: examples from tropical nearshore finfisheries. , 1998, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[65]  S. Garcia,et al.  Sustainability reference systems and indicators for responsible marine capture fisheries: a review of concepts and elements for a set of guidelines , 2000 .

[66]  Clarence F. Pautzke,et al.  An ecosystem-based approach for Alaska groundfish fisheries , 2000 .

[67]  Michel J. Kaiser,et al.  The effects of fishing on non-target species and habitats: biological, conservation and socio-economic issues , 2000 .

[68]  John G. Pope,et al.  Changes in the North Sea fish community: evidence of indirect effects of fishing? , 2003 .

[69]  E. K. Pikitch,et al.  Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management , 2004, Science.

[70]  Kirsty Johnston,et al.  Technical background to fish stock indicators for state-of-environment reporting in New Zealand , 2000 .

[71]  S. Hall,et al.  Towards ecosystem‐based fisheries management , 2004 .

[72]  Serge M. Garcia,et al.  The FAO guidelines for the development and use of indicators for sustainable development of marine capture fisheries and an Australian example of their application , 2000 .

[73]  Taylor,et al.  A Global Species Assessment , 2004 .

[74]  Simon Jennings,et al.  A size-based model of the impacts of bottom trawling on benthic community structure , 2002 .

[75]  Henrik Gislason,et al.  Ecosystem Effects of Fishing , 2000 .

[76]  Niels Daan,et al.  An Afterthought: Ecosystem Metrics and Pressure Indicators , 2005 .

[77]  Keith Sainsbury,et al.  Incorporating ecosystem objectives into management of sustainable marine fisheries, including 'best practice' reference points and use of marine protected areas. , 2003 .

[78]  Ray Hilborn,et al.  Ecosystem-based fisheries management: the carrot or the stick? : Perspectives on eco-system-based approaches to the management of marine resources , 2004 .

[79]  D. Pauly.  Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries. , 1995, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[80]  G. J. Piet,et al.  Diversity and community structure of epibenthic invertebrates and fish in the North Sea , 2002 .

[81]  J. J. Hunt,et al.  Workshop on risk evaluation and biological reference points for fisheries management , 2004, Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.