Responsible fishing operations for clean oceans, healthy ecosystems and sustainable fisheries

Pingguo He

Schoolfor MarineScience and Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, New Bedford, MA, 02744, USA

LimingSong

College of Marine Sciences, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, 201306, China

Keywords

This special issue contains selected papers presented at the ICES-FAO Working Group on Fishing Technology and Fish Behavior minisymposium on “Responsible Fishing Technology for Healthy Ecosystems and Clean Environment” held in Shanghai, China between 8 and 12 April 2019. The symposium was co-sponsored by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) and Shanghai Ocean University, China.The meeting was chaired by Pingguo He (USA), Haraldur Einarsson(Iceland) and Liming Song (China). The special issue was edited by the following guest editors: Pingguo He (managing guest editor), Haraldur Einarsson, Liming Song, and Michael Pol, with the assistance of a number of anonymous reviewers.

While the papers published in this volume only contains a small number of papers presented at the symposium and focused primarily on fishing technology, many papers that are not included in the volume but presented at the symposium covered the following seven topics:

1. Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG):Assessment of quantity and measures to prevent ALDFG and its impact.

2. Use of artificial light in fishing – Technologies and practices of using lights to increase efficiency and/or to reduce bycatch, including bycatch of endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species.

3.Best practices in trawl fisheries to reduce negative impacts – Evaluation of impact, measure to reduce impact, and technical and management measures that constitutes “best practice” in trawl fisheries.

4.Technology and practice for managing bycatch and reducing discards – evaluation of bycatch and discards in fisheries, and measures to manage bycatch and reduce discards.

5. Theory and technology for modelling, simulating, and observing fish and fishing gear – New methods and technologies that advance the field of fishing technology and fish behavior, and their application in capture and conservation in marine fisheries.

6. Fuel use in fisheries and measures to reduce fuel use and greenhouse gas emission – Technology and practices for reducing fossil fuel use in fisheries, new alternative fuels that produce less greenhouse gas(GHG), monitoring and auditing fuel use with the purpose of reducing fuel use.

7. Chinese fisheries - Status, challenges, strategies, and opportunities in Chinese marine capture fisheries.

The report of the meeting, including details of all presentations,discussions, topic group activities and Working Group businesses was produced by ICES (2019) and can be found at https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.5592. The symposium proceedings were also published as an FAO report (FAO, 2019a) and can be found at http://www.fao.org/3/ca5742en/CA5742EN.pdf.

The marine capture fisheries have come to a stage where pressing issues have seriously challenged sustainability and further development of the capture fisheries, which requires dramatic actions to reduce collateral impacts of harvesting fish from the sea. The environment and the ecosystem, where our fish reside, is the uttermost important for the long-term and sustainable supply of protein from the sea, so that we can continue to provide healthy seafood to the growing population, to contribute to global food security, and to alleviate poverty and hunger in many coastal countries, especially developing countries.

Fig. 1.Fields of fish capture research including the traditional fish capture research topics on the left (engineering and biology) verse the contemporary fish capture research topics that focuses on mitigating impacts of fishing on the resources and ecosystems.

Research in marine fish capture has undergone tremendous expansion in the past century. Early research topics included traditional engineering studies on fishing gear materials and hydrodynamics of fishing gear in operation, and biological studies on fish behavior and ecology. In recent decades, fish capture research has expanded greatly and included a much more diversified fields with the primarily purpose of mitigating the impact of fishing on fisheries resources and ecosystems as illustrated in Fig. 1.

Marine capture fisheries have been recognized as primary causes of overfishing with the number of overfished stocks still in the upward trend (FAO, 2020, p. 206). Bycatch and discards in capture fisheries can cause extirpation of species (Lewison et al., 2004), reduce biodiversity and impact on endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species, and represent a waste of food (Perez Roda et al., 2019, p. 78). Bycatch and subsequent mortality and other impact on ETP species in capture fisheries are particularly concerning and have prompted international organizations such as FAO to take actions to promote means and methods to manage bycatch, reduce discards and mitigate other impacts (FAO,2009, p. 49; 2010, p. 128; 2011, p. 73; 2021). Fisheries-originated marine litter in the form of abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fish gear (ALDFG) pollutes marine environment (Carney Almroth &Eggert, 2019), threatens marine lives (Stelfox et al., 2016) and impact fisheries resources (Macfadyen et al., 2009). Proper and systematic fishing gear marking has been considered as one of the important measures to reduce fishing gear loss and abandonment (He & Suuronen,2018; FAO, 2019b, p. 88). Fishing operations on or near seabed causes modification to physical, chemical and biological structure of the seabed, which may influence productivity, subsequently harvestable resources (Mazor et al., 2021). Devising measures to reduce seabed impact of bottom-tendering fishing gears such as bottom trawls and shellfish dredges has been considered as an important research priority(He, 2007; He & Winger, 2010).

There are many challenges facing marine capture fisheries. Poor understanding of the ecosystem which capture fisheries depend on may have caused irrecoverable consequences to species, stocks and communities. However, better understanding of ecosystem functioning will likely require further reduction of fishing impact - more we know, more we don’t know. On the one hand, measures to reduce bycatch and mortality of ETP species may help recovery of some species, on the other hand, more abundant and wider distribution of these species may bring further challenges to reduce their bycatch mortality in capture fisheries -more we have, less easy to avoid. Sustaining long-term seafood supply requires sustainable ecosystems. We need to understanding fishing effects on the ecosystem and promote responsible fishing operations to minimize its impact for clean oceans, healthy ecosystems and sustainable fisheries now and in the future.

Declaration of competing interest

There is no conflict of interest of this manuscrip.