Ecologists can spend a lifetime researching a small patch of the earth, studying the interactions between organisms and the environment, and exploring the roles those interactions play in determining distribution, abundance, and evolutionary change. With so few ecologists and so many systems to study, generalizations are essential. But how do you extrapolate knowledge about a well-studied area and apply it elsewhere? Through a range of original essays written by eminent ecologists and naturalists, The Ecology of Place explores how place-focused research yields exportable general knowledge as well as practical local knowledge, and how society can facilitate ecological understanding by investing in field sites, place-centered databases, interdisciplinary collaborations, and field-oriented education programs that emphasize natural history. This unique patchwork of case-study narratives, philosophical musings, and historical analyses is tied together with commentaries from editors Ian Billick and Mary Price that develop and synthesize common threads. The result is a unique volume rich with all-too-rare insights into how science is actually done, as told by scientists themselves.

In addition, they examine how various environmental knowledge claims are generated, packaged, promoted, and accepted (or rejected) by the different actors involved in specific cases of environmental management, conservation, and development.

The global fisheries crisis has prompted widespread debate about the origins of overfishing in managed fisheries. Criticisms of existing systems of science and management have led to experimental approaches involving access to fishery workers and their knowledge. Finding Our Sea Legs is an edited collection of theoretical discussions and case studies of such experiments, with a particular focus on the North Atlantic. Significant institutional changes are required to involve fishery workers and their knowledge in fisheries science and management. Fundamental differences between stock assessment science and fishers' knowledge require new methods for combining and interpreting information. Management structures, industrial and resource management strategies and technological change could affect the nature and quality of information derived from fishery workers. Such impacts need to be assessed. This extensive interdisciplinary overview will be useful to students, fishers, community leaders, social and natural scientists, managers and environmentalists with an interest in fisheries science and management.

This document provides a review, commentary and tabulations of the main trends that have occurred in exploitation of fisheries resources since the 1970s, largely as they are reflected in the FAO database on fishery landings, supplemented with selected information from the fishery literature. Reviews were prepared separately for the 15 main areas into which FAO divides the world's oceans for statistical purposes. They are then compared from a global perspective to reveal relative trends by species and areas, which are highlighted. Several special topics are reviewed, including tuna and tuna-like species, whales and dolphins, and environmental issues in fisheries.

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