European Union's public fishing access agreements in developing countries

The imperative to increase seafood supply while dealing with its overfished local stocks has pushed the European Union (EU) and its Member States to fish in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries through various types of fishing agreements for decades. Although European public fishing agreements are commented on regularly and considered to be transparent, this is the first global and historical study on the fee regime that governs them. We find that the EU has subsidized these agreements at an average of 75% of their cost (financial contribution agreed upon in the agreements), while private European business interests paid the equivalent of 1.5% of the value of the fish that was eventually landed. This raises questions of fisheries benefit-sharing and resource-use equity that the EU has the potential to address during the nearly completed reform of its Common Fisheries Policy

Ecological indicators to capture the effects of fishing on biodiversityand conservation status of marine ecosystems

IndiSeas (“Indicators for the Seas”) is a collaborative international working group that was established in2005 to evaluate the status of exploited marine ecosystems using a suite of indicators in a comparative framework. An initial shortlist of seven ecological indicators was selected to quantify the effects of fishing on the broader ecosystem using several criteria (i.e., ecological meaning, sensitivity to fishing, data avail-ability, management objectives and public awareness). The suite comprised: (i) the inverse coefficient of variation of total biomass of surveyed species, (ii) mean fish length in the surveyed community, (iii)mean maximum life span of surveyed fish species, (iv) proportion of predatory fish in the surveyed community, (v) proportion of under and moderately exploited stocks, (vi) total biomass of surveyed species,and (vii) mean trophic level of the landed catch. In line with the Nagoya Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2011–2020), we extended this suite to emphasize the broader biodiversity and conservation risks in exploited marine ecosystems. We selected a subset of indicators from a list of empirically based candidate biodiversity indicators initially established based on ecological significance to complement the original IndiSeas indicators. The additional selected indicators were: (viii) mean intrinsic vulnerability index of the fish landed catch, (ix) proportion of non-declining exploited species in the surveyed community, (x) catch-based marine trophic index, and (xi) mean trophic level of the surveyed community. Despite the lack of data in some ecosystems, we also selected (xii) mean trophic level of the modelled community, and (xiii) proportion of discards in the fishery as extra indicators. These additional indicators were examined, along with the initial set of IndiSeas ecological indicators, to evaluate whether adding new biodiversity indicators provided useful additional information to refine our under-standing of the status evaluation of 29 exploited marine ecosystems. We used state and trend analyses,and we performed correlation, redundancy and multivariate tests. Existing developments in ecosystem-based fisheries management have largely focused on exploited species. Our study, using mostly fisheries independent survey-based indicators, highlights that biodiversity and conservation-based indicators are complementary to ecological indicators of fishing pressure. Thus, they should be used to provide additional information to evaluate the overall impact of fishing on exploited marine ecosystems

Ecological indicators to capture the effects of fishing on biodiversityand conservation status of marine ecosystems

IndiSeas (“Indicators for the Seas”) is a collaborative international working group that was established in2005 to evaluate the status of exploited marine ecosystems using a suite of indicators in a comparative framework. An initial shortlist of seven ecological indicators was selected to quantify the effects of fishing on the broader ecosystem using several criteria (i.e., ecological meaning, sensitivity to fishing, data avail-ability, management objectives and public awareness). The suite comprised: (i) the inverse coefficient of variation of total biomass of surveyed species, (ii) mean fish length in the surveyed community, (iii)mean maximum life span of surveyed fish species, (iv) proportion of predatory fish in the surveyed community, (v) proportion of under and moderately exploited stocks, (vi) total biomass of surveyed species,and (vii) mean trophic level of the landed catch. In line with the Nagoya Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2011–2020), we extended this suite to emphasize the broader biodiversity and conservation risks in exploited marine ecosystems. We selected a subset of indicators from a list of empirically based candidate biodiversity indicators initially established based on ecological significance to complement the original IndiSeas indicators. The additional selected indicators were: (viii) mean intrinsic vulnerability index of the fish landed catch, (ix) proportion of non-declining exploited species in the surveyed community, (x) catch-based marine trophic index, and (xi) mean trophic level of the surveyed community. Despite the lack of data in some ecosystems, we also selected (xii) mean trophic level of the modelled community, and (xiii) proportion of discards in the fishery as extra indicators. These additional indicators were examined, along with the initial set of IndiSeas ecological indicators, to evaluate whether adding new biodiversity indicators provided useful additional information to refine our under-standing of the status evaluation of 29 exploited marine ecosystems. We used state and trend analyses,and we performed correlation, redundancy and multivariate tests. Existing developments in ecosystem-based fisheries management have largely focused on exploited species. Our study, using mostly fisheries independent survey-based indicators, highlights that biodiversity and conservation-based indicators are complementary to ecological indicators of fishing pressure. Thus, they should be used to provide additional information to evaluate the overall impact of fishing on exploited marine ecosystems