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Defining Overfished Stocks: Have We Lost the Plot?
Author(s) -
Hilborn Ray,
Stokes Kevin
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
fisheries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.725
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1548-8446
pISSN - 0363-2415
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8446-35.3.113
Subject(s) - overfishing , maximum sustainable yield , stock (firearms) , stock assessment , economics , fishery , fisheries management , geography , biology , fish <actinopterygii> , fishing , archaeology
In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on prevention of overfishing and agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now report the proportion of stocks that are overfished as a primary indicator of the agencies' performance. Almost all national and international legislation makes specific reference to maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and most definitions of overfishing are related in some way to achievement of MSY. We show that many of the definitions of overfishing now being adopted by fisheries agencies are increasingly unrelated to achievement of MSY and have become, to a great extent, arbitrary. We argue that overfishing definitions and management targets are generally better based on levels of historical stock size rather than the growing trend to setting targets in relation to theoretical unfished stock sizes.