The Arrival of Modern Fisheries Management in the North Atlantic: A Historical Overview

Abstract

This chapter describes how TACs emerged as the dominant fisheries management form in the North Atlantic. It points out industrial, scientific and political factors that influenced the management reform that took place during the 1960s and 1970s and ended in the wide-spread adoption of TACs as the new management form. The chapter describes the discourses in the central fisheries management arena, mainly consisting of the North Atlantic fisheries commissions and ICES, and shows how the choice of management form was shaped by that time's scientific and political challenges: the need to find a management measure with a comprehensible connection to fishing mortality which also provided for politically-feasible distribution among contracting states.