Fisheries in Large Marine Ecosystems:
Descriptions and Diagnoses
D. Pauly, J. Alder, S. Booth, W.W.L. Cheung, V. Christensen, C. Close, U.R. Sumaila,
W. Swartz, A. Tavakolie, R. Watson, L. Wood and D. Zeller
Abstract
We present a rationale for the description and diagnosis of fisheries at the level of Large
Marine Ecosystems (LMEs), which is relatively new, and encompasses a series of
concepts and indicators different from those typically used to describe fisheries at the
stock level. We then document how catch data, which are usually available on a smaller
scale, are mapped by the Sea Around Us Project (see www.seaaroundus.org) on a
worldwide grid of half-degree lat.-long. cells. The time series of catches thus obtained for
over 180,000 half-degree cells can be regrouped on any larger scale, here that of LMEs.
This yields catch time series by species (groups) and LME, which began in 1950 when
the FAO started collecting global fisheries statistics, and ends in 2004 with the last
update of these datasets. The catch data by species, multiplied by ex-vessel price data
and then summed, yield the value of the fishery for each LME, here presented as time
series by higher (i.e., commercial) groups. Also, these catch data can be used to
evaluate the primary production required (PPR) to sustain fisheries catches. PPR, when
related to observed primary production, provides another index for assessing the impact
of the countries fishing in LMEs. The mean trophic level of species caught by fisheries
(or `Marine Trophic Index') is also used, in conjunction with a related indicator, the
Fishing-in-Balance Index (FiB), to assess changes in the species composition of the
fisheries in LMEs. Also, newly conceived `Stock-Catch Status Plots' are presented which
document graphically, for each LME, both the increase in the number of stocks that
moved from the fully exploited to the overexploited and collapsed stages, and the relative
biomass of fish extracted from stocks in these various stages. Finally, original time series
of estimated catch data are presented for the six LMEs of the coast of North Siberia,
Arctic Alaska and Arctic Canada (all entirely contained within FAO Statistical Area 18), for
which even crude catch estimates were previously unavailable. Altogether these
descriptors of fisheries and ecosystem states over the last 50+ years allow a diagnosis of
the fisheries of each LME, and inferences on global trends, as LMEs are the source of
80% of the global marine catch.
Introduction
Fisheries have been seen traditionally as local affairs, largely defined by the range of the
vessel exploiting a given resource (Pauly & Pitcher 2000). The need for countries to
manage all fisheries within their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), a consequence of the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), led to attempts to derive
indicators for marine fisheries and ecosystems at the national level (see e.g., Prescott-
Allen 2001). Also, it was realized that, given the large scale migrations of some exploited
stocks, and of distant-water fleets (Bonfil et al. 1998), an even better integration of
fisheries could be achieved at the level of Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs)( Sherman et
al. 2003, Sherman & Hempel, this vol.).
24
Pauly et al.
However, no national or international jurisdiction reports, at the LME level, for catches
and other quantities from which fisheries sustainability indicators could be derived were
available. Indeed, if the fisheries of LMEs are to be assessed, and if comparisons of the
fisheries in, and of their impact on LMEs, are to be performed, then the fisheries within
LMEs must be documented for this explicit purpose, mainly by assembling data sets from
national and other sources.
The Sea Around Us Project was created in 1999 with the explicit purpose of assessing
the impact of fisheries on marine ecosystems and of developing policies which can
mitigate this impact (Pauly 2007). Thus, we set ourselves, from the very beginning, the
task of assembling data on all the fisheries that impacted on a `place', i.e., any area of the
sea, since whatever one's definition of an `ecosystem' is, it must include reference to a
place. Indeed, the concept of place has a profound implication on our ability to
implement ecosystem based management of fisheries (Pauly 1997; Sumaila 2005).
When dealing with the fisheries of places such as LMEs, the physical and other features
that are relevant to the fisheries must also be expressed at the LME scale. The Sea
Around Us website provides such statistics, which are used in the LME-specific accounts
in this volume. These are:
1)
The percentage of global coral reef area in a given LME (rather than the area
itself, which is highly variable between authors), based on a global map produced
by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (www.unep-wcmc.org);
2)
The percentage of seamounts in a given LME (rather than their number, for the
same reason), based on a global map of Kitchingman & Lai (2004);
3)
The percentage of the area of a given LME that is part of a Marine Protected
Area (MPA), based on an MPA database documented in Wood et al. (in press).
Other fisheries-relevant information, not used here, but available through the
`Biodiversity' option on our website (www.seaaroundus.org), are fish species by LME
(from www.fishbase.org), and of marine mammals and other marine organisms, to be
consolidated in SeaLifeBase (www.sealifebase.org). Additionally, the `Ecosystem' option
allows access to maps of primary production (see Sherman & Hempel, this vol. for
details), major estuaries (Alder 2003), ecosystem models, and other features of LMEs.
However, the major exhibit of the website, and the major product of the Sea Around Us
Project are time series of fisheries catches by LME. They were obtained using a method
developed by Watson et al. (2004), which relies on splitting the world oceans into more
than 180,000 spatial cells of ½ degree lat.-long., and mapping onto these cells, by
species and higher taxa, all catches that are extracted from such cells. The catches in
these spatial cells can then be regrouped into higher spatial aggregates, for example, the
EEZs of maritime countries or, as is relevant here, the LMEs that have been so far
defined in the world's oceans (Watson et al 2004).
As these aggregates of spatial cells can then be combined with other data, for example,
the price of the fish caught therein, or their trophic level, one can straightforwardly derive
other time series, e.g., of indicators of the value, or the state of fisheries in any area. In
the following, we present how the primary (i.e., `catch') time series were obtained, along
with a set of four derived time series included in this volume for all (except some of the
Arctic) LMEs. As these time series are presented through graphs (the tabular data are
available from www.seaaroundus.org); each section below refers to the graph that
presents one of these time series. A final section is devoted to the newly derived catch
graphs for the six Arctic LMEs that are entirely within FAO Statistical Area 18, and which
are the sole fisheries-related exhibit presented for these LMEs.
Fisheries in LMEs
25
Graph 1 - Reported landings by species, per LME
The method used by the Sea Around Us Project to map catches onto ½ degree lat.-long.
spatial cells has been described by Watson et al. (2003, 2004, 2005) in some detail.
Here, we summarize it in 5 steps:
1)
Assemble the `catch' data to be mapped. Data were sourced from FISTAT, the
database of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO;
www.fao.org), the STATLANT database and selected reports of the International
Council for the Exploration of the Sea's (ICES, www.ices.int/fish/statlant.htm), the
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO; www.nafo.ca/), FAO Regional
bodies (Southeast Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Sea (GFCM), Eastern
Central Atlantic (CECAF) and RECOFI), Cuban fisheries catch data (Baisre et al.
2003); Estonian fisheries catch data (Ojaveer 1999), `nationally disaggregated'
catch data for the components of the former USSR (Zeller & Rizzo in press) and
the former Yugoslavia (Rizzo & Zeller in press), Guam, and the Commonwealth
of the Northern Mariana Islands (Zeller et al. 2007), American Samoa (Zeller et
al. 2006), and, for the Antarctic, from the Convention on the Conservation of
Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR; www.ccamlr.org). These data
consist of marine finfish, brackishwater and diadromous finfish, and marine
invertebrates. They exclude marine mammals, and reptiles (i.e., sea turtles),
algae, and invertebrates harvested for purposes other than food (e.g., corals
harvested as construction material). All freshwater organisms are excluded, as
are fish and invertebrates produced in mariculture operations. The latter is not
always clear-cut, due to the similarity between sea ranching and capture
fisheries, and it may be the cause for some of the large recent `catch' increases
in some LMEs, notably those along the Chinese coast. Another cause of catch
mis-estimation (although one with reversed sign) is discarded by-catch (Zeller &
Pauly 2005), and Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing, which is
generally not accounted for by our sources of `catch' data. For this reason, we
nearly always refer to `reported landings'. Thus, when encountering `catches',
readers should be aware that these are not really catches, i.e., landings +
discards + IUU, etc. Finally, in the case of some countries for which the FAO
database does not provide catches, or reports without correcting the unrealistic
figures submitted by member countries, the Sea Around Us Project has
attempted to reconstruct or correct the catch, using concepts initially presented
by Pauly (1998). However, for the analyses presented in this volume, this
concerned only the following areas: China (Watson & Pauly 2001); Cuba,
Estonia and US flag territories in the Pacific (see references above), and the
seven Arctic LMEs in FAO area 18, for which we provide preliminary catch time
series, to replace the landings of zero that FAO often reports for this area (see
below). For all other countries, we stress again, the catches reported here
originated from FAO and other official sources.
2)
Create, for each taxon (species, genera, families and orders) for which at least
one country reports landings, a distribution range map, constrained by an
external polygon, based on the known depth and latitudinal range, and within
which account is taken of the habitat preference of this taxon (Watson et al.
2004, Close et al. 2006). These range maps rely heavily on data extracted from
FishBase (www.fishbase.org) for fish, and from various sources, all consolidated
in SeaLifeBase (www.sealifebase.org) for invertebrates. The range maps were
all revised for the catch allocation used here (see Close at al. 2006;
www.seaaroundus.org). Also, a new procedure, which we call `demersal creep',
was implemented which accounts (only in demersal taxa, generally caught by
trawling) for the fact that when exploitation is light (and catches low), only the
26
Pauly et al.
near-shore part of the distribution is fished, with the fraction of the distribution
range covered increasing ratchet-like when catches increase, up to the entire
distribution being covered when the catch reaches its maximum (and remaining
there when catches subsequently decrease).
3)
Combine the landings reported by various countries and species (or higher taxa)
with the corresponding distribution range maps, and allocate these landings to
spatial cells, subject to fishing access status (does country A fish in the EEZ of
country B?), and other constraints (Watson et al. 2004). The procedure used
here considers where countries have been fishing, which can be in their own
waters (or EEZ, since the early 1980s), in the waters (EEZ) of countries to which
they have legal access (as documented by access agreements), or to which they
have traditional or illegal access (as documented by other sources). The
allocation procedure thus uses a large database of access agreements, which
grew from a smaller database called FARISIS (FAO 1999), which was kindly
made available by FAO to the Sea Around Us Project. Published or online
reports of countries observed fishing in the waters of other countries, even
without any known access agreements, were also considered and incorporated
in the access agreement database.
4)
When under these rules the landings of a given taxon reported by a given
country cannot be allocated to its own waters (because that taxon does not occur
there), or to the waters of other countries (because no access agreement is
known, nor is it known to fish there traditionally or illegally), the case is
investigated until resolution is found.
5)
Once the landings by species is allocated to ½ degree lat.-long. spatial cells and
the landings reported by different countries are thus reassigned to the
ecosystem(s) from which they originated, a procedure is implemented which
attempts to reduce the fraction of the reported landing assigned to the
`miscellaneous fish' category. These miscellaneous fish, particularly abundant in
reports from tropical developing countries and from China, make it extremely
difficult to understand what happens to the underlying stocks. The procedure
used for this, which relies on a set of simple heuristics, does not affect total catch
levels. Rather, it only reassigns fish from the `miscellaneous fish' category to
some of the identified taxa already reported by either the country itself or its
neighbors. As presently implemented, these rules disaggregate > 50 % of the
reported `miscellaneous fish' landings of the world (R. Watson, Sea Around Us
Project, August 2007, unpublished data).
These steps, though they typically do not modify the reported landings by FAO statistical
areas, produce a radically different view of landings at the level of the EEZ of individual
countries. Thus, in the Mauritanian EEZ, for example, which is a component of the
Canary Current LME, the landings derived from this procedure are much higher than
suggested by looking at the FAO data for Mauritania because we `put back' into the
Mauritanian EEZ fish that was landed in other countries, but which was caught in
Mauritanian waters (Watson et al. 2005). Another feature of Mauritanian landings (and of
landings elsewhere in the world) is that since 2007, they do not include the ex-USSR,
even for the period from 1950-1991, when its fleets were active through the oceans. This
is so because we have retroactively re-assigned ex-USSR catches to its components
maritime republics (Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russian Federation and Ukraine),
based on their relative reported landings in the first years of the post-dissolution period,
and rules about who tended to fish where (Zeller & Rizzo). Thus, we show Russian,
Estonian, etc. catches from 1950 onward. However, their sum, it must be stressed, still
adds up to the FAO catch for the ex-USSR. An analogous procedure was used for the
relevant components of the former Yugoslavia, i.e., Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro
(Rizzo & Zeller).
Fisheries in LMEs
27
Our procedure was recently tested independently by Gascuel (2007), who found that our
approach approximates well the values that would have been generated by Mauritania,
were it to also report the landings by all the distant water fleets operating in its EEZ.
Figure 1 shows the landings, by species for all LMEs in the world. Since this graph is
normalized to show the 11 most abundant species (with the remainder pooled into `mixed
group'), and not many species are globally important, this graph exhibits more `mixed
group' landings (as 12th category) than typically occur in any specific LME. Also, it will be
noted that LMEs account for the overwhelming part of the world catch, i.e., between 76%
(1990) and 91% (1968) of global catch. However, the average contribution of LME
catches appears to have slightly declined over time, from around 89-90% in the early
decades to around 78-81% for recent time periods. Indeed, the only major group not
caught primarily in LMEs is represented by large pelagic fishes, primarily tunas.
90
80
70
es)
n 60
n
o
50
i
l
l
i
on t
m 40
ngs ( 30
Landi 20
10
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
Anchoveta
Alaska pollock
Atlantic cod
Atlantic herring
South American pilchard
Capelin
Chub mackerel
European pilchard
Largehead hairtail
Japanese anchovy
Gulf menhaden
Mixed group
Figure 1. Landings by species in all LMEs (colored time series), and in the world ocean (black line). As
this graph individually identifies only the 11 species with the highest global catch (with the remainder
pooled into `mixed group'), this graph exhibits more `mixed group' landings (as 12th category) than
reported from any specific LME. The only major group not caught primarily in LMEs is large pelagic
fishes, primarily tunas. Our website (www.seaaroundus.org) also presents catches by `Commercial
groups' (as used in Figure 2), `Functional Groups, as used in Ecopath models (see www.ecopath.org),
`Country fishing', and `Gear', based on Watson et al. (2006).
In addition to the catch by species, the website of the Sea Around Us Project presents,
for all but the six Arctic LMEs located fully in FAO Area 18 (see section `Catch graphs for
Arctic LMEs in FAO Statistical Area 18' below), catches by `Commercial groups' (as used
in `Graph 2', see below), `Functional groups, as used in Ecopath models (see
www.ecopath.org), `Country fishing' (not to be mistaken for the PPR by, or footprint of
countries, see Graph 3 below), and `Gear', based on Watson et al. (2006a, 2006b).
Graph 2 - Value of reported landings by major commercial groups, per LME
Fishing is an economic operation and the ex-vessel value of the landings has to cover al
fixed and variable costs of fishing and still generate a profit, except when fisheries are
28
Pauly et al.
subsidized (Sumaila & Pauly 2006). To be able to evaluate the ex-vessel value of
fisheries worldwide, a database of ex-vessel fish price data was constructed, based on 1)
observed prices in different countries at different times for different species; and 2)
inferred prices, based on observed prices and an averaging algorithm which took
taxonomic affinity, adjacency of countries and time into account (Sumaila et al. 2007). As
observed prices were available for the most important commercial species, the inferred
prices have little influence on the total value of landings from any LME fishery.
The year-, species- and time-specific prices in the database were then adjusted for
inflation to year 2000 real prices in US$, using consumer price index (CPI) data from the
World Bank, and multiplied by the spatially allocated landings for the corresponding years
and species (groups). This yielded time series of the value of fisheries landings in year
2000 inflation adjusted prices, which can be compared in time and space (Sumaila et al.
2007), and which, in the aggregate, match, for example, estimates of the ex-vessel
values of fisheries catches produced by the OECD.
Here we present graphs of reported landing value by `Commercial groups', to facilitate
comparison between LMEs which may not share species. This may also facilitate their
interpretation by readers who do not know biological details on the various species
caught in different LMEs, but know market categories. Again, we stress that all values
presented here are based on real 2000 prices, i.e., deflated nominal prices (Sumaila et al
2007). Figure 2 shows the value by major commercial groups of reported landings in all
LMEs of the world. As might be seen, LMEs account for most of the value of marine
fisheries catches in the world with values ranging from 71-90% of global landings value.
However, this is a slightly smaller fraction than for catch biomass, as many of the
offshore fishing grounds for extremely valuable tunas are not included in LMEs.
120
100
D)
80
i
l
l
i
on US
(
b
60
ngs
ndi
l
a
40
e
of
l
u
a
V
20
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
Perch-likes
Crustaceans
Cod-likes
Herring-likes
Anchovies
Salmon, smelts etc.
Molluscs
Flatfishes
Tuna & billfishes
Scorpionfishes
Sharks & rays
Other fishes & invertebrates
Figure 2. Ex-vessel value of reported landings in all LMEs of the world, by `Commercial groups'
(colored time series), with the value of the global marine catch also added (black line). All values
presented are based on real 2000 prices, i.e., deflated prices (Sumaila et al. 2007).
Fisheries in LMEs
29
Graph 3 Primary production required to sustain fisheries within LMEs
Footprint analysis consists essentially of expressing all human activities in terms of the
land area required for generating products that are consumed by us, or for absorbing the
waste generated in the course of supplying these products. Numerous conversion tables
exist which allow footprint analysis, for example for producing crops, or absorbing carbon
emissions, and these are being used to account for the human impact on ecosystems in
standardized fashion (Wackernagel & Rees 1996). Also important to the footprint
concept is that, generally, they are expressed in relative terms, i.e., in terms of the
surface area of a country. Thus, a country which has a footprint exceeding its surface
area relies on resources from other countries. The footprint concept, and conversion
tables which are used to implement it, are, however, tied to land areas. There has been
to date no published application of this concept to LMEs.
Here, we present extensions of the footprint concept to LMEs. However, the productivity
of a given area of ocean is determined by the local primary production, which can vary
tremendously over small distances, depending on local mixing processes (Longhurst
2007). Thus we shall not consider the surface area of LMEs, but their average primary
production as reference for footprint analysis; hence the concept of Primary Production
Required (PPR) (Christensen & Pauly 1993) used here.
The Primary Production Required (PPR) by fisheries landings is a function of the trophic
level of the fishes that are caught. Thus, far more primary production is required to
produce one tonne of a high-level trophic fish, for example tuna, than a tonne of a low
level- trophic fish, for example sardine. This is because the transfer efficiency between
trophic levels in the ocean is relatively low, estimated at 10 % on the average (Pauly &
Christensen 1995). Thus, to calculate the primary production that was required to
produce a given tonnage of fish, we need the average trophic level of the fish in question,
an assumption about trophic efficiency (here 10%) and the equation PPR =
landings·10(TL-1) (Christensen and Pauly 1995).
The landings data used to estimate footprints are those presented above. PPR is
calculated separately for each species (or group of species) for the fleets of all countries
operating in the LME in question, expressed in terms of the primary production in that
LME. The combined footprint of different countries fishing in a given LME area can thus
be assessed. To facilitate comparisons between LMEs, the `maximum fraction' (of PPR,
in terms of primary production in each LME) is also shown. It is computed as the mean
of values for the five years with the highest PPR value.
The primary production data used here refer to the average from October 1997 to
September 1998 and will not be representative of observed primary production in specific
years, nor of the average primary production from 1950 to 2004 in each LME. While this
may cause some errors, there is no reason to believe it should cause any systematic
bias, and we consider it warranted to use the PPR measure for comparisons between
LMEs. Thus the low level of relative PPR in Australian LMEs compared with the high
values in the north Atlantic is likely not an artifact, nor will the relative contribution of
various countries' fleets to the overall footprint within a given LME be an artifact.
On the other hand, extremely high values of PPR (above a fraction of 0.5) point at
serious problems, including:
1)
The assumptions and data used for implementing the method itself (i.e., the use
of one year's worth of SeaWifs global remote sensing data as a proxy for primary
production for all years from 1950 to 2004, everywhere);
2) Over-reported
landings;
30
Pauly et al.
3)
Extensive range extension in periods of peak abundance, e.g., in Japanese
sardine (Watanabe et al. 1996), or migration of targeted species, especially
feeding migrations, extending beyond the limits of an LME;
4)
High reported landings from exploitation of accumulated biomass, rather than
exploitation of annual surplus production.
Which of these problems is likely to apply is indicated in the LME-specific chapters. By
way of generalization, however, we may mention here that (2) tends to occur in East
Asian LMEs (Watson & Pauly 2001), (3) in the Kuroshio LME, and some of the smaller
LMEs of the North Atlantic, and (4) with regard to Atlantic cod in the Northwest Atlantic in
the earlier periods. The problem in (1), on the other hand, occurs throughout the world.
However, it is not likely to be the cause of the geographic pattern just mentioned.
0.2
0.20
0.18
. 0.16
s
E
M
L 0.14
l
l
a
s
s
0.12
r
o
.
a
c
od
0.1
0.10
.
pr
m 0.08
pri
of
n 0.06
o
ti
r
a
c
0.04
F
0.02
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
China Main
Russian Fed
Japan
USA
Norway
India
Spain
Indonesia
Canada
UK
Korea Rep
Others
Figure 3. Primary Production Required (PPR; Pauly & Christensen 1995) to sustain fisheries in the 57
most important LMEs of the world, an expression of their `footprint' (Wackernagel & Rees 1996). PPR is
calculated separately for each species (or group of species) caught by the fleets of all countries
operating in a LME (or here: in 57 of 64 LMEs). The `maximum fraction' (of PPR, in terms of primary
production in each LME) is computed as the mean of values for the five years with the highest PPR
value.
Figure 3 shows the fraction of primary production required to sustain the landings
reported by countries fishing within 57 LMEs of the world, as fractions of their combined
primary production. (The Arctic LMEs exclusive to FAO Area 18 are not included here,
due to their small catches and variable ice-free zones). The fraction of primary production
required has increased steadily over the years, in line with increasing reported landings,
and is approaching 20%. In recent years, the countries with the largest footprint in all
LMEs combined were China, USA and Indonesia, with China outpacing all others (even
with correction of over-reporting of landings, Watson & Pauly 2001).
Fisheries in LMEs
31
Graph 4 The Marine Trophic Index and the FiB index, by LME
When a fishery begins in a given area, it usually targets the largest among the accessible
fish, which are also intrinsically most vulnerable to fishing (Cheung et al. 2007). Once
these are depleted, the fisheries then turn to less desirable, smaller fish. This pattern has
been repeated innumerable times in the history of humankind (Jackson et al. 2001) and
also since the 1950s, when landing statistics began to be collected systematically and
globally by FAO.
With a trophic level assigned to each of the species in the FAO landings data set, Pauly
et al (1998) were able to identify a worldwide decline in the trophic level of fish landings.
This phenomenon, now widely known as `fishing down marine food webs', has been
since shown to be ubiquitous when investigated on a smaller scale, e.g., in countries
such as Greece (Stergiou & Koulouris 2000) or subdivisions of large countries, e.g. India
(Bhathal 2005). This ubiquity of fishing down is one of the reasons why the Convention
on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the mean trophic level of fisheries catch, which it
renamed Marine Trophic Index (MTI) as one of eight biodiversity indicators for
"immediate testing" (CBD 2004, Pauly & Watson 2005).
Diagnosing fishing down the food web from the mean trophic level of landings is
problematic, however. Landings reflect abundances only crudely. Also, a fishery that has
overexploited its resource base, e.g., on the inner shelf, will tend to move to the outer
shelf and beyond (Morato et al. 2006). There, it accesses hitherto unexploited stocks of
demersal or pelagic fish, and the MTI calculated for the whole shelf, which may have
declined at first, increases again, especially if the `new' landings are high. Thus, at the
scale of an LME, a trend reversal of the MTI may occur when the fisheries expand
geographically. This is the reason why the diagnosis as to whether fishing down occurs
or not, performed for many of the LMEs in this volume, generally depends on the species
composition of the landings, which may indicate whether a geographic expansion of the
fishery has taken place.
To facilitate this evaluation, a time series of the Fishing-in-Balance (FiB) index is also
presented for each LME. Pauly et al. (2000) defined the FiB index such that its value
remains the same when a downward trend in mean trophic level is compensated for by
an increase in the volume of `catch', as should happen given the pyramidal nature of
ecosystems and the transfer efficiency of about 10% between trophic levels alluded to
above.
The FIB index will decline, obviously, when both the MTI and landings decline, as now
happens, unfortunately, in many LMEs. On the other hand, the FIB index will increase if
landings increases more than compensate for a declining MTI. In such cases (and
obviously also in the case when landings increases and the MTI is stable or increases),
the FiB index increases indicate that a geographic expansion of the fishery has taken
place, i.e., that another part of an ecosystem is being exploited (Bhathal & Pauly in
press). Note that the absolute value of the FiB index can be applied to assess the
change of the FiB index from any baseline we like. It is here standardized to have a
value of zero in 1950.
Figure 4 presents the trophic level and FIB index for all LMEs combined, but with
Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens) and large pelagic fishes (large tunas and
billfishes) excluded. The very localized fishery for Peruvian anchoveta, a low trophic
level species, is the largest single-species fishery in the world, and it exhibits extreme
32
Pauly et al.
fluctuations in landings (see Figure 1, top, and Chapter XVII-56 Humboldt Current LME),
which mask the comparatively more subtle patterns in trophic level changes by the rest of
the world's fisheries. The reason for excluding large tunas and billfishes is that much of
their catch is taken in pelagic waters outside of the currently defined LMEs. Thus, the
inclusion of these landings from only part of their stock-exploitation ranges would
artificially inflate trophic level patterns, especially in recent decades, where the tuna
fisheries expanded tremendously (Pauly and Palomares 2005). The trend in mean
trophic level for all LMEs combined (Figure 4, top) indicates a decline in the MTI from a
peak in the 1950s to a low in the mid 1980s. This is attributed to `fishing down marine
food webs' (Pauly et al. 1998, Pauly and Watson 2005), attenuated by an offshore
expansion of the fisheries (Figure 4, bottom, and see Morato et al. 2006). In the mid
1980s, the continued offshore expansion, combined with declining inshore catches led to
a trend reversal in the MTI, i.e., to the fishing down effect being completely occulted.
Analyses at smaller scales (i.e., as documented in the LME-specific chapters, or in
smaller-scale studies, see above) confirm this.
3.5
3.4
l
v
e
c
l
e
3.3
hi
r
op
T 3.2
3.1
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
0.6
0.5
0.4
x
de 0.3
I
n
B
Fi 0.2
0.1
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
Figure 4. Two indicators based on the trophic levels (TL) of exploited fish, used to characterize the
fisheries in the LMEs of the world. Top: trend of mean TL, indicating `fishing down marine food webs',
recently masked by offshore expansion of the fisheries (Pauly et al. 1998, Pauly & Watson 2005).
Bottom: corresponding trend of the Fishing-in-Balance (FiB) index, which is defined such that its
increase in the face of stagnating or increasing MTI suggests a geographic expansion of the fisheries
(see text and Bhatal & Pauly, in press).
Graph 5 Stock-Catch Status Plots, by LME
These graphs have their origin in the work of Granger & Garcia (1996), who fitted time
series of landings of the most important species in the FAO database with high-order
polynomials, and evaluated from their slopes whether the fisheries were in their
`developing', `fully utilized' or `senescent' phases. Froese & Kesner-Reyes (2002)
simplified these graphs by defining for any time series, five phases relative to the
maximum reported landing in that time series, representing a `stock'. They are:
·
Undeveloped: Year of landing is before the year of maximum landing, and
landing is less than 10% of the overall maximum;
Fisheries in LMEs
33
·
Developing: Year of landing is before the year of maximum landing, and landing
is between 10 and 50 % of the overall maximum;
·
Fully exploited: Landing is greater than 50% of maximum year's landing;
·
Overexploited: Year of landing is after year of maximum landing, and landing is
between 10 and 50% of the overall maximum; and
·
Collapsed: Year of landing is after the year of maximum landing, and landing is
below 10% of the overall maximum.
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
0%
100
10%
90
20%
)
.
80
%
(
s
30%
u
70
t
at
s
40%
y
60
b
ks
50%
c
50
t
o
f
s
60%
o
40
er
b
70%
m
30
u
N
80%
20
90%
10
100%0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
developing
fully exploited
over-exploited
collapsed
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
0%
100
10%
90
20%
80
)
.
30%
%
70
(
t
us
40%
t
a
60
s
k
50%
50
t
oc
s
y
60%
40
h b
t
c
a
70%
C
30
80%
20
90%
10
100%0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
developing
fully exploited
over-exploited
collapsed
Figure 5. A newly proposed type of paired `Stock-Catch-Status Plots' (here presented for all LMEs in
the world), wherein the status of stocks, i.e., species with a time series of landings in an LME, is
assessed, based on Froese & Kesner-Reyes (2002), using the following criteria (all referring to the
maximum catch in the series): Developing (catches < 50 %); Fully exploited (catches >= 50%);
Overexploited (catches between 50% and 10%); Collapsed (catches < 10%). Top: Percentage of stocks
of a given status, by year, showing a rapid increase of the number of overexploited and collapsed
stocks. Bottom: Percentage of catches extracted from stocks of a given status, by year, showing a
slower increase of the percentage of catches that originate from overexploited and collapsed stocks.
Note that (n), the number of `stocks', i.e., individual landings time series, only include taxonomic
entities at species, genus or family level, i.e., higher and pooled groups have been excluded.
The fisheries in a given area can then be diagnosed by plotting time series of the fraction
of `stocks' in any of these categories (Froese & Kesner-Reyes, 2002). Such graphs were
used in a paper by Froese & Pauly (2004) documenting the state of the North Sea LME.
This method of diagnosis suggests that the number of collapsed stocks (as defined in
Figure 5) is increasing alarmingly throughout the world, as can be seen in the LME-
specific `Stock-Catch Status Plots' included in this book. Here, a `stock' is defined as a
time series of one species, genus or family for which the first and last reported landings
34
Pauly et al.
are at least 10 years apart, for which there are at least 5 years of consecutive catches
and for which the catch in a given LME is at least 1000 tonnes.
Here, we propose a variant of what may be called `stock number by status plots': a `catch
by status plot', defined such that it documents, for a series of years, the fraction of the
reported landings biomass that is derived from stocks in various phases of development
(as opposed to the number of such stocks). As might be seen in Figure 5, such a plot of
relative `catch' by status (lower panel) is quite different from the stock number by status
plots (upper panel). We call the combination of these two plots `Stock-Catch-Status
Plots' (Figure 5).
Figure 5 illustrates the dual nature of the newly derived Stock-Catch Status Plots, for all
LMEs in the world combined. It illustrates that, overall, 70 % of global stocks within LMEs
are deemed overexploited or collapsed, and only 30% fully exploited (Figure 5, top).
However, the latter stocks still provide 50% of the globally reported landings biomass,
with the remainder produced by overexploited and collapsed (Figure 5, bottom). This
confirms the common observation that fisheries tend to affect biodiversity even more
strongly than they affect biomass.
Catch graphs for Arctic LMEs in FAO Statistical Area 18
The Arctic, generally defined as the area within the 10o Celsius summer isotherm, has
about four million human inhabitants. FAO Statistical Area 18, ranging from Novaya
Zemlya in the west to the Hudson Bay in the east, is comprised of the Siberian coast
(Russia), the Arctic coast of Alaska (USA), the Arctic coast of Canada, and parts of the
northern coast of Greenland, or about two-third of what is generally defined as the Arctic.
FAO Area 18 is also an area with extremely low fish catches. However, landings are not
as low as the FAO data from that area would have it, and the negligible (often zero)
catches officially reported from this area are mainly the result of Russia, the USA and
Canada not reporting adequately on the small-scale fisheries in their section of the Arctic.
This obviously affects the seven LMEs presently defined for this area, i.e., from west to
east, the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, Hudson Bay, and the
large Arctic LME (soon to be differentiated into [Canadian] Arctic Archipelago, Baffin
Bay/Davis Strait as `new' Arctic LMEs). Six of these seven LMEs are located entirely
within FAO Area 18, while the Arctic LME has substantial coverage also in FAO Areas 21
(NW Atlantic) and 27 (NE Atlantic).
Thus, to complete our coverage of the world's LMEs, and to produce a baseline against
which future fisheries development in the Arctic can be assessed, the Sea Around Us
Project undertook a reconstruction of catch time series for FAO Area 18. We present
here key results from this work on northern Siberia (Pauly & Swartz 2007) and Arctic
Canada (Booth & Watts 2007), and from an ongoing study on Arctic Alaska (S. Booth and
D. Zeller, Sea Around Us Project, unpublished data). These results are summarized, for
the Arctic LMEs, in Table 1 and Figure 6, and are presented individually in their
respective chapters.
Fisheries in LMEs
35
4
3.5
3
)
.
2.5
t
onnes
on
illi
2
m
(
ings 1.5
d
n
La
1
0.5
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
Chum salmon
Charr
Whitefish
Inconnu
Broad whitefish
Cods
Dolly varden
Pink salmon
Pacific herring
Sardine cisco
Flounders
Mixed Group
Figure 6. Estimated catches from the six LMEs fully comprised within FAO Statistical Area 18, and
based on Pauly & Swartz (2007), Booth & Watts (2007) and Booth & Zeller (unpubl. data). These
conservative estimates of (small-scale fisheries) catches are considerably higher than reported by FAO
for the same area, an extreme case of the tendency, by FAO member countries, of underreporting the
catches of their small-scale fisheries (see also Zeller et al. 2006, 2007).
Because the catches in Figure 6 are usually not destined for commercial markets, and
relatively small, we abstain here from presenting their ex-vessel value, and indeed, from
deriving any catch-based indicators (MTI, PPR, etc). Consequently, the LME-specific
accounts do not include graphs illustrating catch-based indicators, either.
Table 1: Estimated average annual catches (1950-2004) and major taxa for LMEs within FAO
Statistical Area 18, arranged from west to east.
Average catch
LME
Major taxa
(tonnes·year-1)
Kara Sea
7,239
Coregonus sardinella, C. lavaretus, C. nasus
Laptev Sea
3,667
Coregonus sardinella, C. autumnalis, C. muksun
East Siberian Sea
2,717
Coregonus nasus, C. sardinel a, C. autumnalis
Chuckchi Sea
1,727
Oncorhynchus keta, Coregonus spp., Stenodus
leucichthys
Beaufort Sea
127
Coregonus spp., Stenodus leucichthys, Clupea
pallasii
(Canadian) Arctic Sea1
1,066
Salvelinus alpinus, Gadidae, Salmo salar
Hudson Bay
484
Salvelinus alpinus, Gadidae, Salmo salar
1 These data apply only to that part of the currently defined Arctic LME that comprises the (Canadian) Arctic
Archipelago, and are not included in Figure 6. These data exclude the much higher catches from the Arctic
LME areas within FAO areas 21 (Baffin Bay, Davis Strait) and 27 (NE Atlantic waters).
36
Pauly et al.
Discussion
Traditionally, the local and sectoral focus of fisheries science, monitoring and
management has precluded the development and use of indicators at large spatial
scales. With the advent of ecosystem-based concerns and concepts such as the Large
Marine Ecosystems (Sherman et al. 2003), it has become evident that such indicators will
be needed for better integration of fisheries in ecosystem-based management
approaches.
However, existing national and international institutions, due to their historic sectoral,
local and national focus, are not in a position to report fisheries information, i.e., catches,
their values and associated indicators at an ecosystem level, such as LMEs. In contrast,
the Sea Around Us Project was specifically established to assess the impacts of fisheries
at an ecosystem level. We therefore developed tools and concepts to present available
fisheries data via ½ degree lat.-long. spatial cells, allowing consideration of various
spatial scales, such as LMEs. It is this `place'-based, rather than sector-based approach
which allows us to document fisheries impacts at the scale of LMEs. We have also
derived a standard set of indicators and graphical representations, presented here on a
global scale (i.e., for all currently defined LMEs combined). They are presented in LME-
specific format in the various chapters of this book, and as well, through our website
(www.seaaroundus.org).
The five types of graphs presented here allow comprehensive overviews of the general
status of fisheries and ecosystem of each LME, as they account for the characteristics of
fisheries, biology and ecology of the exploited species and ecosystem. Catch and catch
values indicate status and trends of the fisheries, e.g., through changes in species
composition and catches. These relate strongly to the status of stocks in the LME, as
indicated by the Stock-Catch Status Plots developed here. Changes in fisheries and
stock status have direct impacts on the ecosystem which can be indicated by the MTI
and FiB. These also determine the footprint of fisheries an indicator of sustainability, as
shown here through the Primary Production Required by fisheries within LMEs.
All of these indicators require accurate and complete catch data. Such catch data,
however, are not available for all LMEs. The methods we use for re-expressing FAO's
global reported landings dataset on a spatial basis, here through LMEs, cannot
compensate for these limitations. Rather, it makes them visible, and emphasizes the
need for catch reconstruction at the national level (sensu Zeller et al. 2006, 2007), from
which LME catch time series can then be derived. This was here specifically illustrated
by reconstructed catch time series from Northern Siberia (Russian Federation), Arctic
Alaska (USA), and parts of Arctic Canada, with the help of which the fisheries of six arctic
LMEs could be characterized for the first time. In the next years, the Sea Around Us
Project, working in close collaboration with national scientists, will radically expand its
coverage of countries with reconstructed catches, to overcome the data problems
highlighted in the LME-specific chapters. Also, we will expand our list of indicators, and
include several that do not rely on catch trends, but on biomass (or catch/effort) trends,
which are far more informative.
The LME framework, populated with relevant and current catch and related fisheries
data, is set to provide the information needed to develop policies for ecosystem-based
fisheries management. It provides a neutral platform for jurisdictions (national and sub-
national) to come together to discuss resource management issues as a single ecological
unit and look at the consequences of policies, irrespective of boundaries. This
information will also provide guidance on information gaps (e.g., spatial effort data) and
areas for research (e.g., large scale fisheries-independent biomass estimation), so that
Fisheries in LMEs
37
ecosystem based management of fisheries and marine areas can be strengthened in
many of the world's coastal regions.
The LME system can also enhance the global assessments of marine areas and
resources. Until now, large-scale assessments have primarily focused on ocean basins
(Pauly et al. 2005) or FAO Statistical Areas (Pauly et al. 1998, Alder et al. 2007).
However, these are large areas, and the important differences needed for developing
policy can be lost in such a large scale management unit. Assessments based on LMEs
can give much better resolution. LME units also lend themselves to ecosystem modeling
software such as Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE), which can be used to simulate
developments scenarios (Christensen & Walters 2004). Recent experience with EwE
and FAO Statistical Areas as modelling units has highlighted that these areas are too
large for meaningful treatment (Alder et al. 2007). For example, FAO area 21 includes
the Barents Sea and the North Sea, which are strongly divergent ecosystems in terms of
structure and fisheries (Alder et al. 2007). LMEs do not have this problem. Also, they
can be interfaced with other spatial entities, e.g., `ecoregions' (Spalding et al. 2007), i.e.,
with smaller scale systems defined in terms of their biodiversity.
Thus, the present volume presents globally, and for the first time, comprehensive
fisheries data and indicators assembled at a large spatial ecosystem scale, namely for all
64 currently defined Large Marine Ecosystems.
Acknowledgement
The work presented here is a product of the Sea Around Us Project, initiated and funded
by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, USA. We also thank the Lenfest Foundation
for support to study the Alaska marine fisheries in the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea LMEs.
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