| Access rights | An access right allows a vessel to be used in a managed fishery for the purposes and under the constraints specified in a management plan, e.g. to fish for a particular species up to specified proportion of the total allowable catch. |
| Biodiversity | The variability from all sources among living organisms including diversity within species (genetic diversity), between species and of ecosystems. |
| Bycatch | Species (or size classes) taken in a fishery targeting other species (or a different size range of the same species). That part of the bycatch which has no human value is discarded and returned to the sea, usually dead or dying. |
| Direct effects of fisheries | Direct effects of fisheries are direct impacts on the target and bycatch species or habitat. They include affects on the abundance, size structure and genetic composition of populations and damage to or destruction of sensitive bottom habitats. |
| Ecolabelling | A voluntary method of certification of environmental quality of a product and/or the environmental performance of a process based on consideration of the full production cycle and agreed sets of criteria. |
| Ecosystem | An organizational unit consisting of an aggregation of plants, animals (including humans) and micro-organisms, along with the non-living components of the environment. |
| Ecosystem health | A measure of ecosystem resilience (ability to maintain its structure and pattern of behaviour in the presence of stress), organization (number and diversity of interactions between ecosystem components) and vigour (a measure of activity, metabolism or primary productivity). A healthy ecosystem is able to maintain its structure (organization) and function (vigour) over time in face of external stress (resilience). |
| Ecosystem integrity | The ability of an ecosystem to support and maintain a balanced, harmonious and adaptive biological community and that has species composition, diversity and functional organization comparable to that of natural habitat in the region. |
| Fishing capacity | The total quantity offish that could be taken by a fishing unit, for example a fleet, assuming that there was no imposed limitation on the fishing activities or yield from the stock. |
| Fishing effort | The total amount of fishing activity on the fishing grounds over a given period of time. Effort is often expressed for a specific gear type, e.g. number of hours trawled per day, number of hooks set per day or number of hauls of a beach seine per day. |
| Fishing mortality | A technical term which refers to the proportion of the fish available being removed by fishing in a small unit of time; e.g. a fishing mortality rate of 0.2 implies that approximately 20% of the average population will be removed in a year due to fishing. |
| Habitat | The environment in which the fish live, including everything that surrounds and affects its life: e.g., water quality; bottom; vegetation; associated species (including food supplies). |
| Incentive measure | A management measure intended to motivate or encourage stakeholders to conduct their activities in a responsible way that contributes towards achieving the goals and objectives. Incentive measures can include, for example, implementation of suitable systems of access rights, taxes and subsidies and market incentives such as ecolabelling and tradable access or property rights. |
| Indicator | A variable that can be monitored in a system, e.g. a fishery, to give a measure of the state of the system at any given time. Indicators are used to assist, for example, fishery managers to track how well the objectives (e.g. the state of the stock) are being achieved over time. Indicators should therefore be linked to specific objectives and to the related reference points. |
| Indirect effects of fisheries | Fisheries can affect a population or ecosystem indirectly by, for example, increasing or reducing the abundance of a predator, prey or competitor, or by damaging habitat that is important in the life cycle of organisms in the ecosystem. |
| Input control | Management measures used to control the time and place as well as the type and/or amount of fishing in order to limit catches and fishing mortality, e.g. restrictions on type and quantity of gear, effort, and capacity; closed seasons. |
| Integrated environmental and economic accounting | A system that considers stocks and flows of environmental goods and services. It uses a set of aggregate indicators to monitor environmental and economic performances, usually at the national level but, if data permit, at subnational levels and ecosystem levels, to guide policy-makers. |
| Interested party | See Stakeholder. |
| Institution | Using a broad definition, an institution is any form of relations between individuals or groups of interested parties and the State. These may include rules (e.g. defining the management rules and measures), mechanisms (e.g. the processes used in making decisions) and the organizational support structures that develop and implement the rules (e.g. a fishery administration, intergovernmental management body, gathering of village elders or committee of users). |
| Legal instrument | A broad term that includes any accord or law (for example convention, treaty, agreement, decree, act of parliament, regulation) that creates binding obligations for States, entities or persons to which it applies. |
| Limited entry | A common management tool in which the government issues a limited number of licenses to fish, thereby limiting the number of participants in the fishery. |
| Management measure | A specific control applied in a fishery to contribute to achieving the objectives, including some or all of technical measures (gear regulations, closed areas and time closures), input controls, output controls and user rights. |
| Management plan | A formal or informal arrangement between a fisheries management authority and interested parties or stakeholders which identifies the partners in the fishery and their respective roles, details the agreed objectives for the fishery and specifies the management rules and regulations which apply to it and provides other details about the fishery which are relevant to the task of the management authority |
| Marine protected area (MPA) | An area of intertidal or subtidal terrain, together with its overlying water and associated flora, fauna, historical and cultural features, which has been reserved by law or other effective means to protect part or all of the environment within the MPA. |
| Monitoring control and surveillance (MCS) | Monitoring gathers information on the fishery that is used to assist in developing and assessing appropriate management measures (controls), while surveillance uses this information to ensure that these controls are complied with. |
| Operational objective | A target that is actively sought and provides a direction for management action. For example, achieving a specified income for individual fishers is one possible economic objective of fisheries management. |
| Output control | Management measure aimed at directly limiting the fish catch or landings through e.g. a total allowable catch and quotas |
| Participatory management | Participatory management in fisheries brings together the different stakeholders for the purposes of sharing one or more of knowledge, authority, and responsibility for planning and implementation. The amount of sharing can range from consultation to full responsibility for making, implementing and reviewing decisions. |
| Precautionary approach | The precautionary approach involves the application of prudent foresight when action needs to be taken with incomplete knowledge. It requires that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall be not used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. |
| Reference point | An estimated value derived from an agreed scientific procedure and/or an agreed model which corresponds to a desired (target) or undesired (limit) state of the resource, the fishery and stakeholders, or the ecosystem and can be used as a guide for fisheries management. |
| Restocking | The release of cultured juveniles into the wild to restore the spawning biomass of severely overfished stocks to levels at which they can once again provide sustainable yields. Restocking requires managers to protect the released animals and their progeny until replenishment has occurred. |
| Stakeholder (also referred to as an interested party) | Any person or group with a legitimate interest in the conservation and management of the resources being managed e.g. participants in a specific fishery, recreational fishers, conservation interest groups, artisanal fishers, fish processors and traders, government. The public and the consumers could also be considered as interested parties in some circumstances. |
| Stock enhancement | An activity or programme designed to increase the size or growth of the fishery resource stock. It may include restocking programmes but can also involve activities such as habitat engineering and introducing new species or new strains of existing species. |
| Target resource - oriented management (also referred to as the single-species approach) | A term used to refer to conventional fisheries management in which the stock of the target species is the main concern of management actions. |
| Territorial use right (TURF) | Fishery management methods that assign rights to individuals and/or groups to fish in certain locations, generally, although not necessarily, based on long-standing tradition. |
| Technical measure | For the purposes of this publication, technical measures are defined as restrictions or constraints to regulate the output which can be obtained from a specified amount of effort. They can include gear restrictions, closed seasons and closed areas. The term may also be restricted to refer specifically to measures intended to effect the efficiency of fishing gear. |
| Total allowable catch (TAC) | The TAC is the total catch allowed to be taken from a resource in a specified period (usually a year), as defined in the management plan. The TAC may be allocated to the stakeholders in the form of quotas as specific quantities or proportions. |
| Vessel monitoring system (VMS) | As part of modern monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) systems the VMS is a vessel tracking system (usually satellite-based) which provides management authorities with accurate information on fishing vessels position (and speed) at time intervals. |
