Defining Overfishing Defining Stock Rebuilding

This paper addresses the different dimensions of rebuilding or restoring stocks, including in terms of conflicting objectives, the bio-economy of rebuilding, its costs and benefits, and the distributional effects of fishing reforms among the various actors.

This publication analyses the issues and challenges governments face as they develop and implement plans to rebuild fisheries.

A discussion of overfishing explores the scientific, political, ethical, and economic issues associated with harvesting the ocean's fish, using case studies of fisheries from around the world to answer the issue's most pressing questions.

"Rebuilding depleted stocks is a central part of the fisheries governance agenda. By analysing the available literature, Part 1 of "Rebuilding of marine fisheries" provides a global review of the emergence of the rebuilding paradigm, its key concepts, the trends in fishery resources, and the empirical evidence available on stocks depletion, collapse and rebuilding. It addresses the bio-ecological, economic, and human dimensions of rebuilding or restoration of stocks, multispecies assemblages and habitats/ecosystems and touches on the need for rebuilding at the whole sector level when depletion has become widespread and chronic. The human imensions of stocks and fisheries are given particular attention, looking at conflicting objectives, the bio-economy of rebuilding, its costs and benefits, and the distributional effects of the related reform among actors with their potential social consequences in the short and long terms. Governance is addressed in detail: legal and policy frameworks; rationale and objectives of a rebuilding regime; alternative rebuilding strategies; reference values and protocols; regulatory time-frames; risk management and harvest control rules; impacts of climatic oscillations; management tool-box; implementation guidance and performance evaluation. The document ends with a review of the determinants of success of a rebuilding programme."--Publisher's description for part 1.