Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SEAwise (Shaping ecosystem based fisheries management)
Reporting period: 2024-10-01 to 2025-09-30
Fisheries provide sustenance, employment, economic and social activity in coastal areas and beyond, throughout Europe. Increasing these benefits while reducing ecosystem impacts, in an era of environmental change and increased competition for marine space, presents a key challenge to European Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM). SEAwise aims to provide a fully operational approach for European Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM), thereby addressing the need to increase fisheries benefits while reducing ecosystem impact under environmental change and increasing competition for space. SEAwise approached this aim by building a network of stakeholders, advisory bodies, decision makers and scientists to co-design key priorities and approaches to EBFM, assembling a new knowledge base on European fisheries interactions with social and ecological systems that integrates scientist and stakeholder experience based knowledge, developing predictive models of fisheries interactions with social and ecological systems to evaluate, select and implement EBFM strategies across Europe accounting for changes in the environment and use of marine space and providing ready-for-uptake advice for EBFM for Mediterranean, western and northern European waters.
Over four years, SEAwise has brought together insights across the human and ecological dimensions of fisheries and their management to provide the knowledge base needed for operationalizing EBFM in Europe. Tracing from priority objectives, identified in collaboration with stakeholders, and SEAwise’s EBFM framework for fisheries, we have outlined opportunities and overcome barriers to attaining the goal of operationalising EBFM for European fisheries. This report synthesises this knowledge across our work themes along with the barriers still remaining.
SEAwise combined different future socio-economic and climate scenarios with management scenarios with a specific focus on small scale (SSF) and large-scale (LSF) fleets. In the human domain, we estimated aspects such as number of meals produced, Gross Value Added (GVA), fish price and CO2 per kg of fish landed. In the ecological domain, we investigated aspects such as the status of retained species, bycatch and habitats. New relationships between the environment and reproduction, growth or maturity were included in a variety of models. Including environmental changes led to poorer projected stock status for many of the stocks than the scenario with no environmental change. However, the relative ranking of management scenarios in terms of stock biomass did not change.
Fisheries management based on FMSY with strict implementation of a landing obligation led to improved ecological wellbeing but poorer human wellbeing except in cases where stocks were currently overfished. Allowing some flexibility around FMSY could in some cases improve human wellbeing without deteriorating ecological wellbeing. Environmental changes led to poorer projected status for many of the retained species. However, the relative ranking of management scenarios in terms of biomass did not change. In economic terms, the management scenarios performed differently for small scale and large-scale fisheries and the two segments varied in the impact of climate change.
The impacts of area restrictions for fishing activities to reduce bycatch and habitat impact varied depending on whether the area hosted the species or habitat of interest and how effort was redistributed. In most cases, the currently suggested areas did not contain high densities of bycatch species or sensitive habitats and as a result, their effect was limited. Conversely, ecological status was improved if specific fishing techniques were prohibited in fit-to-purpose areas to limit impacts such as juvenile catches, incidental bycatch and the degradation of benthic habitats. Area closures often decreased catches and increased operating costs and fuel use as effort was displaced to surrounding areas.
Ultimately, there were no panaceas when it comes to achieving EBFM. A suite of complementary tailored measures, entailing area-based, effort-based, and technical measures are required to ensure sustainable and resilient fisheries. Climate change impacts must be accounted for within existing and future plans. Managers should be prepared to adapt management measures if or when climate impacts render existing measures unfit. This requires adaptive, contextually-sensitive, fisheries-specific and regionally tailored management based on better coverage and integration of particularly social data and data on incidental bycatch. Evaluation of unintended consequences across objectives should be incorporated systematically when choosing management strategies. In addition, timely and responsive support for innovation – for instance, gear innovation – and inclusive policy change, can improve the navigation of trade-offs. Moving beyond a focus on target species to assessments of broader ecological and social impacts of fisheries is urgently needed, and we finalise by discussing the barriers to this transition that still remain.
SEAwise combined different future socio-economic and climate scenarios with management scenarios with a specific focus on small scale (SSF) and large-scale (LSF) fleets. In the human domain, we estimated aspects such as number of meals produced, Gross Value Added (GVA), fish price and CO2 per kg of fish landed. In the ecological domain, we investigated aspects such as the status of retained species, bycatch and habitats. New relationships between the environment and reproduction, growth or maturity were included in a variety of models. Including environmental changes led to poorer projected stock status for many of the stocks than the scenario with no environmental change. However, the relative ranking of management scenarios in terms of stock biomass did not change.
Fisheries management based on FMSY with strict implementation of a landing obligation led to improved ecological wellbeing but poorer human wellbeing except in cases where stocks were currently overfished. Allowing some flexibility around FMSY could in some cases improve human wellbeing without deteriorating ecological wellbeing. Environmental changes led to poorer projected status for many of the retained species. However, the relative ranking of management scenarios in terms of biomass did not change. In economic terms, the management scenarios performed differently for small scale and large-scale fisheries and the two segments varied in the impact of climate change.
The impacts of area restrictions for fishing activities to reduce bycatch and habitat impact varied depending on whether the area hosted the species or habitat of interest and how effort was redistributed. In most cases, the currently suggested areas did not contain high densities of bycatch species or sensitive habitats and as a result, their effect was limited. Conversely, ecological status was improved if specific fishing techniques were prohibited in fit-to-purpose areas to limit impacts such as juvenile catches, incidental bycatch and the degradation of benthic habitats. Area closures often decreased catches and increased operating costs and fuel use as effort was displaced to surrounding areas.
Ultimately, there were no panaceas when it comes to achieving EBFM. A suite of complementary tailored measures, entailing area-based, effort-based, and technical measures are required to ensure sustainable and resilient fisheries. Climate change impacts must be accounted for within existing and future plans. Managers should be prepared to adapt management measures if or when climate impacts render existing measures unfit. This requires adaptive, contextually-sensitive, fisheries-specific and regionally tailored management based on better coverage and integration of particularly social data and data on incidental bycatch. Evaluation of unintended consequences across objectives should be incorporated systematically when choosing management strategies. In addition, timely and responsive support for innovation – for instance, gear innovation – and inclusive policy change, can improve the navigation of trade-offs. Moving beyond a focus on target species to assessments of broader ecological and social impacts of fisheries is urgently needed, and we finalise by discussing the barriers to this transition that still remain.
SEAwise used advanced indicators and fisheries models to provide the foundation for advice on economically effective and socially acceptable governance under climate change, productivity changes, and the Landing Obligation. Environmental effects on fish stock productivity and effects of fishing on the ecosystem were investigated and the effects of fishing on sensitive species, benthic habitats, food webs, biodiversity and litter used in the evaluation of the mutual consistency of objectives for ecological and social systems under different management strategies. Multispecies-multifleet models provided ecosystem forecasts of the effect of fisheries management measures. The predictions informed two online advice tools highlighting stock- and fisheries-specific social and ecological effects and management trade-offs. SEAwise tools and courses for ICES, GFCM, stakeholders and decision makers ensure that these methods can be used directly in Mediterranean, western European, North Sea and Baltic Sea waters after the end of the project.
The project results contribute to the restoration and conservation of coastal and marine Social-Ecological Systems, by suggesting compromises between maximising benefits to fisheries and minimising adverse effects. Maximising society's readiness to implement new research knowledge from SEAwise is crucial in attaining the full impact of the scientific advice for consumers and policy makers produced in the project. For this reason, collaborative networks were an integral part of SEAwise, ensuring that results remained relevant, readily understandable and applicable to decision-making by policymakers, producers, influencers and consumers. The communication strategy targeted dissemination activities to a variety of audiences, bringing significant benefits to public understanding, consumer behaviour and policy decisions. SEAwise results and products were reviewed by expert end users, ensuring co-construction and integration of comments. The success of the project in achieving a widespread impact in Europe is clearly evidenced by the larger number of presentations and invited talks organised by stakeholders, managers, advisory organisations and the scientific community.
The project results contribute to the restoration and conservation of coastal and marine Social-Ecological Systems, by suggesting compromises between maximising benefits to fisheries and minimising adverse effects. Maximising society's readiness to implement new research knowledge from SEAwise is crucial in attaining the full impact of the scientific advice for consumers and policy makers produced in the project. For this reason, collaborative networks were an integral part of SEAwise, ensuring that results remained relevant, readily understandable and applicable to decision-making by policymakers, producers, influencers and consumers. The communication strategy targeted dissemination activities to a variety of audiences, bringing significant benefits to public understanding, consumer behaviour and policy decisions. SEAwise results and products were reviewed by expert end users, ensuring co-construction and integration of comments. The success of the project in achieving a widespread impact in Europe is clearly evidenced by the larger number of presentations and invited talks organised by stakeholders, managers, advisory organisations and the scientific community.