This conference brought together an international group of fisheries economists from academia, business, government, and inter-governmentalagencies, to consider a coordinated project to build an econometric model of the world trade in groundfish. A number of the conference participants had just spent up to six weeks at Memorial University of Newfoundland working and preparing papers on the project. This volume presents the papers that these scholars produced, plus additional papers prepared by other conference participants. In addition, various lectures and discussionswhich were transcribed from tapes made of the proceedings are included. The introductory essay explains the genesis of the conference, describes the approach taken to modelling the groundfish trade, very briefly summarizes the technical papers, and describes future plans. The project is continuing as planned, and a second conference was held in St. John's in August 1990. The conference was a NATO Advanced Research Workshop and we wish to thank the ScientificAffairs Division ofNATO for their financial support. Additional financial support was received from the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation in St. John's, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans of the Government of Canada, the Department of Fisheries of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Air Nova; we acknowledge with appreciation their help.

Here is the first systematic handbook treatment of quantitative modeling natural resource problems, their allocated efficient use, and societal and economic impact. Andrés Weintraub is the very top person in Natural Resource research. He has selected co-editors who are at the top of the sub-fields in natural resources: agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and mining. The book covers these areas with contributions from researchers on, among others, modeling natural research problems, quantifying data, and developing algorithms.

This report updates previous studies that measured in economic terms the extent of biological losses attributable to overfishing globally. The new estimates assess these 'sunken billions' at $83 billion annually. The report further shows that a clear path can lead to the recovery of these considerable losses, including through significant reduction in global fishing overcapacity. A breakdown between regions is also included, showing that the effort needed to achieve this reform will not be felt equally throughout the world. While the cost of such reform will likely be high, the expected benefits include an increase in biomass by a factor of 2.7, increase in annual harvests by 13 percent, and a 30-fold increase in annual net benefits accrued to the fisheries sector (from $3 billion to $86 billion annually). This urgent call for action is reinforced by the impacts of climate change on fish stocks and fisheries worldwide.