The Impacts of Fisheries on Marine Ecosystems and the Transition to Ecosystem-Based Management

Abstract

Fishing remains one of the largest factors modifying marine ecosystems. Because fisheries constitute only one of many anthropogenic effects, management is shifting from single-species approaches toward ecosystem-based management. Interaction webs are a critical nexus to understand linkages, to model ecosystem change, and to apply management directives. Ecosystem-based management requires consideration of both direct and indirect effects of commercial fisheries. But it must also include impacts of bycatch, recreational fisheries, artisanal fisheries, and environmental change that can be large but unanticipated. Synergistic effects of fishing, environmental variation, and climate change increasingly threaten marine ecosystems and complicate management. Here we review the global effects of fisheries and propose an integrated framework for managing biophysical processes and human ecology. To incorporate the multitude of effects, this emerging approach focuses on the dynamics of interaction webs in a spatially explicit or place-based framework.