Assessing social--ecological trade-offs to advance ecosystem-based fisheries management

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 9; no. 9; p. e107811
• Main Authors: Voss, Rudi, Quaas, Martin F, Schmidt, Jörn O, Tahvonen, Olli, Lindegren, Martin, Möllmann, Christian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 30.09.2014; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Age; Animals; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomass; Case studies; Clupea harengus; Cod; Commercial fishing; Conservation; Conservation of Natural Resources; Earth Sciences; Ecological monitoring; Ecology; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Economic conditions; Economic models; Economics; Ecosystem; Ecosystem management; Ecosystems; Equity; Europe; Fish; Fish populations; Fisheries; Fisheries management; Fishery management; Fishing; Forage; Forages; Gadus morhua; Humans; Market value; Models, Economic; Mortality; Optimization; Population Dynamics; Profit maximization; Profits; Resource management; Social Environment; Social Sciences; Species; Sprattus sprattus; Sustainable fisheries; Tradeoffs; Triple Bottom Line; Wildlife conservation; Europe; California; United States > US; Baltic Sea; Germany
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107811

Modern resource management faces trade-offs in the provision of various ecosystem goods and services to humanity. For fisheries management to develop into an ecosystem-based approach, the goal is not only to maximize economic profits, but to consider equally important conservation and social equity goals. We introduce such a triple-bottom line approach to the management of multi-species fisheries using the Baltic Sea as a case study. We apply a coupled ecological-economic optimization model to address the actual fisheries management challenge of trading-off the recovery of collapsed cod stocks versus the health of ecologically important forage fish populations. Management strategies based on profit maximization would rebuild the cod stock to high levels but may cause the risk of stock collapse for forage species with low market value, such as Baltic sprat (Fig. 1A). Economically efficient conservation efforts to protect sprat would be borne almost exclusively by the forage fishery as sprat fishing effort and profits would strongly be reduced. Unless compensation is paid, this would challenge equity between fishing sectors (Fig. 1B). Optimizing equity while respecting sprat biomass precautionary levels would reduce potential profits of the overall Baltic fishery, but may offer an acceptable balance between overall profits, species conservation and social equity (Fig. 1C). Our case study shows a practical example of how an ecosystem-based fisheries management will be able to offer society options to solve common conflicts between different resource uses. Adding equity considerations to the traditional trade-off between economy and ecology will greatly enhance credibility and hence compliance to management decisions, a further footstep towards healthy fish stocks and sustainable fisheries in the world ocean.