Fluctuations and declines in marine fish populations have caused growing concern among marine scientists, fisheries managers, commercial and recreational fishers, and the public. Sustaining Marine Fisheries explores the nature of marine ecosystems and the complex interacting factors that shape their productivity. The book documents the condition of marine fisheries today, highlighting species and geographic areas that are under particular stress. Challenges to achieving sustainability are discussed, and shortcomings of existing fisheries management and regulation are examined. The volume calls for fisheries management to adopt a broader ecosystem perspective that encompasses all relevant environmental and human influences. Sustaining Marine Fisheries offers new approaches to building workable fisheries management institutions, improving scientific data, and developing management tools. The book recommends ways to change current practices that encourage overexploitation of fish resources. It will be of special interest to marine policymakers and ecologists, fisheries regulators and managers, fisheries scientists and marine ecologists, fishers, and concerned individuals.

This book presents multi-level approaches to the problem of unsustainable fisheries and provides potential solutions to address it. It discusses the importance of fisheries from a global perspective, describes current fisheries failings, and provides recommendations for more sustainable practices (e.g., food and livelihood security, interdisciplinary approaches, ecosystem-based and community-based management, governance reforms, reduced capacity, and accountability).

Although the ocean-and the resources within-seem limitless, there is clear evidence that human impacts such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution disrupt marine ecosystems and threaten the long-term productivity of the seas. Declining yields in many fisheries and decay of treasured marine habitats, such as coral reefs, has heightened interest in establishing a comprehensive system of marine protected areas (MPAs)-areas designated for special protection to enhance the management of marine resources. Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate how MPAs can be employed in the United States and internationally as tools to support specific conservation needs of marine and coastal waters. Marine Protected Areas compares conventional management of marine resources with proposals to augment these management strategies with a system of protected areas. The volume argues that implementation of MPAs should be incremental and adaptive, through the design of areas not only to conserve resources, but also to help us learn how to manage marine species more effectively.

Over the last two decades, the scientific and popular media have been bombarded by gloom and doom stories of the future of fisheries, the status of fish stocks, and the impact of fishing on marine ecosystems. Dozens of certification and labeling schemes have emerged to advise consumers on what seafood is sustainable. In recent years, an opposing narrative has emerged emphasizing the success of fisheries management in many places, the increasing abundance of fish stocks in those places, and the prescription for sustainable fisheries. However, there has been no comprehensive survey of what really constitutes sustainability in fisheries, fish stock status, success and failures of management, and consideration of the impacts of fishing on marine ecosystems. This book will explore very different perspectives on sustainability, and bring together the data from a large number of studies to show where fish stocks are increasing, where they are declining, the consequences of alternative fisheries management regimes, and what is known about a range of fisheries issues such as the impacts of trawling on marine ecosystems. Ocean Recovery is aimed principally at a general audience that is already interested in fisheries but seeks both a deeper understanding of what is known about specific issues and an impartial presentation of all the data rather than selected examples used to justify a particular perspective or agenda. It will also appeal to the scientific community eager to know more about marine fisheries and fishing data, and serve as the basis for graduate seminars on the sustainability of natural resources.

Sustainable Fish Production and Processing is a unique resource that bridges the gap between academia and industry by analyzing new, state-of-the-art fish production, processing and waste management. The book explores general valorization methods, focusing on the extraction of high added-value compounds and their reutilization in different fields of the food and nutraceuticals industry. Sections take a comprehensive approach to understanding the most recent advances in the field, while also analyzing the potentiality and sustainability of already commercialized processes and products. This resource could be utilized as a handbook for anyone dealing with sustainability issues within the fish industry.Emphasis of fish production is given to food security issues, large marine ecosystems, aquaculture genomics, epigenetics and breeding, proteomics for quality and safety in fishery products, post-harvest practices in small scale fisheries, and lifecycle impact of industrial aquaculture systems. Emphasis of fish processing and by-products is given to industrial thawing of fish blocks, sources and functional properties of fish protein hydrolysates, recovery technologies and applications, potential biomedical applications, ready-to-eat products, fish waste for bacterial protease production, fish waste for feeding as well as lipid extraction from fish processing for biofuels. Covers recent advances in the field of fish production and processing over the last decade, following sustainability principles Discusses the advantages and disadvantages of relevant processes from various perspectives to improve sustainability Offers practical success stories and solutions to ensure the sustainable management of fish processing by-products

Longhurst examines the proposition, central to fisheries science, that a fishery creates its own natural resource by the compensatory growth it induces in the fish, and that this is sustainable. His novel analysis of the reproductive ecology of bony fish of cooler seas offers some support for this, but a review of fisheries past and present confirms that sustainability is rarely achieved. The relatively open structure and strong variability of marine ecosystems is discussed in relation to the reliability of resources used by the industrial-level fishing that became globalised during the 20th century. This was associated with an extraordinary lack of regulation in most seas, and a widespread avoidance of regulation where it did exist. Sustained fisheries can only be expected where social conditions permit strict regulation and where politicians have no personal interest in outcomes despite current enthusiasm for ecosystem-based approaches or for transferable property rights.

Reviews the concept of maximum sustainable yield (MSV) in fisheries policy.