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Fish from marine and inland capture fisheries is an important food that contributes significantly to diets and health, but their contribution is somewhat overlooked in food security and poverty‐related policies. Given the current numbers of malnourished people globally, there is a pressing need to consider how to better realize the potential of fish in food systems that can address malnourishment. To do so, we re‐examine the fisheries literature from the perspective of food systems. Starting with nutritional needs and considering how these may be met through local food systems reveals an ongoing transformation that has implications for small‐scale fisheries, as increasingly become part of globalized food systems. We describe the factors that can change the nature of production, mediate access to fish and the distribution of benefits that can lead to impoverishment. This emphasizes the governance challenges that lie at the heart of complex, contested and increasingly globalized food systems, in which actors interact to shape the systems, determining who benefits and how. We draw attention to critical issues of access, power and the values and norms that underpin efforts to manage and transform fisheries, exposing the unequal struggle to secure access that small‐scale fishers and poor people must endure. We suggest a vital challenge for fisheries management is to engage with this struggle and develop policies and management measures that would enable fisheries to make positive contributions to food systems and nutritional security, while meeting global sustainable development objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective fisheries management is necessary for the long‐term sustainability of fisheries and the economic benefits that they provide, but focusing only on ecological sustainability risks disregarding ultimate goals related to well‐being that must be achieved through broader social policy. An analysis of global landings data shows that average fishing wages in 36%–67% of countries, home to 69%–95% of fishers worldwide, are likely below their nationally determined minimum living wage (which accounts for costs of food, shelter, clothing, health and education). Furthermore, even if all fisheries in every country were perfectly managed to achieve their Maximum Sustainable Yield, a common sustainability target, average incomes of fishers in up to 49 countries—70% of fishers worldwide—would still not meet minimum living wages. Access to decent work and livelihoods are fundamental human rights, including for all fisherfolk around the world, and strategies to support their well‐being must therefore integrate a much wider set of perspectives, disciplines and institutions. Key first steps for fisheries researchers are to more fully recognize and estimate fisheries benefits to households—including income from women and/or alternative employment, unreported landings, or shadow values of subsistence catch—and to help identify and learn from economic equity outcomes in rebuilt fisheries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimizing the impact of fishing is an explicit goal in international agreements as well as in regional directives and national laws. To assist in practical implementation, three simple rules for fisheries management are proposed in this study: 1) take less than nature by ensuring that mortality caused by fishing is less than the natural rate of mortality; 2) maintain population sizes above half of natural abundance, at levels where populations are still likely to be able to fulfil their ecosystem functions as prey or predator; and 3) let fish grow and reproduce, by adjusting the size at first capture such that the mean length in the catch equals the length where the biomass of an unexploited cohort would be maximum ( Lopt). For rule 3), the basic equations describing growth in age-structured populations are re-examined and a new optimum length for first capture ( Lc_opt) is established. For a given rate of fishing mortality, Lc_opt keeps catch and profit near their theoretical optima while maintaining large population sizes. Application of the three rules would not only minimize the impact of fishing on commercial species, it may also achieve several goals of ecosystem-based fisheries management, such as rebuilding the biomass of prey and predator species in the system and reducing collateral impact of fishing, because with more fish in the water, shorter duration of gear deployment is needed for a given catch. The study also addresses typical criticisms of these common sense rules for fisheries management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, ocean acidification (OA) and the subsequent changes in marine productivity may affect fisheries and eventually the whole economy in the Arctic. We analysed how changes in climate and ocean pH under scenarios of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are likely to affect the economics of marine fisheries in the Arctic. We applied a Dynamic Bioclimate Envelope Model (DBEM) and outputs from four different Earth System Models (ESMs) to project future changes in the distribution and maximum catch potential of exploited marine fishes and invertebrates. We projected that total fisheries revenue in the Arctic region may increase by 39% (14-59%) by 2050 relative to 2000 under the Special Reports on Emission Scenario (SRES) A2. Simultaneously, total fishing costs, fishers' incomes, household incomes and economy-wide impacts in the Arctic are also projected to increase. Climate change with OA is expected to reduce the potential increases in catch and the economic indicators studied herein. Although the projections suggest that Arctic countries are likely to be 'winners' under climate change in comparison with tropical developing countries, the effects of OA will lower the expected future benefits in the Arctic. The predicted impacts are likely to be conservative as we consider only the direct effects of OA on fishes and calcifiers, of which there are only a few in the Arctic. Results of this study would be useful for designing effective adaptation strategies to climate change and measures to mitigate the potential negative impacts of OA in the Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conservatively estimate the distant-water fleet catch of the People's Republic of China for 2000-2011, using a newly assembled database of reported occurrence of Chinese fishing vessels in various parts of the world and information on the annual catch by vessel type. Given the unreliability of official statistics, uncertainty of results was estimated through a regionally stratified Monte Carlo approach, which documents the presence and number of Chinese vessels in Exclusive Economic Zones and then multiplies these by the expected annual catch per vessel. We find that China, which over-reports its domestic catch, substantially under-reports the catch of its distant-water fleets. This catch, estimated at 4.6 million t year−1 (95% central distribution, 3.4-6.1 million t year−1) from 2000 to 2011 (compared with an average of 368 000 t·year−1 reported by China to FAO), corresponds to an ex-vessel landed value of 8.93 billion € year−1 (95% central distribution, 6.3-12.3 billion). Chinese distant-water fleets extract the largest catch in African waters (3.1 million t year−1, 95% central distribution, 2.0-4.4 million t), followed by Asia (1.0 million t year−1, 0.56-1.5 million t), Oceania (198 000 t year−1, 144 000-262 000 t), Central and South America (182 000 t year−1, 94 000-299 000 t) and Antarctica (48 000 t year−1, 8 000-129 000 t). The uncertainty of these estimates is relatively high, but several sources of inaccuracy could not be fully resolved given the constraints inherent in the underlying data and method, which also prevented us from distinguishing between legal and illegal catch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine social-ecological systems consist of interactive ecological and human social elements so that changes in ecological systems affect fishing-dependent societies and vice versa. This study compares the responses of marine ecological and fishing-dependent systems to environmental change and the impacts of globalization, using four case-studies: NE Atlantic (Barents Sea), NW Atlantic (Newfoundland), SE Atlantic (Namibia) and the equatorial Atlantic (Ghana). Marine ecological systems cope with short-time changes by altering migration and distribution patterns, changing species composition, and changing diets and growth rates; over the longer term, adaptive changes lead to increased turn-over rates and changes in the structure and function of the system. Fishing communities cope with short-term change through intensification and diversification of fishing, migration and 'riding out the storm'. Over the longer term, adaptive changes in policy and fisheries governance can interact with social-ecological change to focus on new fisheries, economic diversification, re-training, out-migration and community closures. Marine social-ecological systems can ultimately possess rapid adaptive capacity in their ecological components, but reduced adaptive capacity in society. Maintaining the diversity of response capabilities on short and longer time scales, among both ecological and human fishing systems, should be a key policy objective. The challenge is to develop robust governance approaches for coupled marine social-ecological systems that can respond to short- and long-term consequences of global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]