Global trends in world fisheries: impacts on marine ecosystems and food security

Abstract

The management of marine fisheries needs to undergo dramatic change in the new millennium, in response to the well–documented evidence of global overfishing and the general depletion of commercial fish stocks. The axioms of sustainable development and equilibrium productivity of wild ecosystems are identified as misleading concepts, which nonetheless underlie current approaches to the management of living marine resources. Current trends in marine fisheries landings worldwide provide little evidence of sustainability of marine resources under current management paradigms, where biological, economic and social aspects of fisheries are usually treated as different disciplines. While open–access conditions are less widespread than formerly, except for many straddling and highly migratory resources, fishers usually have access to the resource year–round throughout its range. Despite quotas, the nominal control of capacity and technical measures protecting juveniles, top–down management has generally been unable to prevent stock depletion, particularly of the older spawners that for demersal stocks often support recruitment.