The future fisheries: Constraints and possibilities sustainability - ecological impact from fisheries, the political environment and how this may affect the future of capture fisheries

Abstract

Fisheries, and in particular those in the North Atlantic, have attracted increased public attention in recent years. This has resulted in a change of the political climate in which fisheries shall operate in the future. In this paper, an attempt is made to identify some of the future constraints in marine fisheries. This is done on the basic assumption that future fisheries will exploit the marine resources at much lower exploitation levels than is experienced today. The analysis focuses on the fisheries themselves while the impact from society is seen as imposed constraints, e.g. the precautionary approach will be implemented to set catch limits. Market forces (costs and demands) are not discussed but obviously these forces will be very important in a full understanding of the future fisheries. The fisheries are analysed in four subsystems: biology of the resources and ecosystem, the communities, the economy and the technology. The decision structure in fisheries are analysed in five subsections: defining constraints, defining objectives, acquisition of information, allocation of resources (fleet and labour) and finally control and enforcement.