In between plankton and whales, there are thousands of fish species whose job it is to convert plankton into fish biomass and to serve as food for bigger predators. They have an essential role in their ecosystems. These fish—known as pelagic species—are also the ones most sought by the fishing industry. The problem is that, just like with monoculture farming on land, commercial fisheries managers’ business models tend to think in terms of commodities rather than ecosystems. In order to protect the ecological balance of the ocean, that needs to change.
At a Seafood Expo Global session on Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management, (EBFM) a panel of experts noted that the percentage of fisheries using an ecosystem-based approach is still very small. It is growing, but will need support from both government and industry as well as more sophisticated data and ecosystem modeling to make a difference. And fisheries, just like terrestrial farms, will have to start diversifying.
Andrew Clayton project director of international fisheries for the Pew Charitable Trusts started the panel by pointing out that, while aquaculture production surpassed wild fisheries in 2024, that doesn’t mean the pressure is off of fisheries. Pelagic fish are what most fish feeds are made of. Clayton said that around 17 million tons of wild caught fish are needed to produce fish meal and fish oil, most of which goes to feed those farmed fish. The remainder is provided from trimmings and by-products.
“These millions of tons of catches of species like anchoveta, herring, sardinella, these are the fish that convert plankton into fish biomass, and they’re then predated upon by other fish and wildlife. They’re hugely important.” Anchoveta alone, as a species, contributes 7% of global wild catch.
The people who manage these pelagic fisheries must juggle competing demands: the needs of local fishers and food security; the needs of predators who depend on these fish for food in their ecosystems, including the commercial species—like tuna—that depend on them; and their own biodiversity commitments to things like the Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and now the Science-based Targets Initiative.
But, Clayton said, some of these fisheries lack the basic building blocks of management. In the Northeast Atlantic, for example, blue whiting, mackerel and Atlanto-Scandian herring have all been overfished for decades.
“There are stable structures for those parties to get together in meeting rooms every October and November to look at the science and look at the total catches that should be allowed for those pelagic species. And they’re collectively agreeing to disagree because they can’t agree relative shares and they’re walking away and setting unilateral quotas. And this means that those fisheries are being overfished, they’ve been overfished for several years now, they’ve been getting away with that for a certain amount of time where the fish populations were not necessarily responding to that overfishing and now they’re starting to see declines for those species like blue whiting.”
“So if these relatively well-resourced parties with good science can’t manage these fisheries it really bodes badly for the businesses that rely on these inputs to produce fishmeal and fish oil for aquaculture feeds.”
In the UK, he noted, the government shut down a Sandeel fishery because it was concerned about the impact of declining populations on the seabirds that depend on them. The European Union felt this was a disproportionate response. After five years of wrangling—during which time Brexit happened—it looks like the closure will be upheld.
“But it highlights how the management thinking is evolving,” Clayton said. “And how there’s going to be a new paradigm where managers also need to take into account the impact in those ecosystems of how they’re managing those large-scale fisheries.”
The supply chain, he said, has an opportunity to ask for long-term harvest strategies and management strategy evaluation so everyone “can get around the table and agree what the aims are for that fishery and also meeting these broader biodiversity commitments and applying ecosystem-based management.” Otherwise, he said, the managers are handing a risk to the supply chain.
Gonçalo Ferreira de Carvalho, executive coordinator of Sciaena, an NGO promoting sustainable use of the ocean, pointed out that transitioning from single species management is “a drumbeat we’ve been hearing consistently for a long time.” There’s also a need to understand the impacts of other Blue Economy industries on the environment and fish stocks.
“I think there’s a belief that transitioning to EBFM will help deliver both sustainable fisheries and also biodiversity protection which have so far been managed pretty much in separate silos. And I think what we see here a lot from fishing representatives in the EU and beyond is the urgent need to incorporate the impacts of other human activities.”
So far, he said, progress is piecemeal and slow. “It will be very complex and challenging to transition and it will take time and it will need a bit of a change to the status quo. And we all as humans fear change.”
The development of Framework for Ecosystem-Informed Science and Advice (FEISA) in 2024 by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is a big step forward. FEISA combines a system of indicators with risk-based approaches spanning biological, socio-economic, and governance dimensions, aiming to provide a holistic understanding of ecosystem health and resilience.
“It very much uses risk as a currency to identify trade-offs at the end, and it’s very much focused on integration and adaptation. So it’s a flexible and interactive structure to align ICES science and advisory practice with EBFM needs.”
The final speaker was Dave Martin, Deputy Division Director, Programs Division at Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP). Martin said SFP’s database of fisheries and aquaculture assessments focuses primarily on the management system and on stock health. The group has been developing a methodology to add some scores around environment and biodiversity, but has only been able to score fisheries based on resource availability.
Across the board, he said, what the organization sees is limited data collection, limited research–especially on non-target species and ecosystems, and limited measures to reduce bycatch. And that doesn’t even include parts of the world where the data isn’t collected. Scores have been plateauing in recent years and 2024 looks like it will show reduced scores for effective fisheries management. Many of the challenges, he said, are in the precautionary management system.
Martin said low scores may mean harvest control rules are not in place, or that mid-season management measures have been neglected, or that managers aren’t following science advice “even when that science advice is very robust and fantastic.”
For biodiversity scores, he said SFP looks at four additional indicators: bycatch; endangered, threatened or protected (ETP) species; impacts to bethnic habitats, and impacts to the broader ecosystem.
When a fishery gets a low score, he said, it may mean there’s a problem they can see in the data. Or it may mean there’s a lack of information about what’s going on. “That information isn’t getting into the public domain and anything we assess on FishSource is based solely on information that’s in the public domain.”
Martin noted that there is a lot of pressure on governments to get involved in moving the needle on EBFM. But he is from the U.S. where funding for science is being cut. He said SFP was founded to work with industry and our organization was founded to work with industry and that industry—including the supply chain—had a key role to play. “Not in just asking for better management, not just threatening to stop buying–which are all important things–but to actively get involved in the management process.”
Fishers, he said are best positioned to count fish. In-country processors are well-positioned to engage governments. And then importers and end buyers are well-positioned to request or demand better compliance.
“We really need to identify whole value chain approaches so that we can work collaboratively to address some of these challenges…. There’s no way one company can do it on their own, certainly not in their whole supply chain. We really need to find ways for companies to work together.”
SFP recommends pre-competitive platforms that allow companies that compete in the marketplace to find ways to collaborate on issues of common interest, like improving fisheries management, and then “go back outside and compete on price and quality and all the other things.”
