Global fishery prospects under contrasting management regimes
Significance What would extensive fishery reform look like? In addition, what would be the benefits and trade offs of implementing alternative approaches to fisheries management on a worldwide scale? To find out, we assembled the largest of its kind database and coupled it to state of the art bioeconomic models for more than 4,500 fisheries around the world. We find that, in nearly every country of the world, fishery recovery would simultaneously drive increases in food provision, fishery profits, and fish biomass in the sea. Our results suggest that a suite of approaches providing individual or communal access rights to fishery resources can align incentives across profit, food, and conservation so that few trade offs will have to be made across these objectives in selecting effective policy interventions. Data from 4,713 fisheries worldwide, representing 78% of global reported fish catch, are analyzed to estimate the status, trends, and benefits of alternative approaches to recovering depleted fisheries. For each fishery, we estimate current biological status and forecast the impacts of contrasting management regimes on catch, profit, and biomass of fish in the sea. We estimate unique recovery targets and trajectories for each fishery, calculate the year by year effects of alternative recovery approaches, and model how alternative institutional reforms affect recovery outcomes. Current status is highly heterogeneous the median fishery is in poor health (overfished, with further overfishing occurring) although 32% of fisheries are in good biological, although not necessarily economic, condition. Our business as usual scenario projects further divergence and continued collapse for many of the world's fisheries. Applying sound management reforms to global fisheries in our dataset could generate annual increases exceeding 16 million metric tons (MMT) in catch, $53 billion in profit, and 619 MMT in biomass relative to business as usual. We also find that, with appropriate reforms, recovery can happen quickly, with the median fishery taking under 10 y to reach recovery targets. Our results show that commonsense reforms to fishery management would dramatically improve overall fish abundance while increasing food security and profits.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences