The Role Of Sustainable Fisheries In Marine Ecosystem Preservation And Biodiversity – TNC brings innovative solutions and science to global fisheries challenges to ensure healthy marine and freshwater ecosystems and thriving communities.

The health of our oceans and inland waters and the livelihoods of millions of people depend on well-managed fisheries. Fish and other seafood products provide essential nutrients for more than 3 billion people worldwide and provide income for 10-12% of the world’s population. From small-scale mussel and sea urchin fishing along the Humboldt Current in South America to offshore octopus fishing in Kenya, freshwater fishing in the U.S. Great Lakes, and industrial tuna fishing in the western and central Pacific, these diverse species are essential to healthy ecosystems and resilient communities. .

The Role Of Sustainable Fisheries In Marine Ecosystem Preservation And Biodiversity

But there is another side to the coin. Unsustainable fishing practices lead to overfishing and habitat destruction, threatening ecosystem resilience, and mismanaged fisheries cause annual economic losses of approximately $80 billion worldwide. Adding to the problem, climate change amplifies existing stressors on marine ecosystems.

How Overfishing Threatens The World’s Oceans—and Why It Could End In Catastrophe

We can still restore the health of our oceans and inland waters and protect sensitive species and habitats, but we must change the way we interact with our oceans, lakes and rivers. Fisheries management reform is probably the most impactful approach we can take.

Empowered Communities and Thriving Fisheries (3 minutes) Understand how we work to provide fishing communities with the information they need to sustainably manage their fisheries.

The Conservancy (TNC) envisions sustainable fisheries that result in reliable seafood supplies, thriving coastal communities, biodiversity conservation, and healthy oceans, rivers, and lakes. However, there are obstacles to achieving this vision, including a lack of information about fisheries and ecosystem health and limited ability to implement solutions. To overcome these obstacles, we combine innovative technologies and collaboration to help design scientific, political and technical solutions that bridge information gaps, balance people’s needs and ensure sustainable fisheries.

Advancing Knowledge On Marine Connectivity Is Key To Support Transition To A Sustainable Blue Economy

TNC Global Fisheries Our fisheries projects operate in more than 25 countries and impact more than 1,000 marine and freshwater species. © T&C

Our fishing projects around the world are supported by close collaboration with people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods.

In Kenya, Tanzania, Peru, Chile, Melanesia, and Micronesia, we work with local and indigenous fishing communities to support community-based conservation efforts that enable local leaders to manage their fisheries sustainably. For example, our collaboration with Pate Marine Community Conservation in Lamu County, Kenya, focuses on community-designed solutions such as seasonal closures, exclusion zones, fishing gear restrictions, and monitoring and surveillance activities. Through these activities, female fishermen and community leaders have been able to increase octopus harvests and negotiate better prices for their catch while restoring habitat and species.

Ocean Conservation. Ocean Conservation Refers To The…

In North America, from the Southeast to the Mid-Atlantic, West Coast and Alaska, we work with the commercial and recreational fishing sectors to co-develop solutions with the triple bottom line: sustainable fish supply, stability and better prices. It is for the fishermen, and for the protection and restoration of the ecosystem. For example, in Alaska, we partnered with local fisheries organizations to launch a fisheries fund that promotes marine conservation and increases fisheries policy leadership by helping the next generation of fishermen purchase fishing privileges. In the U.S. West Coast groundfish fisheries, we supported the development of the California Groundfish Collective (CGC), a group of organized anglers who create risk-based spatial fisheries plans and share information to reduce the catch of vulnerable species and support fishery rebuilding efforts.

Atlantic Beach, New York A humpback whale eats a herring in Atlantic Beach, New York, USA. © Artie Raslich

Fish Market, Ancón, Peru Ancón has a thousands of years of history harvesting food from the sea, and they work together as a community to make their practices as responsible as possible. © Jason Houston

Fish And Overfishing

In addition to working directly with fishermen, we work with seafood buyers and other actors in the supply chain to promote sustainable, science-based practices. In Indonesia, where some deep-sea fish species and grouper are at risk of overfishing, we are leading efforts to secure commitments from seafood buyers to only purchase fish that exceed the minimum size for each species at risk. Likewise, we worked with the Bahamas Fishermen and Bahamas Marine Exporters Association to achieve Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for lobster, the first of its kind in the Northern Caribbean. This is a global recognition of sustainability.

Our global presence allows us to leverage solutions across projects and accelerate the adoption of best fishing practices, while fostering international collaboration and improving the sustainability of fisheries around the world. This is important for coastal communities in Africa or Latin America, as it is in the United States, where more than 80% of the seafood consumed is imported, often from countries where bycatch rates of vulnerable species are up to 19 times higher. Our work in California, tagging swordfish and using the results to implement low bycatch gear to reduce the impact of fishing on wildlife such as sea turtles, dolphins and whales, is now being applied in Chile and Peru. This is just one example of how we can work with fishermen, scientists and governments across borders to ensure sustainable fish supplies for consumers, healthy habitats and large-scale species.

In the Gulf of Maine, Bryan Bichrest tosses pollack into a fish bucket from his boat. © David Hills

How Do Governments Regulate The Fishing Industry?

Fishing communities are experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand through temperature changes, acidification, deoxygenation and changes in fish distribution.

In New England, where oceans are changing faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, rising temperatures are causing problems such as causing commercially important fish species to migrate, making new fishing grounds difficult to access. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, there have been record numbers of entanglements of whales in crab fishing gear as changing ocean conditions change their historical distribution to follow prey. Our team is working with fishermen, agencies and other stakeholders to build climate-ready solutions by improving predictions of whale location and their overlap with fishing season timing and using this information to track risks in near real-time.

We are well positioned to work together to solve the challenges facing fishermen and the ocean.

Will The Sustainable Food Of The Future Come From The Blue?

Fishermen on the Front Line (2 minutes) Learn how fishermen are experiencing the impacts of climate change first-hand.

We also work closely with government agencies responsible for fisheries management to implement adaptation measures to combat the impacts of climate change. Mexico is actively implementing a fisheries capacity building program to support fisheries scientists and managers in developing climate-responsive fisheries management plans. And in collaboration with the US Pacific Fisheries Management Council, our team has led an initiative to use scenario planning to better understand plausible future scenarios for ecological and socioeconomic change.

Small-scale fisheries employ more than 90% of the world’s 35 million registered fishers, so addressing the challenges of small-scale fisheries and fisheries for which data is limited is essential to providing sustainable income and food sources for local communities.

Ways To Support Sustainable Fisheries From Home

The Conservation Society team consisting of Tuungane Peter Limbu, James Anton and Sadoki Nfukamo for the Buhingu Beach Management Unit (BMU) on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania. Measure the fish. James and Sadoki are part of a volunteer data collection team that monitors the type and size of fish caught in the lake. © Ami Vitale

A key element of TNC’s work is the FishPath program. This is an approach that moves fisheries towards sustainability by working with local stakeholders to develop appropriate solutions. The FishPath process combines online decision support tools and training to help local stakeholders design and implement science-based fisheries management.

To date, FishPath has been applied to a variety of regions, from coastal fish in Peru and Chile to reef fish in Hawaii, king conches in the Bahamas and lobsters in Kenya. Our work has already led to several successful projects, and we continue to expand through the growing FishPath network to additional coastal fisheries in need of better sustainable management.

Can Deepwater Aquaculture Avoid The Pitfalls Of Coastal Fish Farms?

For example, in Peru, we worked with government agencies and fishing communities to support the establishment of an annual national closure of the important but declining chita coastal fishery, implemented in collaboration with community members in Ancón. We have strengthened our capabilities. science. Based data collection protocol. In northern and central Chile, where coastal fish are largely unregulated throughout the kelp forest ecosystem, we are conducting a FishPath process to develop regulations for 15 different species that support the conservation of sensitive coastal habitats and the sustainability of fishing.

In Africa, we support the coastal countries of Kenya and Lake Tanganyika (Tanzania) to establish and implement sustainable fisheries regulations, including bans on destructive fishing nets and protection of fish breeding grounds. Lake Tanganyika combines these fishing activities with microfinance opportunities that support income diversification, education programs for local women, and reproductive health initiatives. On the other side of the world, in America’s Great Lakes, we are working to identify, protect, and restore sufficient spawning habitat so that whitefish, cisco, and lake trout populations can rebuild for the benefit of the Great Healthy Lakes.

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