The benefits now prove to be fairly tangible.Consider the following.

1) The number of trawlers on a major fishing port was beyond the carrying capacity whether on shore or on potential fishing areas.The operations become so uneconomic,that the fishermen made it an unwritten rule to see that only 1/4 of the trawlers actually go for fishing at a time.In this way, they could remain in operation.

2) Some of the trawler operators converted their vessel into gill netters,netting better catches with much less in put in terms of energy & manpower.

3) By strictly following fishing ban during the major breeding season for prime commercial varieties, the fishermen are then able to catch substantially well during the rest of the season.

Though there is the flip side of the coin too, as all is not totally well in as it should be,as rules & regulations are still not followed strictly,raising a question mark,whether the managers can actually plug the holes in the system.

Although I don't answer your question directly, if you take a look at one of the conference proceedings on my profile, we talk about EBFM in light of new genomic approaches. May be on interest?

I agree with Julie in that the main benefit should be sustainability, as well as ecosystem-wide resiliance to fishing pressure. However, having looked for examples of EBFM I honestly cannot find any that I consider to have incorporated even half of the criteria that define EBFM. Could someone post an article or link that they feel is a good example, or at least the best they have come accross? So in terms of demonstrated benefits of EBFM, I'm not sure that this is answerable as yet.

I'd love to see that review when it is available! Please do post it asap.

Hi, I think that the whole concept needs some sort of universal definition, for people see different things in the EBFM. Please, see the attached article I published in World Fishing & Aquaculture some time ago. MB-Y

Sorry, here's the attachment MB-Y

In Europe the EBFM is yet to come. I wonder if the scientific complexities of it will match to the structural complexities of the European Union and the national governments. To become real management practice, EBFM probably has to be boiled down to rather simple concepts and I am not sure if this will be possible. What I can see happening within Europe within the next decade is the implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAF or EAFM), by which I mean to not only to manage the target stocks, but also the impacts of fisheries on non-target species and habitats. To my understanding EBFM and EAFM are not entirely the same thing, with EBFM requiring good understanding of the ecosystem, while EAFM is more problem orientated.

Important, but difficult question, Jason.

I'm sure you're able to give some good answers to this yourself, but here's some input from my part of the world (Norway, which is in Europe, but not EU). Firstly, there seem to be many definitions of EBFM and at least as many of the more general ecosystem-based (approach to) management. In Norwegian waters two different approaches are being implemented. For our main open ocean seas integrated management plans have been introduced. These are mainly geared towards conservation and are run by our Ministry of climate and the environment. These plans are very broad, inter-sectorial, non-legally binding and must in reality be considered as guidelines. So far they have very little impact on the way fisheries management is done.

Our fisheries management is still mostly traditional single-species, but step-by-step ecological considerations are being introduced. A good case is the Barents Sea cod, one of the few cod stocks remaining large (the spawning stock biomass is at a historically record high level, the total biomass around 3.5 mill tonnes). The state of the stock of the cod's main prey, capelin, is included in the assessments procedures, so is sea temperature (up there warm is good). This careful move towards EBFM is one of the reasons for this stock doing so well.

Aldring another element from Norway: an importstopp component of ebfm is to reduce the impact of fishing activities on other parts of the marine ecosystems. This is noe a) systematically containeren for all fisheries annually and b) there are a large nummer of regulatory measures addressing this, directly or indirectly. Examples of regulatory measures aimed directly at reducing the impact of a fishery are area closures to protect juvenile fish or vulnerable ecosystems. An example of an indirectly measure is that bottom trawling is mostly required to be outsidere the 12 nmi boundary.

Alf's examples indicate management by input methods, which is a blessed respite from the obsessive, non-ecological and anti-social output management sytem prevailing in W.Europe, USA, and some other countries, of TACs based on unreliable "stock assessments", and on marketable quotas, incl. ITQs, which are a tool for transferring fishing rights from the small to big owners. MB-Y

Hello! I think this article by Policansky and Magnuson would provide some input on the benefits of ecosystem based management of fisheries. It's basically an overview on how considerations on ecosystem based management have alterations on the genetics and populations on Oncorhynchus spp.

Policansky D, Magnuson J. 1998. GENETICS, METAPOPULATIONS, AND ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT OF FISHERIES. Ecological Society of America 8(1):199-123

I hope this helps!

ICES stock assessment advice is now supposed to conform to EAFM and indeed does now include some consideration of environment impacts and multispecies interactions. ICES has just started a large initiative to develop the advice needed to implement some form of EBM (larger than just fisheries as it covers habitats etc see also OSPAR). The main problem I perceive is that traditional fisheries management was/is based largely on setting annual quotas. These are really determined by what has already recruited to the stock. This situation is changing somewhat with the development of multi-annual plans which will need to take more account of multispecies interactions - and these predominantly impact the pre-recruit stages (at least I believe so - others might want to debate this point?). However, I tend to agree that many of the wider aspects proposed in various EAFM papers are still to happen - and indeed many may not be practical. The biggest problem for me is that EAFM supposes that we know what a 'healthy' ecosystem actually looks like - I think this is actually much harder than it sounds - for sure we know what an 'unhealthy' ecosystem looks like but the desirable situation is harder to define - this is evident from all the problems we are having coming up with good indicators for ecosystem health under the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (but may be that is another story)

As far as I know from the literature, there aren't any studies directly answering Jason's question (please forgive me if I missed any). There are lots of studies on EBFM and its benefits, but all I reviewed lack in benefit-cost analysis, which Jason asks for investment-return of EBFM.

We plan to make a research in near future for this issue, in the Northern Cyprus with the local authority. Our study may be structured in the outline below:

We can list the INVESTMENTs, which are in turn COST for EBFM:

1. Institutional arrangements through all levels of fisheries bodies: cost of rearranging human resources and infrastructure in governmental and non-governmental institutions.

2. Legal arrangements: cost of laying down new rules (including spatial arrangements: cost of declaring no-take zones, protected areas, etc; temporal arrangements: seasonal prohibitions, etc)

3. Enhancing monitoring: cost of monitoring biological, social and environmental parameters related to fisheries and the cost of using best scientific information.

4. Others: may include cost of rearranging fleet (decreasing number of fishing vessels), applying new techniques, etc.

If you have any study about calculating the items above, I would appreciate to be informed.

The term RETURN may be defined in several ways. But, we all know that anthropocentric view is much more perceived than the biocentric one, by both fishermen and authorities. Thus, we may think about:

1. Ecological and economical sustainability of the stocks, and their economical returns to the fishery community (including social benefits).

2. The return period of EBFM investments: EBFM may take time to return its benefits, obviously perceptible by fishermen and authorities.

If we achieve to make the study start, I will be glad to have your comments on the issues !

I would argue that If F is obviously driving the status and trends of a population, then the traditional Baranov catch equation application will probably be most efficacious approach - granted the dependance on some reliable stock-recruit relation comes in to play and fishery-independent surveys are available.  However, if M (considering the full range of life stages) dominates the status and trends of a given population, then by all means some EBFM approach would logically be necessary - but then I ask "show me the model or models"!  I then ask "show me the money".

Recently Kraak et al. (2012) presented a proposal for a novel approach to fisheries management that integrates into one single system the management for a range of commercial species as well as ecosystem considerations. Fishermen would be given an allocation of fishing-impact credits, called Real-Time Incentives (RTIs), to spend according to spatiotemporally varying tariffs per fishing day. RTI-quota and tariffs could be based on both commercial stock targets and ecosystem objectives. Fishermen could choose any moment how to spend their RTIs, e.g. by limited fishing in high-catch or sensitive areas, or by fishing longer in lower-catch or less sensitive areas. The RTI system does not prescribe or forbid, but instead allows fishermen to fish when and where they want (barring closed areas). Costs of overfishing and other costs to the ecosystem are internalized and fishermen have to take them into account in their business decisions. There is no need for traditional landings or catch quotas for the fleets while operating under the scheme; the single-currency RTI quotas are supposed to limit fishing mortality and other fishing impacts. Monitoring and results-based adaptive management should ensure that the targets and objectives are achieved.

The basis of the approach is that the management area would be divided up into ‘cells’ at a high spatial resolution. Each cell would have a certain ‘cost’ applied to fishing in that cell. These costs would be set by managers. Fishermen would then ‘pay’ these costs in RTIs from their individual RTI account, allocated at the start of the management period, e.g. year. The costs, or tariffs (e.g. in RTIs per day), associated with fishing in each of the cells would be shown on colour-coded tariff maps (Figure 1). Using these maps, fishermen are then free to fish when and where they choose (barring closed cells) as long as their RTI credit lasts; once they have exhausted their RTI-quota they would have to stop fishing in the relevant management area for the rest of the management period. The total amount of RTIs annually available can be set in relation to (internationally) agreed objectives or targets of fishing mortality rate (or parts thereof if applied to fleet segments) of the stock(s) of interest. There would be no direct catch or landings quota of the stock(s) of interest while operating under the RTI scheme. Different métiers or gear or mesh-size groups would each have their own set of tariff maps, based on the fact that these cause different impacts on target and bycatch stocks as well on other ecosystem components. There would also be incentives to deploy selective or ecologically friendly gear, for which the operator would get tariff maps with lower tariffs.

Kraak, S. B. M., Reid, D. G., Gerritsen, H. D., Kelly, C. J., Fitzpatrick, M., Codling, E. A., and Rogan, E. 2012. 21st century fisheries management: a spatio-temporally explicit tariff-based approach combining multiple drivers and incentivising responsible fishing. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69(4): 590–601.

Hi there Jason,

I think that you know the answers that I am about to give.

The process is interative and progressing. Already we build in EBM into much fisheries advice- changes in productivity (growth and recruitment) are incorperated into stock assessment and predictions across many fisheries by adjusting assumptions in the projections for catch quotas. The variability in mortality caused by complexity in the system is now built into the stock assessments of Baltic fish, North herring, cod, haddock and whiting- by using multispecies models. This also always us in the North Sea is ensure that enough prey fish (forage fish) is available for birds and sea mammals. The reference points for the fisheries management for Baltic sea herring, cod and sprat are now all based on multi-species assessments, thus they account for trophioc interactions. Norwegian cod advice accounts for interactions with themselves (cannibalism) and with capelin. We are spreading these approaches to the Celtic Sea and Bay of Biscay too.

Importantly we also provide advice on mixed fisheries (http://bit.ly/1jHPieP) where single species quota advice conflicts with availability in the catch.

The marine strategy frame work directive means that with 1-2 years our advice for EU waters must reconcile commercial fisheries advice with fishing pressure on the seafloor integrity, biodiversity of habitats and species and on foodweb structure and function. We are working on that now. Look at our pages: http://www.ices.dk/explore-us/Action%20Areas/Pages/Integrated-ecosystem-assessments.aspx

You know of these two papers already, but:

http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/06/19/icesjms.fst075.short

http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/03/05/icesjms.fsu027.short

The best example todate is our Baltic Sea fisheries advice- variable M, multispecies target fishing pressures and the new challenge which is the failure of Eastern Baltic cod to grow to catchable size. Followed by all our North Sea work providing fish for predators and mixed fisheries advice.

I think Mark's answer doesn't quite hit Jason's question - namely what are the "demonstrated benefits" - perhaps the answer is that is it still too early to tell if the new approach will lead to more "healthy" marine ecosystems - I guess in Europe we need to see all marine waters reach Good Environmental Status as required by the EMSFD, this would provide evidence that we are moving in the right direction. However, there is still much development needed for the indicators and lots of issues around harmonistation.

The root of the problem is that fisheries only partly influence the status of the ecosystem in which they operate. Even an ecosystem in which the best fisheries management based on catch vs. abundance is applied, can be affected and even permanently degraded by increasing pollution and destruction of fish habitats by various coastal and offshore developments.   Maybe the question should be reformulated to, e.g., "What are the demonstrated benefits of fisheries operating in a well-managed ecosystem"?

I agree with the point above which is why in Europe we tend now to talk about Ecosystem-based marine management of which Ecosystem-based fisheries management should form a component. Marine planning needs to take account of all activities which impact the marine ecosystems.