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.
