DataSheet_1_Irreversibility of regime shifts in the North Sea.zip

Human impacts can induce ecosystems to cross tipping points and hence unexpected and sudden changes in ecosystem services that are difficult or impossible to reverse. The world´s oceans suffer from cumulative anthropogenic pressures like overexploitation and climate change and are especially vulnerable to such regime shifts. Yet an outstanding question is whether regime changes in marine ecosystems are irreversible. Here we first review the evidence for regime shifts in the North Sea ecosystem, one of the heaviest impacted and best studied marine ecosystems in the world. We then used catastrophe theory to show that fishing and warming have caused a previously undetected and potentially irreversible regime shift. Our study emphasizes the combined effects of local and global human impacts in driving significant ecosystem shifts and suggests that adaptation is likely the central avenue forward for maintaining services in the face of global climate change.</p

SEAwise Report on the key social and economic aspects of regional fisheries

Fishing is a human activity with various social and economic implications. In most countries, those implications are key factors to consider when deciding on specific management strategies. In this report, the fisheries management strategies implemented in the different European marine regions are reviewed, and relevant indicators, models and tools that can be used to predict the effectiveness of these strategies, from a social and economic point of view are identified. The objective was to identify the critical social and economic aspects of fisheries,  relevant social and economic indicators, and regionally‐relevant management measures to be considered in the evaluations of different management strategies later in the project.   The scoping consultations and systematic reviews identified a long list of potentially relevant key social and economic aspects and management measures. Among these, the most frequently mentioned items identified in scoping with stakeholders were windfarms, employment/jobs, MPAs, food supply, small-scale fisheries, local communities and pollution. The systematic review identified landings (volume or value), effort (days at sea), fuel costs, number of vessels, profit, aspects of costs, economic performance, sustainability-resilience, compliance and capacity as frequently occurring topics. The fisheries management policies most frequently mentioned were effort control, landing obligation, Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ), MPAs and TAC. Among the papers analyzed, more than 30%, concerned the Mediterranean region, followed by Western Waters, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, indicating a higher contribution of Mediterranean studies to the conclusions. Aspects identified frequently in both scoping and in systematic reviews included MPAs and small-scale fisheries, which were all identified in both methods as frequently occurring. However, there were also aspects which appeared to be represented differently in the evaluations (e.g. employment and local communities) indicating discrepancies between the available knowledge and that sought by the end users. The report describes results from the SEAwise project. More information can be found at https://seawiseproject.org/</p