Balanced harvesting in a variable and uncertain world: a case study from the Barents Sea

Balanced fishing proposes a considerable change to current fisheries management to increase overall biomass harvested while reducing the ecosystem impacts of large-scale fisheries. However, to date, the work to a large degree has focused on simplified models, which exclude much of the variability in real ecosystems, as well as basing harvesting rates on a perfect, but unrealistic, knowledge on stock productivity. Furthermore, the published studies have avoided examining the practicalities of implementing balanced fishing in a real world. This has resulted in a gap that remains tobeovercomebefore balancedfishing canbe considered aviablemanagement strategy for largemarine ecosystems.Wediscuss variability in recruitment, in biology and life history characteristics, in data quality, and in fishing practice and management, and their implications for implementation of balanced fishing, using examples from the Barents Sea. We try to outline the complexities that need to be investigated as a precursor tomoving balanced fishing froman academic exercise to a practicalmanagement scheme. Given the difficulties inmoving to “full” balanced fishing, we highlight the importance of investigating to what extent benefits can be gained by implementing only the most achievable parts of a balanced fishing regime.