Fishery Management Tools
- management tools to regulate how much fish are taken from the ocean;
- harvest control rules that trigger when and how much to adjust management.
Management tools may be designed and applied to manage a number of different aspects of a fishery, including species composition, catch-per-unit-effort of fishing, spatial patterns of harvesting, and single or multiple species populations. In the Northern Reefs of Palau, management tools such as size limits and closed areas have been used to limit fishing-related mortality of juveniles and help maintain a healthy spawning population of important coral reef fish species.
Community members in Pohnpei discuss the future of Nahtik Marine Protected Area and fisheries. Photo © Nick Hall
Harvest control rules may be implemented in response to changes in indicators of stock status (e.g. making adjustments to the size of a closed area based on the size of the fish being harvest from that area). Ideally, these rules are based on data indicating how fishing is affecting stocks. Harvest control rules are intended to maximize production while maintaining the sustainability of the fishery.
Good management tools and harvest control rules will depend strongly on the biological, socio-economic, and governance characteristics of the fishery and the community. Effective fishery management requires clearly defined goals, the inclusion of all fishery stakeholders in the development of management tools and harvest control rules, and measures to assess the latter’s effectiveness against the stated goals.
| Management Tools | Benefits | Limitations | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selectivity Controls | Gear Modification and Restriction (see Rebuilding Global Fisheries) | Useful in multi-species fisheries to minimize targeting vulnerable species Effective at reducing by-catch Useful where there is little capacity for monitoring and enforcement Tend to favor maximum employment policies | May be susceptible to effort creep Focuses more on avoiding limit reference points rather than achieving targets Can still lead to losses in critical ecosystem services |
| Minimum Size Limit Maximum Size Limit (see Palau and/or Belize Case Study) | Useful for protecting juveniles or mega-spawners Useful for protecting slow-growing, long-lived species with variable recruitment Useful where there is little capacity for monitoring and enforcement | Not effective for rejected fish with poor survivorship | |
| Temporal closures | Seasonal Closure Time-of-Day Restrictions | Can be daily, seasonal, or trigger-based Useful if there are temporal spawning grounds Useful if there are seasonal concentrations of effort | Unlikely to be effective at reducing effort unless coupled with other tools like catch limits or gear restrictions |
| Spatial closures | Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) (see Belize, Wakatobi, and/or Galapagos Case Studies) No-Take Zones (NTZs: see Papua New Guinea, Belize, Wakatobi and/or Bonaire Case Studies) Territorial User Rights in Fishing (TURFs: see Territorial Use Rights for Fishing) Move-on Provisions (see Guidelines for Developing Formal Harvest Strategies for Data-poor Species and Fisheries) | Can be rotational, seasonal, permanent, or trigger-based Most effective for sedentary species Useful if there are spatial spawning grounds or habitat vulnerable to fishing Useful if there are spatial concentrations of effort May maximize benefits to tourism markets and provide benefits to fishers from spillover and recruitment | Not effective for highly migratory species Does not address Latent effort May have high management costs that can result in conflict and displacement of fishers |
| Effort limits | Limited Access (Licenses) Dive Hours Number of Lines or Hooks Trip Limits Net Setting Time | Can be daily, seasonal, or annual Common control for restricting number of boats or fishers in a fishery | Difficult if there are many fleets Inappropriate for fishers who rely on subsistence fishing May be problematic in multi-species fisheries if these include species at risk of overfishing |
| Catch limits | Total Allowable Catch Quotas Systems and Catch Shares (see Catch Share Design Manual) | Can be daily, seasonal, or annual | Difficult if there are many fleets May not be easy to regulate within a multi-species context |
Managing Fisheries for People and Ecosystem Health
Coral reef managers often face difficult trade-offs between meeting the interests of the fishing sector and those of biodiversity conservation. In most successful examples to date, fishing communities benefit most from an ecosystem-based approach to fishery management. In ecosystem-based fishery management (EBFM), multiple objectives are managed for the reef ecosystem as a whole, to ensure the long-term health of coral reefs and fish populations and maintain other ecosystem services that the reef provides, such as tourism, shoreline protection, and other cultural values. In other words, EBFM ensures that in addition to fisheries, communities continue to benefit from the multiple advantages that the reef provides.
Additionally, rights-based approaches that guarantee fishers’ access to, use of, and control over fishing grounds or fish stocks safeguard livelihoods and access to food for fishing communities.