Fisheries conservation and management: finding consensus in the midst of competing paradigms

[Extract] The state of the world's fisheries has been a prominent and controversial scientific and social issue over the past 20 years (Banobi, Branch & Hilborn, 2011). Influential research has suggested that we have preferentially 'fished down' top ocean predators before targeting their prey (Pauly et al., 1998) and that, as a consequence, these marine predators have declined by 90% (Myers & Worm, 2003). Even worse, it has been argued that current trends will lead to the global collapse of all fisheries by 2048 (Worm et al., 2006). These paradigms have been challenged by recent findings. The original basis for fishing down marine food webs (Pauly et al., 1998) was based on trophic levels – the average position within food webs, where microscopic algae are at trophic level one, herbivores at trophic level two and predators at trophic level three or higher. Pauly et al. (1998) found a precipitous decline in the average trophic level of commercial catches. However, recent analyses of catches and unbiased data from scientific surveys and stock assessments show that mean trophic levels are increasing rather than decreasing, and that this indicator does not reliably track changes in marine ecosystem health (Branch et al., 2010). In any case, in most ecosystems where average trophic level has declined, such trends are due not to waning top-predator catches ('fishing down'), but to increasing catches of low-trophic-level species, or 'fishing through' (Essington, Beaudreau & Wiedenmann, 2006). Where collapses have occurred, they are up to twice as frequent in small, short-lived species low on the food web than in long-lived predators (Pinsky et al., 2011)

What the 'food security' agenda means for animal conservation in terrestrial ecosystems

[Extract] The goal of the 'food security' agenda – to provide the world's population with a sustainable and secure supply of safe, nutritious, affordable and high-quality food (Research Councils United Kingdom, 2011) – comes with considerable challenges. To feed the expanding human population, numbered over 7 billion and growing (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2011), it is anticipated that by 2030, crop production must increase by 43% and meat production by 124% (Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2009). Growing demand is expected to result in escalating food prices as transport and storage costs increase, potentially reducing access to food among the world's poor. Given the past relationship between lack of access to affordable food and political instability (Brinkman & Hendrix, 2011), food security is given a high priority on global and national political agendas

Putting the eco back in ecotourism

[Extract] In the 1980s, alarm began to spread about habitat loss, especially in tropical forests that supported a vast number of species. Fast and accelerating clearing over the previous two decades had reduced, isolated and degraded this habitat type (Aldhous, 1993; Skole & Tucker, 1993). Conservation proponents reacted by buying and protecting forest tracts; however, political will and funds were often insufficient to support viable plant and animal populations, to protect representative forest communities, or even to prevent the neighboring human populations from illicitly using resources in protected tracts (Goodman & Gonzales, 1990; Terborgh, 1999). Ecotourism developed, in part, as a complement to these conventional conservation methods

Addressing gender imbalances in Animal Conservation

[Extract] The paucity of senior female scientists in science, including ecology and conservation, is a growing concern in the western world. 'Where are the women in ecology?' asked a paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment recently (Martin, 2012). 'Women are driven out of research', conclude O'Brien & Hapgood (2012). Despite the increasing popularity of biology, including ecology, among female undergraduates and graduates, the proportion of female scientists in top positions remains low (European Commission, 2009; Martin, 2012; O'Brien & Hapgood, 2012; Adamo, 2013). An increasing number of individuals, institutions and governmental organizations are starting to ask why so many female scientists do not end up being employed in the type of occupations in which they were trained (Rosser, 2008; Hill, Corbett & St. Rose, 2010; Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2012). There are several reasons to address this issue, especially at a time of economic austerity in many countries. Losing trained scientists can represent a sunk cost: conservative estimates put the economic cost of a PhD in the US at c. $500 000 (Rosser, 2008), while each PhD student in the UK receives c. £100 000 from the government to cover stipends and research and training expenses (UKRC, 2012). Moreover, gender diversity is associated with indirect benefits; for example, commercial busi- nesses with gender-balanced staff and management tend to perform better financially (UKRC, 2010a)

Spatial and Temporal Operation of the Scotia Sea Ecosystem

Analysis of the operation of ocean ecosystems requires an understanding of how the structure of the ecosystem is determined by interactions between physical, chemical and biological processes. Such analysis needs to consider the interactions across a wide range of spatial (approx. 10 m–10,000 km) and temporal (minutes to centuries) scales and trophic levels (primary producers to top predators) (Angel, 1994; Murphy et al., 1988;Werner et al., 2003). There are, however, few areas of the global ocean where there is sufficient knowledge to achieve such an integrated analysis (deYoung et al., 2004). Circulation patterns of the major ocean gyres, such as the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, involve movement of water masses through very different climatic regimes which favour distinctly different groups of organisms (Longhurst, 1998). Generating comprehensive views of the operation of oceanic ecosystems is complicated as a result of such heterogeneity in species distribution and ecosystem structure (Levin, 1990; Longhurst, 1998; Murphy et al., 1988). In contrast to othe

Spatial and temporal operation of the Scotia Sea ecosystem: a review of large-scale links in a krill centred food web

The Scotia Sea ecosystem is a major component of the circumpolar Southern Ocean system, where productivity and predator demand for prey are high. The eastward-flowing Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and waters from the Weddell–Scotia Confluence dominate the physics of the Scotia Sea, leading to a strong advective flow, intense eddy activity and mixing. There is also strong seasonality, manifest by the changing irradiance and sea ice cover, which leads to shorter summers in the south. Summer phytoplankton blooms, which at times can cover an area of more than 0.5 million km2, probably result from the mixing of micronutrients into surface waters through the flow of the ACC over the Scotia Arc. This production is consumed by a range of species including Antarctic krill, which are the major prey item of large seabird and marine mammal populations. The flow of the ACC is steered north by the Scotia Arc, pushing polar water to lower latitudes, carrying with it krill during spring and summer, which subsidize food webs around South Georgia and the northern Scotia Arc. There is also marked interannual variability in winter sea ice distribution and sea surface temperatures that is linked to southern hemisphere-scale climate processes such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. This variation affects regional primary and secondary production and influences biogeochemical cycles. It also affects krill population dynamics and dispersal, which in turn impacts higher trophic level predator foraging, breeding performance and population dynamics. The ecosystem has also been highly perturbed as a result of harvesting over the last two centuries and significant ecological changes have also occurred in response to rapid regional warming during the second half of the twentieth century. This combination of historical perturbation and rapid regional change highlights that the Scotia Sea ecosystem is likely to show significant change over the next two to three decades, which may result in major ecological shifts