US EPA

3292339 

Journal Article 

Challenges, objectives, and sustainability: Benthic community, habitats and management decision-making 

Rice, J 

2005 

Yes 

American Fisheries Society. Symposium
ISSN: 0892-2284 

AMER FISHERIES SOC 

BETHESDA 

American Fisheries Society Symposium 

41 

41-58 

WOS:000232152900004 

This paper first considers why it has been so difficult to
make progress on moving fisheries toward ecological sustainability even in the narrow context of
the target species. It then reviews the additional challenges that must be confronted when
addressing the ecosystem effects of fishing, particularly impacts on benthic communities and
habitats. Several impediments to progress are identified, including excess fishing capacity, the
differential time courses of costs and benefits in reductions in fishing, myths and
preconceptions regarding precaution and the relationship of sustainability to fishery
characteristics, and above all, the complexity of the concept of sustainability itself, which has
ecological, economic, and social dimensions. It has proven nearly impossible to find management
options that do not lose ground on some dimensions in exchange for positive change on others. The
paper evaluates the main tools available for reducing the effects of fishing on benthic
communities and habitats, with regard to sustainability on all three axes. Four main classes of
tools, including changing the cost-benefit accounting to include ecosystem goods and services,
marine protected areas, gear modification and fleet substitution, and eco-certification, were all
found to incur significant social or economic costs in order to make significant contributions to
reducing impacts of fisheries on benthos. Because of the inescapability of trade-offs in decision
making, a structured framework is needed for the decision-making process. Objectives-based
fisheries management provides such a framework. but including benthos (and other ecosystem
properties) in the list of objectives presents real challenges in keeping the list tractably
short and the individual objectives usefully explicit. Work done by expert groups on approaches
to meet these challenges is summarized. Overall, although there are many ecological questions
about fishing effects on the benthos that have not yet been fully answered, the more urgent
challenges are to find ways to use the knowledge we do have more effectively in decision making. 

Barnes, BW; Thomas, JP; 

1-888569-60-3 

Symposium on Effects of Fishing Activities on Benthic Habitats 

Tampa, FL