Understanding and Managing Enhancement Fisheries Systems

Abstract

Aquaculture-based fisheries enhancement is a set of management approaches involving the release of cultured organisms to enhance, conserve, or restore fisheries. Enhancement has a long history, and substantial progress has been made in key areas of science underpinning the activity. Yet the contribution of enhancements to global fisheries production has remained small, and there are few outright “success stories.” Enhancements enter into complex fisheries systems and, to be successful, must contribute to a broad set of biological, economic, social, and institutional management objectives. In doing so, enhancements need to add value to, or outperform, alternative measures such as fishing regulation or habitat management. This is possible only under certain conditions and may require transformations in multiple biological-technical as well as market and institutional attributes of the fisheries system. I outline a framework for the integrated analysis of enhancement fisheries systems and a systematic, transparent, and stakeholder-participatory development process.

Keywords:

• fisheries enhancement
• systems approach
• institutional analysis
• population dynamics

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the scientific committee of the 3rd International Symposium on Stock Enhancement and Sea Ranching for inviting this keynote paper, and to NOAA Fisheries for travel support. Discussions during the Symposium have helped to sharpen some of the arguments presented here. Comments from Ken Leber, Geraldine Vander Haegen, and two anonymous referees improved the manuscript. Writing of the paper was partially supported by the William R. and Lenore Mote Eminent Scholar Chair in Fisheries Ecology at Florida State University and Mote Marine Laboratory.