INDIVIDUAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS - HUMAN NATURE AND BEHAVIOUR
The question for policy is often not “What is reality?” but rather, “Whose reality will prevail?” (Padelford and Lincoln, Dynamics of International Politics, 1962)
Objective assessments of events that take place around us are extremely important. However, different observers have different, often conflicting, perceptions of those events and those perceptions become their reality. It is extremely important to identify those perceptions because they serve as the basis for human actions. While they may not prove to be accurate reflections of reality, the actions taken based on them will be real, as will be the consequences of those actions. Therefore, perceptions are an important element of the individual level of analysis. Three important considerations that relate to fisheries management at this level are as follows: (a) one's view of society's relationship to nature, (b) one's view of the renewability of living marine resources, and (c) ideological perspectives.
(a) Man-Nature Relationship
There are conflicting views about what the relationship between man and nature should be. These views, seldom made explicit, can in fact be spread across a continum, with one extreme represented by the domination of nature by man and the other extreme represented by man's subordination to nature. Two major views relevant for this paper emerge: man-over-nature and man-in-harmony-with-nature (Kluckhohm and Strodtbeck, 1959).
A central theme of the man-over-nature view is that nature is (or should be) subordinate to mankind. Nature is to be exploited by man (e.g., Spring and Spring, 1974). While there are obstacles that nature places in the path of the human activities, it is man's obligation to devise ways to surmount those obstacles. One way to do this is through a reliance on technology. Goulet (1977, p. 19) commented on cultural values associated with western technology, nothing that “By definition technology is interested in getting things done; consequently, it breeds impatience with contemplation or harmony with nature.” In many instances the application of technology to resolve one problem has led to other unintended problems (e.g., Borgstrom, 1972). Supporters of man-overnature contend that the environment is robust and therefore resilient in the face of those “insults.” In other words, nature can absorb most, if not all, of the adverse impacts of human activities.
This belief exists in the world of fisheries and tends to foster the development and application of new technologies for the purpose of exploiting living marine resources. For example, the replacement of cotton nets with nylon ones, the use of purse seiners, power blocks, vacuum pumps, echo sounders, and so forth have all been developed to increase fish landings. Each in its own way, these technological fixes enable the fishermen to outmaneuver fish, which, of course, do not have the capability to outmaneuver these new technological applications. Apparently, shoaling by forage fish reduces the effectiveness of natural predators but has served to make such catch techniques as the purse-seine more efficient. “With these techniques,” noted Murphy (1977, p. 285), “man has so greatly nullified any advantage of shoaling with respect to protection from predation that these species are readily rendered extinct or near extinct by fishing.” Thus, the indiscriminate use of technology in a fishery can adversely affect the long-term productivity of that fishery, bringing it not only to the point of financial bankruptcy for industrial firms but can even bring the fish population to the point of extinction.
The man-in-harmony-with-nature perspective suggests that man must place limits on his capabilities when dealing with the natural environment. It is based on the belief that there are limits to exploitation of the natural environment. Unless those limits are acknowledged and then taken into account in the exploitation of nature, overexploited resources will disappear. Farmers, for example, realize the need for soil conservation practices in order to maintain the productivity of their soils. Foresters, too, realize that rates of exploitation must be in balance with rates of replacement. This view demands that those involved in the exploitation of living marine resources recognize, as well as respect, the limits that the natural environment places on their activities. Supporters of this view of the man-nature relationship also tend to believe in the application of appropriate, as opposed to high, technology. While they do not know with certainty what those limits of exploitation are, they tend to support a conservative level of resource exploitation, favouring, for example, such fishery management guidelines as safe yields (building in considerations of uncertainity) as opposed to optimum economic yield or maximum sustainable yield, which are based on theoretical calculations (e.g., Clark, 1976; Edwards and Hennemuth, 1975).
Believers in either of the two contending views tend to strongly oppose the other view. The man-over-nature group has been pejoratively referred to as cornucopians and optimists, while the man-in-harmony-with-nature group has been called doomsayers and pessimists. While the latter group may assert that “technology is the answer,” the former group might respond with “technology may be the answer but what was the question”?
Beliefs held by the various individuals or groups of individuals in a society are not equally influential in the policymaking process at any given point in time. It can be argued that the perceptions that political authorities have about the relationship of man to nature constitute the dominant ideological perspective in the political system at a given point in time. Beliefs held by others can be viewed as subordinate perspectives. Changes in national government or changes by national leaders of administrative personnel in relevant government agencies can bring about a change in the dominant perspective.
Most leaders in developed as well as in developing countries tend to pursue policies of development that are manifestations of the man-over-nature view; that is, relying on human ingenuity to surmount obstacles or constraints laid down by nature. A major difference between the responses by political authorities in developed and developing states is that the former is often in a position to commit greater financial resources either to reverse or at least to mitigate the environmental damage that might result from a disregard for the natural environment.
The Peruvian Experience
The history of Peru has been one of rapid, almost sequential, development of several of its natural resources. As one Peruvian scholar-statesman observed (Kuczynski, 1977, p. 5)
As in many of the poorer countries, the growth of foreign trade was in spurts, depending upon the exploitation of some new natural resource in high demand. Such was the case of guano…in the mid-nineteenth century; of the development of lead, zinc, copper, and silver mining in the twenties; of the rapid expansion of cotton and sugar products after the Second World War, and of the fishmeal boom in the early sixties.
As discussed earlier, one of the most notable resources related to the Peruvian anchoveta fishery has been guano. Seeking to protect the resource on which the bird population fed, the Guano Administration Company was able for some time to thwart attempts to establish a fishery based on the anchoveta. The beginning of the end of dominance by guano interests over fishmeal interests came with the clandestine construction of the first fishmeal operation in Peru in 1950 (Wilbur-Ellis, 1972). Fearing a rapid growth of the fishmeal industry, the Guano Administration Company hired an American scientist to assess the potential impact of a commercial anchoveta fishery on the guano birds. In the resulting report, Murphy (1954, pp. 213–14) pointed to his (and apparently the Guano Administration Company's) view of the man-nature relationship, when he commented on the wanton exploitation of guano in the 1800's.
If the heedless human animal could act so adversely upon the world of life, including his own interests, it was equally possible that by using his brains he might be able to create a profitable harmony with nature.
On the interaction that would come about as a result of the proposed development of a major fishmeal production capability, Murphy exposed his belief when he subtitled a section of his report “Man, the Only Insatiable Predator,” and wrote that
It is obvious that natural predators, such as fish, or birds or beasts, can never seriously reduce the number of their prey, because their very existence is determined by the abundance, including a dynamic surplus, of the food organisms. Predator and prey are in equilibrium. Man, on the other hand, is capable of depleting any readily attacked natural resource. Unlike a guano bird, man has no automatic checks and balances upon his operations. He is not directly dependent upon the tissues of his prey for the energy with which he executes his exploitation. A guanay must eat anchovetas in order to catch more anchovetas, but fishermen hunt with energy from a totally different source, such as petroleum. Only the slow and disastrous consequences of exhaustion and financial failure can end their campaign (pp. 226–27).
Those favouring the development of a Peruvian anchoveta fishery outmaneuvered the guano exporters in the political process. The anchoveta fishery was among the latest resource to be exploited by Peruvians and, as was suggested (Smetherman and Smetherman, 1972) at the beginning of the 1970's,
The Peruvian anchoveta fishmeal boom, unlike earlier Peruvian economic activities such as guano, sugar, copper, silver, and cotton production, would not be another of these boom to bust ventures. (emphasis mine)
There is still controversy over why this fishery nearly collapsed in the early 1970's, with one group blaming the environment (e.g., E1 Nino), another group blaming poorly regulated fishing activities, and a third group blaming the simultneous occurrence of both of those events. As time passes, it seems that the E1 Nino event takes on an increasing share of the blame for the demise of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery.
In the search for socio-economic (aside from geophysical) reasons for the demise, attention often turns to technology. Information about the fish catching and fish processing capacity, cited with pride by representatives of the fishing sector, now became suspect as having contributed to the demise of the fishery. The IMARPE (1970) report, for example, discussed the problem of overcapacity in Peru's fishmeal processing capability as well as in the fleet. It has been reported that during the 1972–1973 El Niño, anchoveta were being captured at rates that far exceeded the ability of scientists to assess those catches. By the time assessments were made and it had been determined with confidence that the fishermen had been cutting into the standing stock, impairing its ability to regenerate its population, the damage to the fishery had already occurred (e.g., FAO, 1979a, p. 108; Troadec et al., 1981, p. 19).
(b) Renewability
Researchers and policymakers have generally accepted the belief that renewable and nonrenewable resources constitute the two basic categories of natural resources. Most observers (optimists and pessimists alike) categorize fish as a renewable resource. This perception of renewability most probably stems from the fact that fish are self-generating, although it is recognized that some seasons are better than others with respect to recruitment.
There are many definitions of renewable and nonrenewable resources. As one example, according to Klee (1980),
Renewable resources would be those that can maintain themselves or be continuously replenished if managed wisely, such as soils, food crops and domesticated animals, land or open space, water (abiotic), freshwater (biotic), marine, wildlife, or forest resources.
Nonrenewable resources are those not generated or reformed in nature at rates equivalent to those at which we use them, such as metals, fossil fuels, building materials, fertilizer chemicals, etc.
Pelagic fish resources could conceivably fit into either of these categories, depending on one's assumptions about fisheries. For example, they could be considered renewable with proper management. If exploited at rates faster than they can replenish their populations, however, pelagic fish could also be considered nonrenewable. These definitions suggest that a particular resource in a given place could, over a period of time, move from the renewable to the nonrenewable category, depending on how “wise” the management of the resource might be.
The exploitation of fish populations is surrounded by uncertainties about fish population dynamics as well as about the larger oceanic and atmospheric environments (e.g., a long-term shift in climatic factors). Thus, while fish populations may be viewed as renewable in one context, they may also be viewed as nonrenewable in another.
Pelagic fish can be viewed as depletable in several ways. They can be depleted, for example, to the point of extinction or to the point where they become vulnerable to environmental fluctuation and changes, or to the point where their reduced numbers make them commercially unprofitable to capture. The above discussion is based on the premise that pelagic species are renewable resources, if managed wisely. Are pelagic fish in fact renewable resources and, if so, under what conditions?
The following graphs (Figure 3) show commercial fish landings for three major pelagic fisheries; the Pacific sardine off the coast of California, the pilchard off the coast of Namibia (South West Africa) in the Southeast Atlantic, and the Peruvian anchoveta in the eastern equatorial Pacific.
As the graphs suggest, each fishery collapsed or nearly did so. For each of these assessments of collapse or near collapse, two opposing schools of thought have emerged about the reason for the demise of these fisheries. Some observers suggest that overfishing was the factor that led to the collapse (each observer may have different views about why the other two fisheries collapsed). In the absence of heavy fishing pressures, they contend, the fish population would probably have been able to cope with fluctuations in its physical environment.
Other observers contend with equal conviction, and often with equally convincing pieces of scientific information, that the collapse of the fish population resulted primarily from changes in environmental variables. While overfishing may have been implicated, the environmental factors set the stage for and were the major cause of the demise. Similar opposing views about the fate of a fishery have not been restricted to these particular fisheries.9 Garth Murphy (1977, p. 296), for example, noted that
In Japan (the Far Eastern Sardine) and in California… scientists tended to divide into two camps. Environmentalists maintained that changes in the ocean climate were responsible for the observed qualitative and quantitative changes in the populations. The second camp maintained that fishing was the basic reason for all of the problems. The sardine disappeared.
Assuming that the view that environmental changes brought about a collapse of these fisheries is correct, would it then be valid to assume that fish populations in specific regions can appear and disappear regardless of the intervention of man? If so, might fish populations of a particular kind, in a specific region, and during a specified period of time, be considered nonrenewable resources? Assume, on the other hand, that the view that human intervention (for example, overfishing) was responsible for the collapse of these fisheries is correct. This view calls for “wise” management of pelagic fish resources. Yet the uncertainties surrounding the exploitation of these living marine resources are many, and the task of identifying an acceptable management strategy considered by most observers to be “wise” or safe would be a almost impossible. In the absence of regulations that prohibit the exploitation of a particular fish population or of difficult-to-determine prudent management startegies, it seems that most pelagic fish populations that take on a commercial value eventually become severely depleted or collapse altogether.
An added dimension to the consideration of renewability of fish stocks is that the world is divided into nations, each with its own jurisdiction over its coastal resources to the extent of the 200-mile Extended Economic Zone (EEZ). It is, therefore, important and useful to define the renewability of resources at a national, not a global, level. To the country that destroys its forest resources, its coal deposits, or its living marine resources, those resources are gone. Only under extraordinary human effort and cost might they be replaced with similar resources.
Therefore, the concept of renewability should include a spatial dimension (e.g., the Pacific sardine off the coast of California has been “unrenewed”), as well as a temporal dimension (e.g., the resource has not been available in commercially desirable quantities for two decades following its demise in 1952; Williams, 1978). Species can also return after they have disappeared or have been reduced to low numbers in a specific area. For example, there is a debate currently underway about whether the sardine has returned to the coastal waters off California in commercially exploitable numbers (MacCall, 1983). Therefore, it appears that these species can shift from the renewable category for a given period of time to a nonrenewable category at a different period of time. One of the problems for society and the managers of those pelagic fisheries is that they do not know when those species will disappear, become sharply reduced in number, or reappear, regardless of the cause (environmental changes or degrees of overfishing). As Murphy (1977, p. 305) has noted about various kinds of stock-recruitment and productivity models, “even if properly applied (they) are only useful for estimating the average sustainable yield, and hence the size of the industry. They cannot forecast the discontinuous events that have been repeatedly observed, and which often result in population collapse.” Perhaps, if under unpredictable adverse conditions they can disappear, pelagic fisheries should be realistically treated as nonrenewable resources.
To the extent that the history of the three pelagic fisheries in separate parts of the ocean, discussed earlier, might serve as examples of exploitation of such resources in other coastal areas, might it not be “wise” to build a consideration of its probable demise into the planning and development of a similar national fishery? If these highly productive fisheries have collapsed, why not expect that others will do the same? If the managers of a new fishery were to accept such a contention (i.e., that a pelagic species that takes on a commercial value tends to collapse), then they may choose to develop the infrastructure to support that fishery at a lower level, knowing that if (or when) the collapse comes, the dislocations it precipitates (e.g., unemployment, loss of foreign exchange, etc.) will be at a much lower level than might have been the case had the resource been treated as renewable.
Renewability and the Peruvian Anchoveta
Those who favoured in the early 1950's the development of a commercial fishery based on Peruvian anchoveta argued that the anchoveta existed in great abundance and for all practical purposes were limitless (e.g., Borgstrom, 1972). At the outset of its development, they argued that an anchoveta fishery would not affect the bird population and guano production; in essence, commercial fisheries and the guano industries could be sustained by the same resource. Robert Cushman Murphy, as noted earlier, cautioned about limits to exploitation of the anchoveta and that in the absence of strict controls on the fishery, the insatiable predator of the tow (i.e., man) would destroy both the fishery and the guano industry. In fact, the guano bird population, estimated at more than 30 million before the 1957–1958 El Niño event, had declined to less than two million following the 1972–1973 El Niño and has since returned to more than 5 million (e.g., Tovar, 1983).
Without a scientific basis to decide otherwise, the government policymakers gave in to the fisheries entrepreneurs and allowed the anchoveta to be exploited on a commercial basis as an industrial fish. As more and more people entered the fishery, the catch statistics in the 1950's and the early 1960's suggested that, in fact, perhaps there was room for both the fishermen and the guano-producing birds.
Only when crises appeared (either socio-economic or geophysical), did Peruvians become concerned about the implications of treating the fishery as a limitless resource. In 1965, as a result of a reduced supply of anchoveta and of scientific reports suggesting the fishery was at its limit of exploitation, the government agency responsible for the fishery established its first closed season (veda). By the late 1960's it became abundantly clear that there were too many vessels competing with each other for what all came to realize was a limited resource. It was at this time that the maximum sustainable yield for the anchoveta fishery was calculated to be about 9.5 MMT per year, but that yield included the bird population's consumption of about 2 MMT per year. The irony in this situation was that by the late 1960's the fishmeal entrepreneurs were calling for a planned reduction of the population of anchoveta-consuming birds for the sole purpose of freeing up more anchoveta for their processing plants. For example, Schaefer, a noted marine scientist, addressed this issue in the following way (1967, p. 512):
Certainly, as a minimum, everyone can agree that it is a priority matter to maintain sufficient populations of each of the bird species to prevent their being driven to extinction, because it is of overriding importance to maintain this genetic material for the future use of humanity. However, one can assert, with some certainty that, for this purpose, there is required a good deal less than 16,000,000 birds.
(See also Stroetzel, 1965, p. 20; and Horna, 1968). This, of course, confirmed Murphy's 1954 assessment of the potential impact of an anchoveta fishery on guano production and his suggestion that “man was an insatiable predator”(p. 226). Murphy had also predicted that the end result of an unregulated anchoveta fishery would be the demise not only of the guano industry but of the anchoveta fishery as well.
Even in the period following the visible signs of overcapitalization of the industry and overexploitation of the resource, those involved with the fishery continued to be optimistic about the future availability of the resource. Much of this optimism appears to have stemmed from wishful thinking, not scientific fact. On this view, Hammergren (1981, p. 345) has commented that
While government planners were aware of the danger…. Unfortunately, past experience, the demands of an economy in crisis, and the lingering tendency to view resources as inexhaustible in one form or another, do not argue for the more conservative position (of exploitation).
Most recently, a report on the state of the Peruvian economy (Downer, 1980) showed continued signs of optimism about the anchoveta fishery, even after several seasons closed to anchoveta fishing, noting that “Peru's legendary anchovy fishing grounds… are coming to life again after a two-year ban of the fishermen. ‘The anchovetas are returning,’ said a Peruvian last month, crossing himself for luck.” Wishful thinking or unbounded optimism should not be a substitute for objective scientific information.
(c) Ideological perspectives
Opposing ideologies exist and their existence must be accepted even if the contents of that ideology are not. A capitalist, for example, will have a view of the world that differs markedly from that of a marxist. Someone who believes in dependency theory (see, for example, Galtung, 1971) will have a worldview that could differ from either that of the capitalist or the marxist. As Bell (1962, p. 30) pointed out. “The most salient fact about modern life - capitalist and communist - is the ideological commitment to social change.”
Ideological perspectives not only might define the causes and consequences of certain actions related to fisheries management or to the management of other economic sectors seemingly unrelated to the fisheries, but might also come into play in the determination of strategies in response to those causes and consequences. It is therefore important analytically to make explicit the ideological worldviews of the various decisionmakers involved directly or indirectly with fisheries, as well as of those observers whose views might be representative of those of various segments of society and who might, through their interpretation of history, influence activities impacting the fishing sector.
At the international level, observers with differing ideological perspectives interpret interactions between states in profoundly different ways. While one observer might note, for example, that foreign investment in a Peruvian fishmeal processing factory was designed to yield profits for both the Peruvian and the foreign entrepreneurs, another observer might view it as exploitation of a developing country by a developed country in order to gain access to its natural resources. For example, an oceanographer (Tomczak, 1981), whose views might be assumed to represent those of a segment of Peruvian society, expressed his belief that
The economic structure of any nonsocialist country of the Third World is characterized by imperialist control over the larger part of the economy, the largest share of this control being exercized by one of the superpowers, either through direct investment or through foreign debt (p.403).
According to Tomczak (1981, p. 406), even the changes over time in the relative percentages of Peruvian commodities for export were the result of “a gradual change in the Peruvian economy…as a response to changing imperialist interests.”
On the other hand, an executive of the American fishmeal company that constructed the first processing plant in 1950 in Peru asserted that the decision to sell idle California fleet and processing plants to Peruvian entrepreneurs was a decision made as an ad hoc response to the collapse of the Californian Pacific sardine fishery and not the result of a long-range strategy to penetrate the Peruvian economy in general and the fishing sector in particular. At least one of the Peruvian entrepreneurs agreed with that view (Eleguera, 1964).
Ideological interpretations of national level activities related to the fisheries also exist. Consider, for example, conflicting ideological views of the origins of the Peruvian fishmeal industry. In his article on “The State and the Bourgeoisie in the Peruvian Fishmeal Industry”, Caravedo, whose views also can be said to represent a segment of Peruvian society, suggested that the growth after 1948 of the fishing industry had been a response within Peru to changes in export policies resulting from a change in economic development programs, following Odria's military coup, and was “not in response to North American marketing mechanisms as had been the case…during World War II” (Caravedo, 1977, p. 110). He also noted that “the initial capital to develop these two sectors of Peru's fishing industry (fishing and shipbuilding) was essentially Peruvian” (p.105). Caravedo (p. 104) also discussed class struggle and how it affected, as well as was affected by, the exploitation of the anchoveta resource.
This article shows the form in which industrial fishing emerged, the development of competition between capitals, and the process of monopolization in the sector. Through this process, crisis developed which took the form of the depletion of the major resource - the anchovy. But accumulation in this industry not only led to the depletion of the anchovy, but to the “superexploitation” of the proletariat.
An opposing view of the Peruvian situation was described by an author (Jaquette, 1975, p. 413), who noted that
Under military dictator Manuel Odria and elected President Manuel Prado, Peru's economic system has been remarkedly open - that is, market-oriented and hospitable to foreign investment. The maintenance of a free enterprise economy can be attributed in part to the ideological convictions of one individual, newspaper editor and sometime finance minister Pedro Beltran, and to the fact that the open economy favours exporters and foreign investors, two of the most powerful groups in pre-1968 Peru.
As an example of class struggle, Caravedo (1977, p. 104) commented on the implications of the 1973 nationalization of the fishing sector by Velasco's government, noting that “The Peruvian state had taken over the industry in 1973 and compensated many of the capitalist at above the book value of their assets”. The nationalization was viewed by him, among others (e.g., Malpica, 1975), as having freed the capitalists from the burdens of a debt-ridden industry that had seemingly lost its resource base, at least temporarily. The buying out of the capitalists, according to these authors, meant they would be free to reinvest in more profitable industries (Caravedo, 1977, p. 120). The actual financial compensation made by government to entrepreneurs has been critically evaluated by Malpica (1975), a representative of the Federation of Fishery Workers, whose criticisms were in turn challenged by Peru's former Minister of Fisheries, General Tantaleán (1978).
Caravedo (1977, p. 104) also attributed class conflict as the motivation behind denationalization of the fleet in 1976, suggesting that
In 1976 the state declared a state of emergency in the fishing industry, but this time because of the militancy of the working class. After momentarily breaking this militancy, the state returned the fishmeal sector to private hands. The militant workers in the fishing industry who were involved in a strike for job security were massively laid off.
The nationalization, however, was defended by Tantaleán as the only way to bring about economic rationalization of the industry by reducing the existing fleet and processing capacity in order to bring it into balance with the anchoveta resource. To foreign investors, the nationalization by the Velasco government was viewed as the latest attempt to move Peru away from free enterprise and toward communism.
The examples of ideological perspectives, like others in this paper, are illustrative. They were not included to favour one ideological perspective over another but have been presented only to underscore the author's belief that ideological perspectives can affect fishery management.
While some scientists and policymakers may wear their ideological perspectives on their sleeve, so to speak, others may be unaware of how it affects their decisions. As an example of these different levels of awareness of ideology in the Western Hemisphere, Jaquette (1975, p. 402), noted that “The centrality of ideology in Latin American politics (stands) in contrast to the North American experience (where ideological content, although it is possibly just as central, goes unrecognized as such)”
Summary - Individual Level
The importance of considering aspects of human nature and behaviour must be recognized when considering fishery management. One of the main points in this section is that individual perceptions about abundance and renewability of living marine resources affect how those resources might be exploited. The combinations of these various perceptions about the resource with perceptions about the widespread uncertainties that surround the fishery pave the way for fisheries managers to choose from a wide range of seemingly rational management options.
It is equally importance to put the individual in context of the larger social and political organizations in which he operates. However, the tendency to reduce problems of fisheries management to the individual level must be avoided. While it can be shown that individuals affect social organizations, it can also be shown that other organizations can influence individual behaviour.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Management plans based on the soundest of biological information fail when it is discovered that fishing pressure cannot be controlled because of unforeseen political or economic constraints. Economic policies fail when unforeseen biological limits are exceeded. In short, fisheries represent dynamic (time-varying) systems with interacting components. (C.J. Walters, Systems principles in fisheries management, 1980).
In the fisheries literature there appear to be many unquestioned assumptions about the linkages between society and fish populations. Upon closer scrutiny, some of these assumptions take on the appearance of half-truths or “fish myths”, because they prove to be valid in some circumstances but invalid in others. In this section, the issue of fish myths is raised and briefly discussed, linking different myths to each of the levels of analysis presented earlier.
International-level fish myths
At the international level, there appears to be an impression that a collapse of a fishery will have little effect, except in the marketplace, on other fisheries. Fisheries around the world are linked in indirect as well as direct ways. Some of those linkages are often subtle while others are obvious. For example, the success in the early years of the Peruvian fishery sparked the interest of Chilean leaders in developing a fishing sector in the Chilean North. Chilean motives at that time for doing so were more directly related to relieving an employment problem in that region than they were for capitalizing on a potentially valuable marine resource (Salinas M., 1973). Recently (Fishing News International, August 1982), Chile surpassed Peru in terms of tonnage of landings and has emerged as one of the world's major fishing nations (by tonnage).
More tangible linkages can be established between the collapse of a fishery in one region and the stimulation of the development of a similar fishery in another. The Californian Pacific sardine collapse serves as just such an example. The sample can be said more recently for the initiatives of the South African industrialists in the Chilean food fish sector in the Chilean North. Even within a region, these have been shifts from the exploitation of one species to the exploitation of another (e.g., anchoveta to sardine), although a modification of fishing gear is usually required. As fisheries collapse, where can the idled fishing vessels and processing plants go?
National-level fish myths
A national level fish myth alluded to in the literature is that fishing is mainly an economic activity. A fishery, however, is embedded in a larger political system and is only one subsystem that must compete with many others for the attention and support of political authorities. Unfortunately, no matter how productive that fishery might be, for example, in terms of producing foreign exchange, or in terms of generating employment, it may not be viewed as a significant sector, especially in developing countries where unemployment and underemployment may already be at relatively high levels. Kuczynski (1977, p. 4) commented on this factor, noting that
Following the traditional pattern, export activity has tended to be liberal in its use of capital (land and equipment) and economical of employment…Employment in mining, fishmeal, and major agricultural exports in the mid-sixties did not directly account for more than 7 percent of total employment.
Fishing activities in developed countries as well as in developing countries are often heavily subsidized, sometimes in obvious ways, and sometimes in not so obvious ways. This suggests other motives for maintaining a fishery (such as nationalism and the desire to show the flag or to avoid increasing the number of unemployed), even when doing so might be economically unsound. As Gulland (1974, p. 107) noted, “Nearly all governments are now, to an increasing extent, becoming involved in the operational side of fishing-through such matters as the granting of loans, subsidies, etc”. The condition of the exploited resource then becomes of secondary concern, as the more immediate needs and potential payoffs overshadow the longer-term impacts on the fish resource and those dependent on it.
Individual-level fish myths
A fish myth that is associated with the individual level of analysis is the usually implied, but sometimes stated, belief that there is one reality or one proper objective for managing a fishery. Most articles, books, and reports (including this one) address the question of objectives for fisheries management. As noted earlier, how one views a resource on which afishery is based affects whether, how, and when that resource will be exploited. As there are many competing perceptions about the resource as well as about the interrelations among groups and among nations, there are competing realities about fisheries management. Discussions about objectives for fisheries management are often prescriptive, suggesting what the objectives ought to be. While there is one such concept that most participants in a fishery seem to support in theory, “to ensure the continuation of this substantial contribution to the…economy”, their actions at the operational level often belie their words.
What is important for the understanding of why a particular fishery has been managed in a particular way is not a search for the single stated “proper” reality (usually the preservation of the resource). What is important is the acceptance of the fact that other realities come into play that represent the more immediate aims of those involved in the fishery. Those realities (or aims), more often than not, overshadow the one “proper” reality for which all profess support. Underscoring this point, Larkin (1978, p. 68) has written that
Fisheries…have had their dismal fascinations for economies, especially because economic inefficiency, over-capitalization and subsidies are almost the common rule…But the abstractions that lead to recipes for maximizing dollar returns from a fishery as a whole do not begin to expose the many-sided considerations of the individual fisherman, nor of the politicians for whom the fishermen vote. In brief, fisheries management has to be very much concerned with human behaviour.
Societal factors can, for better for for worse, affect the management of a fishery. While some of these societal considerations do not appear to be directly related to fisheries, they do influence fisheries management.
Use of anology
The Peruvian case study was chosen to highlight these societal factors because its fisheries have been prominent in the scientific and popular fisheries literature since the middle of the 1950's. In the 1950's and 1960's it served as an example of how to develop the capability to exploit a natural resource, but in the 1970's it has been cited as an example of what to avoid in the development of a fishery. Yet, to this author, it seems that examples of apparent success in fisheries management carry considerably more weight than examples of failures. For example, similarities are often cited when representatives of a fishery want to make a case for following the development path of an apparently successful fishery, while differences are usually highlighted by those who want to minimize the similarities between one's own fishery and a suggested analogous fishery that has collapsed.
To be sure, other fisheries might have been used as the case study of the management of shoaling pelagic fish, the notable ones being the Californian Pacific sardine fishery and the South African and South West African (Namibian) pilchard fisheries. There appear to be many similarities between these three cases that are worthy of additional research (see, for example, Glantz, 1980b).
The use of comparisons between fisheries based on similar species can be an extremely useful approach to develop an understanding of how coastal living marine resources are managed and why. The use of analogues in scientific research is not a new or recent phenomenon (e.g., Culley, 1971; Troadec et al., 1981). With respect to understanding Eastern Boundary pelagic fish reproduction, scientists (Parrish, et al., 1983) have recently called for the use of analogies, noting that
The four major eastern boundary current regions of the world ocean (i.e., the California, Peru, Canary, and Benguela systems) appear to involve similar environmental dynamics and contain very similar assemblages of important pelagic fish species. To the extent that corresponding species in different systems function as analogues, interregional comparative studies may yield information concerning environmental effects on reproductive success that could be difficult to derive from any single regional system alone.
Analogues could be a useful methodological approach for an improved understanding of how societies interact with their physical and biological environments in general, and more specifically how they interact with fisheries. Used with care, that is, identifying explicitly the strengths and weaknesses of particular analogues, they can be a source of new insights for fisheries managers as well as for political and economic development decisionmakers. It may be instructive to keep in mind the following Chinese proverb: “To know the road ahead, ask those coming back”.
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge the research support and never-ending editorial assistance of Maria Krenz. Without her continued efforts, this paper could not have been written. I would also like to thank Dr. Steven Rhodes for his valuable critique of the many drafts of this paper. Dr. Linn Hammergren also deserves special mention for her careful review and critique of the manuscript, as does Karen Lynch for her constant assistance.
REFERENCES
Ahlstrom, E.H. and J. Radovich, 1970. Management of the Pacific sardine. pp. 183–194. In A Century of Fisheries in North America (N.G. Benson, ed.). Washington, D.C. American Fisheries Society Special Publication No. 7.
Banks, A.S. and W. Overstreet (eds). 1981. Political Handbook of the World, 1981. McGraw Hill, New York.
Bakun, A., J. Beyer, D. Pauly, J.G. Pope and G.D. Sharp. 1982. Ocean sciences in relation to living resources. Canadian J.Fish.Aquat.Sci. 39(7): 1059–1070.
Bell, D. 1962. The End of Idealogy. The Free Press, New York.
Bjerknes, J. 1966. A possible response of the atmospheric Hadley calculations to equatorial anomalies of ocean temperatures. Tellus. 18(4): 820–829.
Boerema, L.K. and J.A. Gulland, 1973. Stock assessment of the Peruvian anchovy and management of the fishery, J.Fish.Res.Bd.Canada. 30(12):2226-2235.
Boerema, L.K., G. Saetersdal, I. Tsukayama, J.E. Valdivia and B. Alegre. 1965. Report on the effects of fishing on the Peruvian stock of anchovy. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Tech.Pap. (55).
Borgstrom, G. 1972. Ecological aspects of protein feeding - the case of Peru. In The Careless Technology (M.T. Farvar and J.P. Milton, eds). The Natural History Press, Garden City, New York.
Brown, L. 1974, By Bread Alone, Praeger, New York.
Brown, W.B. 1965. Governmental measures affecting exports in Peru, 1945–1962. Ph.D. Dissertation, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Caravedo Molinari, B. 1977. The state and the bourgeoisie in the Peruvian fishmeal industry. Latin Amer.Perspect. 14(3):103–121.
Caviedes, C. 1975, El Niño: its climatic, ecological, human and economic implications. The Geographical Review. 65:493–509.
Caviedes, C. 1981. The impact of El Niño on the development of the Chilean fisheries. pp. 351– 368. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Clark, C.W. 1973. The economics of overexploitation. Science. 181(4100):630–634.
Clark, C.W. 1976. Mathematical Bioeconomics: the Optimal Management of Renewable Resources. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Clark, C.W. 1981. Bioeconomics of the ocean. Bioscience. 32(3):231–237.
Clark, W.G. 1977. The lessons of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery. CALCOFI Rep. XIX:57–63.
Crutchfield, J.A. and R. Lawson. 1974. West African marine fisheries - alternatives for management. Resources for the Future. Washington.
Culley, M. 1971. The Pilchard: Biology and Exploitation. Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Cushing, D.H. 1974. A link between science and management in fisheries. Fish.Bull.U.S. 72(4):859– 864.
Cushing, D.H. 1975. Marine Ecology and Fisheries. Cambridge University, Press, Cambridge.
Dasmann, R.F. 1972. Environmental Conservation (3rd ed.). John Wiley and Sons, New York. pp. 313–316.
Downer, S. 1980. Even the anchovetas are returning to Peru. Euromoney (April):xi–xvi.
Easton, D. 1965. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Edwards, R. and R. Hennemuth. 1975. Maximum yield: assessment and attainment. Oceanus. 18(2):3–9.
Eleguera, M. 1964. California and the World Ocean. Governor's Conference on California and World Oceans, Museum of Science and Industry, Los Angeles, CA.
FAO. 1968. State of World Fisheries. FAO, Rome, Italy.
FAO. 1974. Summary of Principle Documentation, UN World Food Conference. Rome, Italy:CSD/74/34.
FAO. 1979a. Interim Report of the ACMRR Working Party on the Scientific Basis of Determining Management Measures. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Circ. (718).
FAO. 1979b. ACMRR Working Party on the Scientific Basis of Determining Management Measures, Hong Kong, 10–15 December 1979. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Rep. (236)
FAO. 1981a. Review of the State of World Fishery Resources. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Circ.(710).
FAO. 1981b. Comprehensive programme of assistance in the development and management of fisheries in economic zones (several brochures). FAO, Rome, Italy.
Farvar, M.T. and J.R. Milton (eds). 1972. The Careless Technology. Natural History Press, Garden City,New York.
Firth, F.E. (ed.). 1969. The Encyclopedia of Marine Resources. Van Nfptrand Reinhold, New York. pp. 509–513
Freyre, A. 1965. Fishery development in Peru. pp. 391–411. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Tropical Oceanography.
Galtung, J. 1971. A structural theory of imperialism. J.Peace Res. 8(2):81–117
Garcia, R. 1981. Drought and Man: the 1972 Case History, Vol.1. Nature Pleads Not Guilty. Pergamon Press, Inc., New York.
Glantz, M.H. 1979, Science, politics and economics of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery. Marine Policy. 3(3):201–210.
Glantz, M.H. 1980a. Man, state and the environment: An inquiry into whether solutions to desertification in the West African Sahel are known but not applied. Canadian J.Dev.Studies. 1(1):75–97.
Glantz, M.H. 1980b. El Niño: Lessions for coastal fisheries in Africa? Oceanus. 23(3):9–17.
Glantz, M.H. and J.D. Thompson (eds). 1981. Resource Management and Environment Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries. Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Golden, F. 1983. Tracking that crazy weather. Time. (April 11):67.
Goodsell, C.T. 1974. American Corporations and Peruvian Politics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Gould, J.R. 1972. Extinction of a fishery by commercial exploitation: A note. J.Pol.Econ. 1031– 1037.
Goulet, D. 1977. The Uncertain Promise: value conflicts in technology transfer. IDOC/North America, Inc., New York.
Gordon, H.S. 1954. The economic theory of a common property resource: The fishery. J.Pol.Econ. 62:124–142.
Gulland, J.A. 1968. Population dynamics of the Peruvian anchoveta. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Tech. Pap.(72).
Gulland, J.A. 1972. Fishery management and the needs of developing countries. pp. 175–188. In World Fishery Policy multidisciplinary views (B.J. Rothschild, eds). University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Gulland, J.A. 1974. The Management of Marine Fisheries. Scientechnica Ltd., Bristol.
Gulland, J.A. 1977. Goals and objectives of fisheries management. Rome,Italy. FAO Fish.Tech. Pap.(166).
Gulland, J.A. 1979. Developing countries and the new law of the sea. Oceanus. 22(1):36–42.
Hammergren, L.A. 1981. Peruvian political and administrative responses to El Niño: Organizational, ideological and political constraints on policy change. pp. 317–350. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science. 162:1243–1248
Hardin, G. 1975. Land reform and social conflict in Peru. pp. 220–253. In The Peruvian Experiment (A.F.Lowenthal, ed.). Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Hardin, G. and J. Baden (eds.). 1977. Managing the Commons. W. H. Freeman Press, San Francisco.
Horna, H. 1968. The fish industry of Peru. J.Devel.Areas. 2(2):393–406.
Hunt, S. 1975. Direct foreign investment in Peru: new rules for an old game. pp. 302–349. In The Peruvian Experiment (A.F. Lowenthal, ed.). Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
IMARPE. 1970. Panel of experts' report on the economic effects of alternative regulatory measures in the Peruvian achoveta fishery. Lima, Peru. IMARPE Report No.34. pp. 369–400. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. 1974. The international Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE) 1971–1980. Tech.Ser. No.13. UNESCO, Paris.
Jaquette, J.S. 1975. Belaunde and Velasco: On the limits of ideological politics. pp. 402–438. In The Peruvian Experiment (A.F. Lowenthal, ed.). Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Kaczynski, W. 1979. Problems of long-range fisheries. Oceanus. 22(1):60–66.
Kasahara, H. 1979. Some thoughts on management. In Interim Report of the ACMRR Working Paty on the Scientific Basis of Determining Management Measures. Rome,Italy. FAO Fish.Circ. (718).
Katz, A.L. 1973. The Unusual Summer of 1972. Translated by L.A. Hutchinson, Gidrometeorizdat, Leningrad, USSR.
Kesteven, G.L. 1981. Aid in research into fishery resources: An examination of experience in aid projects executed in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela. In Working Party on the Promotion of Fishery Resources Research in Developing Countries. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Rep. (251).
Klee, G.A. (ed.). 1980. World Systems of Traditional Resource Management. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Kluckhohn, F.R. and F.L. Strodtbeck. 1961. Variations in Value Orientations. Row, Peterson and Co., Evanston, Illinois.
Kolhonen, J. 1974. Fish meal: International market situation and the future. Mar.Fish.Rev. 36(3):36–40.
Kuczynski, P.-P. 1977. Peruvian Democracy under Economic Stress. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Kuczynski, P. 1981. The Peruvian external debt. J.Interamer.Stud.World Affairs. 23(1):3–27.
Larkin, P.A. 1978. Fisheries management - An essay for ecologist. Ann.Rev.Ecolog.Syst. 9:57–73.
Lees, R. 1969. Fishing for Fortunes. Purnell, Cape Town, South Africa
Levin, J.V. 1960. The Export Economies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
MacCall, A.D. 1983. Variability of pelagic fish stocks off California (mimeo, National Marine Fisheries Service, Southwest Fisheries Center).
Malpica, C. 1975. Anchovetas y Tiburones. Lima, Peru.
Marx, W. 1967. The Frail Ocean. Ballantine Books, New York.
Marx, W. 1981. The Oceans: Our Last Resource. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.
Massey, P. 1972. Is fishmeal a threat to Peru's guano birds? Peruvian Times Fisheries Supplement: 32–37.
Miller, F.R. and R.M. Laurs. 1975. The E1 Niño of 1972–1973 in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Bull.Inter-Amer.Trop.Tuna Comm. 16(5):403–416.
Miller, R., C.T. Smith and J. Fisher (eds). 1974. Social and Economic Change in Modern Peru. Liverpool, U.K. Centre for Latin-American Studies, Monograph Series No. 6.
Ministry of Fisheries, Peru. 1977. Report of Consultative Group on the State of the Stocks of Anchoveta and Other Pelagic Species and on the Courses of Action to be Taken for Management of the Fishery. Lima, Peru(July).
Murphy, G.I. 1977. Clupeoids. pp. 283–308. In Fish Population Dynamics (J.A. Gulland, ed.). WileyInterscience, New York.
Murphy, R.C. 1926. Oceanic and climatic phenomena along the west coast of South America during 1925. Geograph.Rev. 13:64–85.
Murphy, R.C. 1954. El guano y las pesca de anchoveta (Guano and the anchoveta fishery). Official report of the Compañía Administradora del Guano to the National Government, Lima, peru. pp. 81–106. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Murphy, R.C. and G.E. Barstow Murphy. 1959. Peru profits from sea fowl. National Geographic, CXV, 3 (March):395–413.
National Research Council. 1982. An ocean-atmosphere climatic interaction study: El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Draft report, October 15, 1982, NRC Climate REsearch Committee. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
O'Brien, J.J. 1978. El Niño: an example of ocean/atmosphere interactions. Oceanus. 21(4):40–46.
O'Brien, J.J., A. Busalacchi and J. Kindle. 1981. Ocean models of El Niño. pp. 159–212. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Thompson, Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Olson, R.S. 1975. Economic coercion in international disputes: The U.S. and Peru in the IPC expropriation dispute of 1968–1971. J.Develop.Areas. 9:395–414.
Padelford, N.H. and G.A. Lincoln. 1962. Dynamics of International Politics. Macmillan, New York, 23 p.
Parrish, R.H., A. Bakun, D. Husby and S. Nelson. (This volume). Comparative climatology of selected environmental processes in relation to eastern boundary current pelagic fish reproduction.
Paulik, G.J. 1971. Anchovies, birds and fishermen in the Peru Current. pp. 156–185. In Environment, Resources, Pollution and Society (W.W. Murdock, ed.). Sinauer Press, Stamford, CT.
Philander, S.G.H. 1983. El Niño Southern Oscillation phenoma. Nature. 302(5906):295–301.
Popiel, J. and J. Sosinski. 1973. Industrial fisheries and their influence on catches for human consumption. J.Fish.Res.Bd.Canada. 30:2254–2259.
Posner, G.C. 1957. The Peru Current. Bull.Bingham Oceanogr.Coll. XVI. Yale University Museum, New Haven. pp. 106–153.
Pulgar Vidal, J. (no date). Geografía del Peru (2nd ed.). Editorial Universo, Lima, Peru.
Quinn, W.H. 1984. (In press). El Niño. In Encyclopedia of Climatology (J.E. Oliver, ed.). Hutchinson Ross Publishing Co., Stroudsburg, PA.
Radovich, J. 1981. The collapse of the California sardine fishery: what have we learned? pp. 107– 136. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Ramage, C. 1975. Preliminary discussion of the meteorology of the 1972–73 El Niño. Bull.Amer. Meteor.Soc. 56(2): 234–242.
Rasmusson, E.M. and T.H. Carpenter. 1982. Variations in tropical sea surface temperature and surface wind fields associated with the southern oscillation/El Niño. Mon.Weather Rev. 110:354–384.
Reinstedt, R.A. 1978. Where Have all the Sardines Gone? Ghost Town Publications, Carmel, CA.
Robinson, M.A. 1980. World fisheries to 2000: supply, demand and management. Marine Policy (January): 19–31.
Robinson, M.A. 1982. Prospects for World Fisheries to 2000. Rome, Italy. FAO Fish.Circ. (722).
Roemer, M.1970. Fishing for Growth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Rothschild, B.J. 1973. Questions of strategy in fishery management and development. J.Fish.Res. Bd. Canada. 30(12):2017–2030.
Salinas, M.R. 1973. The fishmeal industry of Iquique. In Coastal Deserts (D.H.K. Amiran and A.W. Wilson, eds). The University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, AZ.
Schaefer, M.B. 1967. Dynamics of the fishery for the anchoveta Enqraulis rinqens off Peru.Instituto del Mar del Peru. Bol. 1(5):189–304.
Schärfe, J. 1979. Fishing technology for developing countries. Oceanus. 22(1):54–59.
Smetherman, B.B. and R.M. Smetherman. 1972. Peruvian fisheries: conservation and development. Econ.Devel.Cult.Change. 21(2):338–351.
Smith, R.L. 1968. Upwelling. pp. 11–46. In Oceanography, Marine Biology, Annual Review (H. Barnes, ed.). George Allen and Unwin, London.
South African Journal of Science. 1980. A critique of “The control of a pelagic fish resource.” 76 (October):453–466.
Spring, D. and E. Spring. 1974. Ecology and Religion in History. Harper and Row, New York.
Stroetzel, D.S. 1965. Fishing for meal. The Americas. (May):18–22.
Tantaleán Vanini, J. 1978. Yo Respondo. Lima, Peru.
Thompson, J.D. 1977. Ocean deserts and ocean oases. In Desertification: environmental degradation in and around arid lands (M.H. Glantz, ed.). Westview Press, Boulder, Colo.
Tomczak, M., Jr. 1981. Prediction of environmental changes and the struggle of the Third World for national independence: the case of the Peruvian fisheries. pp. 401–435. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Tovar, H. (This volume). Fluctuaciones de poblaciones de aves guaneras en el litoral Peruano, 1960– 1981.
Traeger, J. 1975. The Great Grain Robbery. Ballantine, New York.
Troadec, J.-P., W.G. Clark and J.A. Gulland. 1980. Draft. A review of some pelagic fisheries in other areas. Rapp.P-v. Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:252–277.
Tropical Oceanographic-Atmospheric Newsletter. 1983. Special issue, February 1983.
U.S. National Weather Service. 1982. A major warm episode in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Special climate diagnostics bulletin, mimeo, 82/2.
Valdez-Zamudio, F. 1973. Impacto de medidas regulatorias en la industria pesquera peruana. J.Fish.Res.Bd.Canada. 30(12): 2242–2253.
Vondruska, J. 1981. Postwar production, consumption, and prices of fish meal. pp. 285–316. In Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lessons from coastal upwelling fisheries (M.H. Glantz and J.D. Thompson, eds). Wiley-Interscience, New York.
Walters, C.J. 1980. Systems principles in fisheries management. In Fisheries Management (R.T. Lackey apd L.A. Nielsen, eds). Blackwell Sci.Pub., London.
Waltz, K. 1959. Man, State and War. Columbia University, New York.
Weare, B.C. 1982. El Niño and tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures. J. of Physical Oceanogr. 12:17–27.
Wilbur-Ellis. 1972. Wilbur-Ellis Company: The First Fifty Years, 1920–1971. Wilbur-Ellis Co., New York.
Wooster, W.S. and O.Guillén. 1974. Characteristics of El Niño in 1972. J. of Marine Res. 32(3):387– 404.
Whyte, W.F. and G. Alberti. 1977. The industrial community in Peru. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 431:103–113.
Wyrtiki, K. et al. 1976. Predicting and observing El Niño. Science. 191:343–346.
by
Ray J.H. Beverton
International Federation of Institutes
for Advanced Study (IFIAS-ABC)
55 Sandown Avenue
Swindon, Wilts SN3 1 00
United Kingdom
Resumen
Se comentan algunos de los problemas que se encuentran al tratar de entender mejor la relación entre la ciencia y la toma de decisiones en la explotación de recursos pesqueros. Los conceptos sobre rendimiento máximo sostenible, la teoría del rendimiento de equilibrio y la ordenación pesquera se consideran como aspectos fundamentales en la comunicación entre estos dos sectores y se discuten en esta perspectiva. Se hace referencia en los distintos factores que deben ser tomados en cuenta para poder hacer un enfoque socio-económico integral al sistema pesquero y se intenta una primera clasificación del riesgo de explotación. Se discuten también algunas de las implicaciones que deben ser tenidas en cuenta en el proceso de toma de decisiones.
INTRODUCTION
Having been for a decade or so away from the mainstream of fisheries research, I am not infrequently asked what I make of events during that time (i.e. from 1965 to 1980, give or take a year or so). Sometimes the question is accompanied by the comment you will no doubt have noticed that the same old problems are still with us. It is, indeed, a somewhat sobering thought that the theme of this Conference - except for its geographical slant and the word ‘neritic’- could well have been that of an ICES Special Meeting as far back as the 1930's.
As is true of so much human endeavour, progress in fisheries research has been like the curate's egg - good, in parts. Our understanding of some aspects of the ecological basis of fish populations has advanced greatly, as have our techniques for sampling and analysis of data. No less spectacular have been the theoretical developments, and I scan modern fisheries mathematics with awe and a large degree of incomprehension.
The accumulating stock/recruitment data have provided a bonanza for the curve-fitters, an activity which has attracted some justified scepticism. Nevertheless, we really do know a great deal more about the relationship between parent and progeny in fish populations than when Sidney Holt and I at Lowestoft and Bill Ricker at Nanaimo were trying to extract the last ounce of information from the limited data we then had. The high variability of S/R data may be ‘noise’ to the statistician but to the biologist it should hold the secret to much of what we want to know about fisheries - if he knows where and how to look for it. The fact remains, however, that we still have only clues here and there as to the environmental causes of recruitment fluctuations, and even less of the natural compensatory mechanisms, if any, in the major marine fish populations.
Perhaps these “failures”, if that is a correct description, have been at least partly responsible for what seems to be to have been a more disturbing development in the last decade. I refer to the crisis of confidence which has built up in some quarters concerning the fundamental validity of the scientific basis for fisheries management. These doubts have been eloquently expressed by some of the leading fisheries scientists of my, as well as the younger, generation. The concept of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) as the objective of management has come in for particularly strong criticism (e.g. Larkin, 1977); Holt (1980) goes further, challenging the whole idea that man can “manage” living marine resources on scientific principles.
In view of the surprises and disappointments of recent years this reaction is understandable. Nature has a way of giving us embarrassing reminders of how easily our best laid plans can come unstuck; fisheries is no exception, especially when some of our plans have not been that well laid. But that does not mean for a moment that a rational approach to the utilisation of our fish resources is not possible or necessary, or that science does not have a major role to play. Whatever the frailties in fisheries science and management that may have been exposed by recent events, the destructive power of unrestrained modern fishing operations, backed by economic and political pressure, has become only too painfully obvious.
Not the least of the problems that are still with us, perhaps even more acutely, is that of communicating scientific assessments of fisheries to the decision-makers. This paper is offered as a small contribution towards finding a way forward in this grey area, which necessarily involves the socio-economic dimension and the treatment of uncertainty and risk. It extends certain concepts I put forward in the Santiago seminar of August 1982 co-sponsored by FAO and IOC (Beverton, in press); and draws in particular on the chapter on the Societal Value of an El Niño forecast, by Michael Glantz, in Resource and Environmental Uncertainty; John Wiley, 1981.
MANAGEMENT AND MSY
It is frequently claimed that the concepts of MSY and equilibrium yield theory are obsolete. This issue is central to the communication between science and decisionmaking, as is the concept of “management” of fisheries: it is worth checking on where we stand, and return later.
In my time we did not use the word “management” nor the term MSY. I was brought up in the Michael Graham school of “rational exploitation”. By this was meant harvesting (the agricultural analogy was intended) the natural productivity of the fish stocks in a sensible way, i.e. letting fish grow to a reasonable size before catching them, and not making the future worse by wasting time and money fishing unnecessarily hard. In view of the intrinsic tendency to the contrary in any common property resource, we thought primarily of “regulation”, i.e. a means of restraining this otherwise inevitable drift of the fishery towards self-immolation, rather than the more positive and comprehensive control conjured up by the word “management”.
The equilibrium yield theory as Sidney Holt and I developed it, both as yield per recruit and as absolute yield incorporating a stock-recruitment relationship, was intended to formalise this principle of fisheries regulation and provided a basis for action. Fig. 1 illustrates this approach. We worked on the premise that if the equilibrium yield curve had a maximum (at Fmax) and if the present F1 was manifestly higher than that, then more of the potential natural productivity of each cohort would be utilised at less cost if F were reduced to Fmax and kept there, or thereabouts.
Fig. 1. Hypothetical illustration of relative improvement by regulation of fishing effort, F being reduced from F1 to Fmax.
Depending on how that reduction was brought about so, we supposed, would the longterm economic situation be improved (by most criteria). Future recruitment, and hence catches, would of course continue to fluctuate, as they always had, for reasons beyond man's control. We did not attempt to forecast what actual catches would be in the future. We simply said that if F were reduced (or age at first capture increased, e.g. by a larger mesh) then catches (and catch per unit effort even more so) would be that much greater than they would have been had the reduction in F (or increase in mesh) not been made. Admittedly, this was not an easy option to sell to the industrial decision-makers, even though the resultant marginal gain (provided it was not dissipated in other ways) could have made all the difference between a weak and a strong fishing economy. But it was a start.
The concept of Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), in absolute units, as the prime objective of fisheries management, arose I believe during the 1960's in response to a need for simple legal definition. MSY seems at first sight simple, practical and politically neutral, with catch limits as the means of control. The criticism of the economists that MSY would rarely coincide with the conditions for maximising economic rent was valid but not an overriding objection, at least for fisheries which were already overfished. In fact, by redefining the objective as actual maximum yield instead of the operational requirements (fishing rate and selectivity) for achieving a more rational exploitation, the rules of the “management game” became subtly but fundamentally altered. “Sustainable” became synonymous with “steady”, and success or failure of management became linked with the much more demanding - usually impossible - task of maintaining a constant catch rate despite often extreme natural fluctuations. The fisheries biologist, for one, was in trouble.
Whether this explains the drift into the more ambitious concept of “management” instead of “regulation”, with man as the benign controller of the natural systems (and, by implication, of the socio-economic counterpart also), I do not know. If it does, then care is needed if we are to carry the confidence of the decision-makers with us in dealing with any but the simplest and most stable of fishery conditions.
Density-dependent complications, including stock/recruitment, may modify but do not invalidate the equilibrium or “average expectation” concepts, provided one can work on a long-term basis and accept variation in recruitment as part of the game. There are, however, some clear limitations to this approach, among them:
(a) policy for fisheries in the early stage of development. Caddy (1983) gives a good analysis of these non-equilibrium situations, as do Sharp, Csirke and Garcia (this volume).
(b) policy for fisheries which exist in unstable oceanographic conditions, with major periodic or episodic perturbations, as exemplified by the Peruvian anchovy and Californian and Japanese sardine.
(c) policy for fisheries which are liable to collapse under heavy fishing, as exemplified by the North Sea and Atlanto-Scandian herring.
In all these cases biological assessment alone is not sufficient. Decisions are, or ought to be, made on a trade-off between possible gains and losses measured in different units and different time-scales. Some aspects of socio-economics, and probably politics as well, must therefore be allowed for. How and by whom is for consideration.
INTRODUCTION OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS:
THE TOTAL FISHERY SYSTEM
The factors to be taken into account in addition to those used in conventional fishery assessment will depend very much on the circumstances, but a general list might include the following:
It would be possible, but unhelpful, to represent the interactions between these and the physico-biological fishery sub-system by drawing a multitude of boxes linked by a network of lines and arrows. I am, however, indebted to my colleague Professor Rolando Garcia1 for pointing out to me that this kind of socio-economic system does have a general structure which can be represented for analysis in terms of processes happening at three levels of integration, characterised by their dimensions of space and time and by the extent to which they are influenced by factors external to the system itself. I have found that the same kind of 3-level structure can be used to represent the physico-biological part of the fishery system, the two being linked at one level only (see also Glantz, this volume).
Fig. 2 represents the physico-biological and socio-economic limbs of the overall fishery system on these principles, much of which is self-explanatory. As it stands, this does not solve anything, but it may help to clarify ideas because it shows that certain “rules” must be followed in attempting to bring socio-economics into the picture. Thus,
(a) The only direct interaction between the two sub-systems is at the “hinge of the book”, between levels 1A and 1B. This interaction consists of the flow of fish caught, from 1A→1B, which is soon transformed into its monetary equivalent; and of time, hardware, and skills via the operations of the fishing fleet in the other direction 1B→1A (also with a monetary equivalent).
(b) Materials, animate and inanimate, and “influence” in the form of “decisions”, flow across both pages into the hinge, i.e. 3→2→1. By means of loops and feedbacks, there is a reverse interaction - more limited (absent 2A→3A) but in some cases critical in determining the dynamics of at least the immediately adjacent levels.
(c) Conventional fishery assessments establish the functional relationships across the boundaries 2A⇋21A⇋2;1B. Occasionally, if economic considerations are involved, they extend to level 2B in a limited way.
(d) Cross-flow of materials and “influence” between the pages without going through the hinge is permissible only by introducing a wholly new factor into the system. For example, if the stocks are replenished by some form of cultivation, the link would go from the appropriate B level (either 2B or 3B) into level 3A (nutrients), 2A (eggs and larvae) and 1A (post-recruit fish). The diagram reminds us that the effect on the overall system could not be assessed unless the input level is specified and the inter-level interactions towards the hinge (3A→2A→1A) are known.
(e) In contrast, information about the physico-biological system does pass direct to various levels in the socio-economic sub-system (i.e. between the pages), with or without the scientific interpretation. The timeliness and competence of that information flow obviously has a major influence in the fluctuations of the overall system.
This representation of the interlocking between the physico-biological and the socio-economic components of the total fishery system cannot show explicitly the dimension of time which characterises the various flows and feedbacks. This aspect, and especially the occurrence and consequences of time-lags in the dynamics of fisheries, is well analysed by Caddy. It will not be further mentioned here except to observe that time-lags in the socio-economic sub-system, just as in the physico-biological sub-system, apply at various levels and have analogous and often control effects on the dynamics of the overall system.
1 Head of Dept. of Epistemology at the Metropolitan University of Mexico City: formerly Dean of Sciences at University of Buenos Aires and Director of the Argentinian Meteorological Service. In Drought and Man, Pergamon Press, 1982 and pers. Comm.
Fig. 2.- Diagrammatic representation of total fishery system, comprising the physico-biological and the socio-economic sub-systems interlocking as shown. See also text.
CLASSIFICATION OF “EXPLOITATION RISK”
The decline, collapse and even recovery, of major fisheries in recent decades, for whatever reason, immediately raises a number of fundamental questions for the decisionmakers. Those with which I am concerned here center around the questions:
(a) Could such events have been forecast in real time; and if so, for how long ahead, with what reliability and what is the diagnostic evidence?
or if that is not possible; -
(b) Could the possibility of collapse at some time have been anticipated from the characteristics of the fishery; and if so, what are these characteristics?
These questions are valid even if MSY is not the objective, since they strike at the root of the stability of the fishery industry, to maintain which must surely be a priority objective of management in almost all circumstances. What can we offer the decisionmakers on this?
Regulation by catch quotas has made it necessary to have estimates of future year class strength as far ahead as possible. In practice this usually means 1–3 years depending on the length of the pre-exploited phase and the feasibility of estimating reliably the abundance of the pre-recruits. This might help tactical decision-making (i.e. at level 1B of Fig. 2), but is insufficient for decisions on commitment of major capital resources at high levels. In the present state of knowledge we must discount the practical possibility of making ‘real-time’ forecasts of future year-classes from oceanographic conditions, except in special cases (of which the E1 Niño phenomenon may be one). Nevertheless, we ought to be able to say something from experience about the risk involved in exploiting the main types of stocks and associated fisheries.
It was this line of thinking that led me to attempt such a classification for the Santiago conference. Caddy 2 has been working on the same lines and cites Kawasaki (1979) similarly. The latter confines his criteria to biological characteristics of the stock, but this is only part of the story. Caddy groups fisheries into several categories primarily on the basis of the historical pattern of trends and periodicities in catches, together with a knowledge of the environmental stability. This makes for a better diagnosis, but trends and fluctuations in catch alone can be very misleading, as recognized by Caddy, especially in mixed fisheries when effort can switch from one species to another or is affected by external events such as fishery restrictions or economic factors.
I believe, however, that a further development of this approach is possible and potentially useful to the decision-maker in devising his medium to long-range fishery strategy in both new and established fisheries. It is best visualised with reference to the overall fishery system represented in Fig. 2. Instability can be generated in or between any levels in either the physico-chemical or the socio-economic sub-system, or, more especially, at the interaction between the two main sub-systems (e.g. at the spine of the ‘book’ of Fig. 2). The more critical of these potential sources of instability would seem to be the following:
(a) environmental conditions as they affect the integrity of the life-cycle, as manifest notably but not exclusively by the variability of recruitment (1A→2/A).
(b) degree of compensation in the generation-to-generation transfer, i.e. in the stock-recruitment relationship, as mediated through the life-time dynamics (growth, mortality and maturation) of each cohort (2A⇋21A).
(c) behaviour of individual fish; particularly their shoaling propensities, detectability and use of habitat protection from fishing activity (1A).
(d) efficiency of fishing operations; particularly fish detection technology, group searching tactics and capacity to switch to alternative species (1B).
(e) elasticity of supply and demand, market preferences, mobility of capital investment (1B⇋2 2B).
(f) long-term status of the fishing industry in the national economy; competing products, responsiveness of the regulative framework (2B⇋23B).
2 J.F. Caddy An alternative to Equilibrium Theory for Management of Fisheries. FAO Expert Consultation on the Regulation of Fishing Effort, 1983.
Application of the first four of these criteria to characterise six well-documented fisheries in terms of “exploitation risk” is shown in Table 1, taken from Beverton (in press). The additional socio-economic factors (e) and (f) in the above list have nothing to do with the fish resources as such, but in certain circumstances could be important destabilisation factors and certainty would be, or ought to be, taken into account by the decision-makers.
Commenting in turn on the first four criteria, several kinds of environmental characteristics can be identified from experience as having been instrumental in causing or triggering dramatic fishery changes in stocks living at the extremes of their range which are likely to be most susceptible. Thus, the warming of the North Atlantic in the 1920's was followed by the rise of the West Greenland cod fishery (at the northern limit of the range of the species, Gadus callarias) the disappearance of the Plymouth herring fishery (at the southern limit of the range of the herring) (Clupea harengus harengus) and its replacement in the English Channel by the pilchard (Sardinops pilchardus) spreading northwards from further south. (See Beverton, R.J.H. and Lee, A.J., 1965). Stocks living in or close to a major current system are clearly in an uncertain environment, as instanced by the virtual disappearance of the Japanese sardine (S. melanosticta) in the 1940's, following changes in the course of the Kuroshio current in which it had previously spent the early part of its life-history (Kondo, 1980). Again, the precarious state of stocks living in upwelling systems, e.g. the California sardine (S. sagax caerulea) and the Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens) is well established (see, e.g. Glantz, et al., ibid.).
The degree of compensation in the stock-recruitment relationship, i.e. the extent to which recruitment remains effectively independent of stock size, has a powerful effect on the stability of the fishery. As a general guide, those species that spend part of their early life-history in shallow, confined nursery areas (typified by flatfish in temperate regions) are likely to show high compensation (Ursin, 1982). A much better diagnosis is possible if good stock-recruit data are available. No sophisticated theory or curve-fitting is needed to bring out the high degree of compensation in the stockrecruitment arrays shown in Figs. 3 (a), (b) and (c) for the North Sea sole (solea solea) and herring compared with the weakly compensated Peruvian anchovy. Trends in catches are shown also for comparison. Yet although both the sole and herring have been heavily fished only the latter has collapsed-so far, at least. Strong compensation, though necessary for stability, is evidently not a sufficient protection on its own.
Criteria (c) and (d) provide the clue. The sole is a demersal species which can remain partially buried in the sea-bed; it does not shoal and is undetectable by sonar. All these characteristics mediate the extreme impact of fishing but are not possessed by herring. Explicit proof of a tendency for the catchability coefficient q to increase as stock size declines is not easily demonstrated for the North Sea herring, since a variety of gears have been used in the years (see, e.g. Pope, 1980). There is, however, strong inferential evidence that it does, since a nearly hyperbolic function of q with stock size has been found in several other purse-seine fisheries for pelagic species, notably by Ulltang (1980) for the Norwegian spring spawning herring, by MacCall (1976) for the California sardine and by Butterworth (this volume) for the South West African pilchard.
It is not difficult to see how a nearly hyperbolic relationship between q and stock size, acting synergistically with the other criteria listed above, can lead to virtual certain collapse for a fishery unless drastic remedial action is taken, and in time. Fig. 4 is a simple representation of this positive feed-back system. Suppose that a fishery has been in a reasonably steady condition under moderate fishing for some years, generating the mean stock-from-recruit line A intersecting with the mean recruit-fromstock curve at S1, R1 as shown. Suppose now that a transient environmental perturbation causes recruitment to fall to r1. This poorer year-class will cause the stock to fall which in turn will cause q to increase and steepen the recruit-from-stock line to B. The stock is now more vulnerable to a second fortuitously weak year-class r2, which leads to a further decrease in stock and increase in q. Eventually, the stock-from-recruit line is displaced to D, at which it no longer intersects with the recruit-from-stock curve at any point. The stock now procedes to extinction unless fishing is drastically curtailed or stopped altogether.
| NORTH
SEA PLAICE |
NORTH
SEA HADDOCK |
NORTH
SEA HERRING |
ATLANTO-SCANSIAN HERRING |
PERUVIAN ANCHOVY |
CALIFORNIA SARDINE |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MARINE ENVIRONMENT | Stable | Stable | Stable | Moderately stable | Unstable (Upwelling) |
Unstable (Upwelling) |
FISH POPULATION DYNAMICS |
||||||
| - Degree of S-R compensation | High | Indeterminate | Fairly high | Moderate | Low | Very low |
| - Variability of R | Low | Very high | Moderate | Spasmodically high | Low-Moderate | Moderate |
| - Life-span | Long(20+yrs) | Medium(12+yrs) | Medium(12+yrs) | Medium-Long (15+yrs) |
Short(4+yrs) | Medium(10+yrs) |
| - Pre-mature phase | Long(3&ndash4yrs) | Medium(2yrs) | Medium(2yrs) | Medium(2yrs) | Short(1yr) | Medium(2yrs) |
| - % of growth(wt) span after recruitment | Large(90%) | Large(80%) | Small(40%) | Medium(60%) | Short to Medium(50%) | Medium(50%) |
| FISH BEHAVIOUR | ||||||
| - Habit | demersal | demersal | pelagic | pelagic | pelagic | pelagic |
| - Environmental &ldquoshelter&rdquo | partial | partial | none | none | none | none |
| - shoaling tendency | slight | some | strong | very strong | strong | strong |
| - Ease of detection | undetectable | limited | easily | easily | easily | easily |
| - Dependence (inverse) of catchability on abundance | none | probably none | probably none | very strong | strong | strong |
| -
Vulnerability to escalation of F |
resilient | resilient | vulnerable | very vulnerable | very vulnerable | very vulnerable |
OVERALL FISHERY PROSPECTS |
Steady and dependable inshort to in short and long-term | Highly erratic in short to medium-term; probably reliable in long-term | Fairly Steady in short to medium-term; long-term reliability uncertain | Spasmodic; long-term reliability suspect | Unreliable in medium to long-term, with sudden changes | Unreliable; unstable in the long-term |
| INCREASING EXPLOITATION RISK | ||||||
Fig. 3.- Long-term trends in landings (left-hand diagrams) and the stock-recruitment arrays (right hand diagrams) for the fisheries for: (a) North Sea sole (stable) (b) North Sea herring (collapsed) (c) Peruvian anchovy (unstable). These diagrams show that neither trends in landings nor the shape of the stock-recruitment arrays is alone sufficient as diagnosis of the stability characteristics of fisheries (see also text). Data from Garrod (1982), Saville Bailey (1980), and Csirke (1980).
IMPLICATIONS FOR DECISION-MAKING
In conclusion, let us consider a few of the problems posed to the decision-maker in the light of the above analysis of fishery systems, and the contribution of the scientists to their solution.
Fig.2 illustrates the obvious point that to pass from between the two sub-systems in the direction 1A→1B requires, at the least, transformation of the key variables of effort and catch into monetary equivalents. Despite the significant contributions to fishery dynamics from the economics profession in recent years, it is not immediately apparent in the fisheries literature that any general relationships have been established between these variables. Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong place, yet much of the significance to the decision-maker of stock variability is lost, or at least greatly modified if, for example, the relationship between weight of catch and its price is strongly elastic. Gulland's (1980) analysis of long-term trends in the value of North Sea landings is one of the few of this kind and illustrates this latter point well.
The possible objectives for the management of established and reasonably “reliable” fisheries (see Table 1) have been discussed in the literature with a thoroughness not matched by the clarity with which they are usually defined in practice. It is sufficient here to observe that one way of posing the general problem starts with the premise that there is a potential maximum economic rent that could be gained over time from a fishery (on one or a complex of stocks) if it is managed appropriately. The ultimate choices then lie between:
(a) enabling that maximum rent to be realized directly as profit, which implies a firm limitation of the amount of fishing, or
(b) allowing rather more fishing so that part of that potential rent is dissipated as may be desired, e.g. in larger average catches (possibly, but only within limits), and a larger fishing community in the catching and operational sectors.
As thus formulated, choosing the objectives of fisheries management has a strong political element, to which neither the fisheries scientist nor even the economists can contribute much. There is clearly no generally applicable prescription, although wherever the fishing industry is a major factor in the natural economy or is expected to function as a fairly self-sufficient unit within the national economy, a high priority will be given to achieving a reasonable stability for the fishery system as a whole. Put in these terms, management necessarily involves some form of risk assessment in the way discussed above, with stock variability a dominant factor-and the scientist has a crucial role to play.
This point is well illustrated by returning again to the question of how to keep a fishery reasonably clear of the kind of collapses typified by the herring fisheries cited above, and the “price”to pay for what may be called “prudent exploitation”. The decline of the Norwegian spring spawning herring fishery over the decade from 1960 to its eventual collapse in 1970, with the attendant changes in the size and structure of the stock, have been well documented by the scientists of the Bergen Laboratory (e.g. in Dragesund, Hamre and Ulltang, 1980; and summarised by Bakken, this symposium). This evidence provides a real-life demonstration of the sequence of events illustrated in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Hypothetical stock-recruitment relationship to show how a succession of three poor year-classes (r1, r2, r3) working through an inverse relationship between q and density, can cause a progressive increase in F and hence, steepening of the stock-per-recruit lines (A→B→C→D) resulting eventually in stock extinction (line D no longer intersecting with the recruitment-stock curve at any point). See also text.
Fig. 5 shows how F changed with stock size during this period, the rapid escalation of F at low stock levels being due not to an increase in the amount of fishing but to the nearly inverse relationship between q and stock abundance in this fishery (Ulltang, 1980).
From this diagram it is evident that to keep clear of the rapidly ascending limb of the curve, the stock should not be allowed to fall below about 4 million tons. This corresponds to an F of about 0.3, which is already higher than in the most productive earlier years of the fishery and about twice the value of M. This stock size is located on the stock-recruitment array for the Norwegian spring spawning herring by the vertical broken line of Fig. 6. The variability of recruitment is such that a rather higher stock size, perhaps in the region of 6 million tons, would be needed to reduce to an acceptable level the risk of another year-class as small as that of 1965 setting in motion the collapse feed-back loop. Aproper risk assessment, showing the probability of collapse against stock size, could be made from the observed variability of recruitment using Horwood's (1982) method or by repeated runs on a computer.
The decision-maker then has the unenviable task of weighing various probabilities of collapse against the implications of restraining the fishery to a lower operational level than that at which is would otherwise have been under the influence of the usual shortterm incentives. The price to pay for this more prudent exploitation might include a little smaller average yield, although an F in the region of 0.3 is probably close to the mode of the “equilibrium” yield curve for the fishery: such differences as there might be would be lost in the “noise” of fluctuations in R and price elasticity.
More significant is that the somewhat smaller fishery would be operating at a substantially higher mean catch per unit effort than would otherwise have been the case: effective regulatory measures would therefore be needed to ensure that the effort does not gradually creep up to the danger zone.
Fig.7 shows a hypothetical illustration of prudent exploitation in the case of fishery which is liable to “collapse”. Figure 7 (a) is the equilibrium yield (effort curve incorporating the stock-recruitment curve of Figure 7 (b). Fig. 7 (c) is the corresponding biomass/effort curve. The depth of shading is an indication of the risk of collapse, i.e. if the fishery is being forced by one or two poor recruitment into the positive feed-back loop illustrated in Fig. 4, as happened in the Norwegian fishery. It would clearly be more “prudent” for the fishery to operate at, say, point B then at the MSY point A; and although the total yield would be smaller, the catch per unit effort would be higher.
The difficulty for the administrator of introducing such restraints, and for the scientist of convincing him and the fishermen that it is in their longer-term interests to do so, is clearly formidable. At the time, before the collapse, it was virtually impossible (see Saetersdal, 1980). But now, taking a global view, we are sadder but wiser--or should be, if the lesson is put across effectively. Thus, it is significant that although the stocks of both the Norwegian spring spawning herring and the Icelandic summer spawners were reduced to very low levels, fishing was stopped by decree while a stock remnant still remained (Jakobsson, 1980). The same is true for the North Sea herring and the British Columbia herring (Hourston, 1980). All those are showing signs of recovery, albeit slowly in the first three cases. In contrast, fishing continued unrestrained until the bitter end in the Icelandic spring spawning herring fishery and in the California sardine fishery; both these stocks disappeared completely.
I am indebted to Dr. S. Tanaka for telling me that in both the two classic cases of collapse of Japanese fisheries, the Hokkaido herring in the 1930's and the sardine in the late 1940's, fishing intensity remained high on the dwindling stocks until it was no longer worthwhile for the fishermen to put to sea. The Hokkaido herring disappeared and has never recovered; the sardine has recovered but only after a lapse of some 30 years.
The assessment of exploitation risk is an example of the kind of decision that arises in modern fisheries “management”, involving both equilibrium and transient states. No doubt many other examples could be cited which are at least or more complex, e.g. those arising if more positive management of multi-species is attempted along the lines practiced in Canadian and US fisherise. It is pertinent to ask whether the conventional structure of and communication between the scientific and decision-marking sides is capable of providing the requisite liaison.
| Fig. 5. Relationship between stock size and fishing mortality coefficient F in the Norwegian spring spawning herring fishery in 1971. The vertical broken line shows the stock level at which the rapid escalation of F begins. (Data from Dragesund, Hamre and Ulltang, 1980). |  |
 Fig. 6. Stock-recruitment array for the Norwegian spring spawning herring fishery over the same period as Fig. 5. The vertical broken line indicates the critical 4 m. tonne stock level of Fig. 5; but to reduce the risk of the fishery becoming unstable through a year class as poor as that of 1965, a stock of some 5 or 6 m tonnes would be required (see text). |
Fig. 7. Hypothetical illulstration of the concepty of “prudent exploitation” in a fishery with a strong inverse relation between q and density, a weakly-compensated stock-recruitment and a moderate to highly variable recruitment. Prudent exploitation would require the fishery to operate at B of Fig. 7 (a0 compared with the maximum equilibrium yield point A. Figs. 7 (b) and (c) show the implications of points A and B on the stock-recruitment and c.p.u.e. curves, respectively, for the fishery in question.
One difficulty at this point is the opacity of the processes at key links in the socio-economic sub-system. How science affects the way decisions are reached in the board rooms of the major fishing companies, or how it affects the attitude of individual owner-skippers with a heavy mortgage to pay on their boat, is not readily available. What happens at the decision-making level in government or in the international fisheries bodies is not necessarily any more visible. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), I am glad to see, still provides first-stage scientific assessments to the European Commission on fisheries within the latter's jurisdiction, which are openly published as Reports of the Advisory Committee on Fishery Management. But what happens thereafter, as the scientific assessment is moved up the hierarchy inside the Commission to the ultimate decision-making by the Council of Ministers, is known to a privileged few only.
This situation might not matter if the scientific basis for decisions were easily and quickly tested against results. It is characteristic of natural resource systems, and highly variable fisheries in particular, that this is not so. A high degree of mutual trust and confidence between the scientists and the decision-makers is called for if fishery collapses of the kind we have witnessed during the last decade are to be avoided. Still more will this be true if we are to move into more positive fishery management such as advocated by Gulland (1980) for the North Sea.
My impression - admittedly vague and with only limited support from hard evidence (but see, e.g. Glantz 1981; and Saetersdal 1980) - is that the decision-makers still take only passing notice, most of the time, of what the scientists have to say. If that is right, perhaps we should be giving some thought as to how to get the massage across rather better in the future. It seems to me that one essential step is to acknowledge that the first stage assessment of the fishery is a sophisticated exercise in the application of the scientific method to the analysis and interpretation of complex data from various sources and of uncertain reliability. It requires also a sound understanding of the natural history of the species and of the ecology of the population in question. That being so, there is everything to be gained from publication of those assessments so that they are open to scrutiny by the competent scientific community, just as would be any regular research findings. Not only would this improve the standard of the investigations; it would also give those who have to use them the added confidence that they have run the gauntlet of open scientific peer review, which is the furnace in which the steel of all good scientific research is forged.
REFERENCES
Bakken, E. Recent history of Atlanto-Scandian herring stocks. (This volume).
Beverton, R.J.H. (In press). Resource variability and exploitation strategy. In Segundo Seminario Tailler. Base biologicas para el uso y manejo de recursos naturales renovables. Resursos biologicos marinos (J.C. Castilla, ed.). Monografias Biologicas (2).
Beverton, R.J.H. and A.J. Lee. 1965. Hydrographic fluctuations in the North Atlantic Ocean and some biological consequences. Inst.Biol.Symp. No.14, pp. 79–107. In Biological significance of climatic changes in Britain (E.C. Johnson and L.P. Smith, eds). Academic Press, London.
Butterworth, D.S. Assessment and management of pelagic stocks in the southern Benguela system. (This volume).
Caddy, J.F. 1983. An alternative to equilibrium theory for management of fisheries. Presented at Expert Consultation on the Regulation of Fishing Effort (Fishing Mortality). 17–26 January 1983, Rome.
Csirke, J. 1980. Recruitment in the Peruvian anchovy and its dependence on the adult population. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:307–313.
Dragesund, O., Hamre, J. and φ. Ulltang. 1980. Biology and population dynamics of the Norwegian spring spawning herring, Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.Explor.Mer. 177:43–71.
Garrod, D.J. 1982. Stock and recruitment - again. Fish.Res.Tech.Rep. 68, MAFF, Lowestoft.
Glantz, M.H. 1981. Considerations of the societal value of an El Niño forecast. pp. 449–476. In Resources Management and Environmental Uncertainty: lesson from coastal upwelling fisheries. Wiley and Sons, New York.
Gulland, J.G. 1980. Long-term potential effects from management of the fish resources of the North Atlantic. J.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 40(1):8–16.
Holt, S.J. 1980. Sharing our planet with wildlife. J.F. auna Pres.Soc. XV (3):259–261.
Horwood, J.W. 1982. The variance of population and yield from an age-structured stock, with application to the North Sea herring. J.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 40(3):237–244.
Hourston, A.S. 1980. The decline and recovery of Canada's Pacific herring stocks. Rapp.Pv.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer 177:143–153.
Jakobsson, J. 1980. Exploitation of the lcelandic spring and summer spawning herring in relation to fisheries management, 1947–1977. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.Explor.Mer. 177:23–42.
Kawasaki, T. Why do some pelagic fishes have wide fluctuations in their numbers? — biological basis of fluctuation from the viewpoint of evolutionary ecology. (This volume)
Kondo, K. 1980. The recovery of the Japanese sardine - the biological basis of stock-size fluctuations. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:332–354.
Larkin, P.A. 1977. An epitaph for the concept of maximum sustained yield. Trans.Amer.Fish.Soc. 106(1):1–11.
MacCall, A.D. 1976. Density dependence of catchability coefficient in the California Pacific sardine Sardinops sagax caerulea, purse seine fishery. Calif.Coop.Ocean.Fish.Invest.Rep. 18:136–148.
Pope, J.G. 1980. Some consequences for fisheries management of aspects of the behaviour of pelagic fish. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:466–476.
Saetersdal, G. 1980. A review of past management of some pelagic stocks and its effectiveness. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:505–512.
Saville, A. and R.S. Bailey. 1980. The assessment and management of the herring stock in the North Sea and to the west of Scotland. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:112–142.
Sharp, G.D., J. Csirke and S. Garcia. Modelling fisheries: what was the question? (This volume).
Ulltang, φ. 1980. Factors affecting the reaction of pelagic fish stocks to exploitation and requiring a new approach to assessment and management. Rapp.P-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 177:489– 504.
Ursin, E. 1982. Stability and variability in the marine ecosystem. Dana. (2):51–68.
