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Fisheries and Fishing Techniques. What are fisheries?. A fishing ground for commercial fishing. Where are most fisheries concentrated?. Most fisheries are concentrated over the continental shelf, in neritic waters. There is high net primary productivity and biodiversity here.
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What are fisheries? • A fishing ground for commercial fishing
Where are most fisheries concentrated? • Most fisheries are concentrated over the continental shelf, in neritic waters. There is high net primary productivity and biodiversity here.
Marine fisheries systems mainly exploit • shelves surrounding continents, to depth of 200 m • Deeper waters of tropical, temperate, polar areas. • Here, fisheries dominant environmental change. • changes ecosystem biodiversity and functioning • habitat change from bottom trawling
What is maximum sustainable yield? • The largest number of fish that can be harvested year after year without diminishing stocks (maintaining levels to carrying capacity of the ecosystem).
What is over exploitation? • Over fishing or using a resource beyond its maximum sustainable yield.
Central Case: collapse of the cod fisheries • No fish has more impact on human civilization than the Atlantic cod • Eastern Canadians and U.S. fishermen have fished for cod for centuries • Large ships and technology have destroyed the cod fishery • Even protected stocks are not recovering • Prey may now be competing with, and eating, young cod
How have techniques changed? • The Industrial Revolution saw the advent of • steam trawlers • diesel engines • hydraulic winches • inboard refrigeration • echo-sounders • access to real-time oceanographic data
How have techniques changed? • Fishing boats can rapidly locate, catch and process large quantities of fish • They can also land them in better condition from longer distances • The entire world ocean is now accessible to fishing fleets
What are some Industrialized fishing techniques? • Factory fishing = highly industrialized, huge vessels use powerful technologies to capture fish in huge volumes • Even process and freeze their catches while at sea • Driftnets for schools of herring, sardines, mackerel, sharks • Longline fishing for tuna and swordfish • Trawling for pelagic fish and groundfish
Purse-Seine target species? • Yellowfin Tuna • Porpoise bycatch(caught by accident and not needed=causalty
Small traps baited with fish which are set down on the seabed to catch crabs, lobsters and other seafloor life.
What is subsistence fishing? • Fishing to support your family and yourself. • Negatively impacted by industrialized fishing • Societal • Economic • http://www.filmeducation.org/theendoftheline/senegal.html
'The thing is we're too good right now. Technologically, not a single hunted animal on this earth has a chance.' Professor Jeffrey Hutchings
What is aquaculture? • Humans rearing selected aquatic plants and animals for human consumption. • Mariculture? = Marine aquaculture
What are some advantages and disadvantages of fish farming? advantages Disadvantages Mariculture is challenging due to physical and chemical components + larval stages and needs Can’t sustain human need for food Limited space • Reduces pressure on wild fisheries http://www.filmeducation.org/theendoftheline/fish_farming.html
What is fishing down the food chain? • >30% U.S. fish stocks are overexploited • For >30% of the rest, insufficient information to determine status • As one species becomes more rare, fishermen turn to smaller, once-discarded species: “fishing down the food web” – causes changes in age structure and genetics of populations
What are the economic consequences in the U.S.? • NW: • >72,000 jobs lost due to decreasing salmon populations • $500 million lost • N Atlantic: • 20,000 jobs lost in 1990’s due to cod fishery collapse • $350 million lost
How do we preserve the ocean’s fisheries? • Marine reserves • Regulations • http://www.filmeducation.org/theendoftheline/marine_reserves.html
What is the Magnusen-Stevens Act of 1976? • 200-mile EEZ • Regional Fishery Management Councils (RFMC’s) • Incentives for U.S. fishermen to upgrade vessels • Scientific and Statistical Committees (SSC) to provide information for managers, but RFMC’s not required to follow their advice: overfishing and slow recovery of overfished stocks
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) • Countries have the rights to manage and extract resources from an area 200 nautical miles off the coast of its land • Will include the continental shelf if it extends beyond 200 nautical miles. • Can overlap, leading to dispute! • Cod Wars UK and Iceland • Areas outside of the EEZ are fair game for countries to fish
Continued… • Notes continued on Pollution