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. 2005 Jan 29;360(1453):95-105.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1571.

Regime, phase and paradigm shifts: making community ecology the basic science for fisheries

Marc Mangel  1 , Phillip S Levin
Affiliations

Regime, phase and paradigm shifts: making community ecology the basic science for fisheries

Marc Mangel et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Modern fishery science, which began in 1957 with Beverton and Holt, is ca. 50 years old. At its inception, fishery science was limited by a nineteenth century mechanistic worldview and by computational technology; thus, the relatively simple equations of population ecology became the fundamental ecological science underlying fisheries. The time has come for this to change and for community ecology to become the fundamental ecological science underlying fisheries. This point will be illustrated with two examples. First, when viewed from a community perspective, excess production must be considered in the context of biomass left for predators. We argue that this is a better measure of the effects of fisheries than spawning biomass per recruit. Second, we shall analyse a simple, but still multi-species, model for fishery management that considers the alternatives of harvest regulations, inshore marine protected areas and offshore marine protected areas. Population or community perspectives lead to very different predictions about the efficacy of reserves.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Indices of larval abundance of rockfish (Sebastes spp.) along the US Pacific Coast for the period 1977–2001. Short-lived rockfishes such as greenstriped (filled triangles) and splitnose have greatly increased in abundance, while longer-lived species (e.g. canary and bocaccio (filled diamonds)) have declined. This decline occurred simultaneously with a regime shift around 1977 and the passage of the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (which lead to the development of US fleets) in 1976. (Chilipepper, filled squares; shortbelly, crosses; stripetail, stars; widow, filled circles.)
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) The actual and fitted dynamics for the prey only (equation (4.4)), using the data generated by the full model (equations (4.1)–(4.3)). (b) Using equation (4.4), one predicts that the inshore reserve will be the most effective tool for recovery of the stock. (c) The actual dynamics of both prey and predator. An inshore reserve also releases the predator from fishing pressure so that either ceasing directed take (d) or an offshore reserve (e) are effective conservation tools while an inshore reserve is not (f).
Figure 3
Figure 3
For the first 5 years after the creation of a reserve, the trajectory of the prey population is indistinguishable according to management action.
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References

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