High Seas Fisheries Management Gets Low Marks

Fishing on the high seas—areas beyond the 200-nautical-mile jurisdiction of coastal states—is increasing, largely driven by advanced vessel and gear technology, which facilitates fishing far from shore. High seas fisheries are overseen by various regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs)—intergovernmental bodies made up of nations that have agreed to cooperatively manage fish stocks beyond their national boundaries. Although RFMOs were established to manage and conserve high seas fish stocks, these populations are declining.To illuminate any contradiction between stated management goals and the status of managed fish stocks, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki and Daniel Pauly, researchers at the University of British Columbia, developed a way to score the performance of RFMOs "on paper" versus "in practice." Their results show that on paper, RFMOs are not meeting best practice standards and, in practice, are failing to halt the dramatic declines of fish stocks for which they have management responsibility

The fisheries in the South-Western Indian Ocean, with emphasis on reconstructed catches

Following a brief description of the evolution of marine fisheries since the Second World War, the major trends in the domestic and foreign fisheries in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of the Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique, the Seychelles and Tanzania are reviewed, with emphasis on the actual (‘reconstructed’) catches (as opposed to officially reported catches) of the domestic fisheries for the 61 year period from 1950 to 2010. The discrepancies between these two catch types have policy implication which leads to a discussion of what the governance of these fisheries should emphasize, besides having to be ecosystem-based, and increasingly account for demographic pressure and climate change. The resource managers to be trained for facing these challenges will have to have to be versatile, conservation-orientated, and adept at making use of generic online resources that allow bypassing time-consuming and costly local replications.Suite à une brève description de l’évolution de la pêche maritime depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les principales tendances de la pêche intérieure et étrangère dans les zones économiques exclusives (ZEE) des Comores, Madagascar, le Mozambique, les Seychelles et la Tanzanie sont examinées, l’accent étant mis sur les captures (‘reconstruites’) réelles (par rapport à les captures déclarées officiellement) des pêches intérieures pour la période de 61 ans allant de 1950 à 2010. Ces divergences ont une implication politique qui conduit à une discussion sur ce que la gouvernance de ces pêcheries devrait souligner, en plus d’avoir à être fondée sur les écosystèmes, et de plus en plus tenir compte de la pression démographique et le changement climatique. Les gestionnaires des ressources formés pour faire face à ces défis devront être polyvalents, orientées vers la conservation et doués pour utiliser des ressources en ligne génériques permettant de contourner les reproductions locales coûteuses en temps et laborieuses.This is a contribution of the Sea Around Us, a research initiative based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and funded by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation

Re-estimation of small-scale fishery catches for U.S. flag-associated island areas in the western Pacific: the last 50 years

Nearshore fisheries in the tropical Pacific play an important role, both culturally and as a reliable source of food security, but often remain under-reported in statistics, leading to undervaluation of their importance to communities. We re-estimated nonpelagic catches for Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and summarize previous work for American Samoa for 1950−2002. For all islands combined, catches declined by 77%, contrasting with increasing trends indicated by reported data. For individual island entities, re-estima-tion suggested declines of 86%, 54%, and 79% for Guam, CNMI, and American Samoa, respectively. Except for Guam, reported data primarily represented commercial catches, and hence under-represented contributions by subsistence and recreational fisheries. Guam’s consistent use of creel surveys for data collection resulted in the most reliable reported catches for any of the islands considered. Our re-estimation makes the scale of under-reporting of total catches evident, and provides valuable baselines of likely historic patterns in fisheries catches

Performance in managing marine resources in the Bay of Bengal

The eight member countries were assessed as to their sustainable use of resources within their Exclusive Economic Zones(EEZs). Indicators included; investment in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), impact of trawling, mariculture sustainability, protection of seabirds and marine mammals,ecosystem impacts, economic health and levels of reporting and compliance

Comments on FAO's State of Fisheries and Aquaculture, or 'SOFIA 2010'

Comments are provided on a few sections of the FAO’s 2010 edition of the bi-annual ‘State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture’ (SOFIA), i.e., its characterization of the present as a period of ‘stability’, the peculiar role of China’s fisheries statistics, the under-reporting of much of the small-scale fisheries catch from developing countries as a key aspect of the deteriorating quality of statistical data submitted to the FAO by member countries, and some other minor topics (but not aquaculture). Overall, this SOFIA report, like its predecessors, provides an excellent starting point for debates about the status of global fisheries, rather than settling them, and a few vignettes are presented, which illustrate this. Moreover, this debate should be broader, e.g., involve more university- and civil societybased researchers, to provide the wide variety of views and analyses required to strengthen FAO in its laudable mission of providing dependable information on the state of global fisherie

Trophic signatures of marine organisms in the Mediterranean as compared with other ecosystems

We compared several large marine ecosystems in terms of species numbers of fishes, sea birds, marine mammals, and cephalopods. We examined how these numbers were distributed by trophic level, from herbivores to top predators. We created group-specific trophic signatures as plots of number of species by trophic level, and used these to identify similarities and discrepancies between taxonomic groups and ecosystems. Preliminary results suggested that trophic signatures are similar for ecosystems previously known to share major features, and different for dissimilar ecosystems. In the Mediterranean, as well as in the other large marine ecosystems, fish clearly dominate the predatory trophic levels above 3.0. Preliminary signatures for cephalopods, marine mammals, and sea birds in the Mediterranean and in the North Sea indicate that these groups are restricted to trophic levels above 3.0, and are represented by many fewer species than are predatory fish. Notably, cephalopods are the only invertebrates present at higher trophic levels (>= 4). Invertebrates other than cephalopods are restricted to trophic levels below 3, with very few exceptions. Trophic signatures appear to be useful tools for better understanding of the roles that different groups of organisms play in different ecosystems. We also applied free-scale network theory to analyse the food web created by trophic links of fishes. Our preliminary results indicated that Mediterranean fishes are, on average, only two trophic links away from each other

Optical Rectification and Field Enhancement in a Plasmonic Nanogap

Metal nanostructures act as powerful optical antennas[1, 2] because collective modes of the electron fluid in the metal are excited when light strikes the surface of the nanostructure. These excitations, known as plasmons, can have evanescent electromagnetic fields that are orders of magnitude larger than the incident electromagnetic field. The largest field enhancements often occur in nanogaps between plasmonically active nanostructures[3, 4], but it is extremely challenging to measure the fields in such gaps directly. These enhanced fields have applications in surface-enhanced spectroscopies[5-7], nonlinear optics[1, 8-10], and nanophotonics[11-15]. Here we show that nonlinear tunnelling conduction between gold electrodes separated by a subnanometre gap leads to optical rectification, producing a DC photocurrent when the gap is illuminated. Comparing this photocurrent with low frequency conduction measurements, we determine the optical frequency voltage across the tunnelling region of the nanogap, and also the enhancement of the electric field in the tunnelling region, as a function of gap size. The measured field enhancements exceed 1000, consistent with estimates from surface-enhanced Raman measurements[16-18]. Our results highlight the need for more realistic theoretical approaches that are able to model the electromagnetic response of metal nanostructures on scales ranging from the free space wavelength, $\lambda$, down to $\sim \lambda/1000$, and for experiments with new materials, different wavelengths, and different incident polarizations.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures + 12 pages, 5 figures of supplemental informatio