An extended ecosystem-based fisheries assessment

Abstract

The ecosystem-based fisheries assessment (EBFA) approach (Zhang et al., 2009) was developed to assess fisheries resources, which evaluates four management objectives: sustainability, biodiversity, habitat quality, and socio-economic benefits. However, the approach was designed to assess ecosystem impacts of offshore fisheries, and so it considers only the impacts of fishing on marine ecosystems and fisheries resources. This study is to extend the EBFA approach for inshore or coastal ecosystems, which have a variety of impacts due to a number of anthropogenic activities other than fishing. These activities cause significant impacts on inshore ecosystems and their fisheries resources, which include various kinds of impacts from multiple driving forces such as 1) aquaculture, 2) stock enhancement activities, 3) land-based wastes and pollution, 4) inshore construction activities, 5) leisure activities like sport fishing and scuba diving, 6) accidents and disasters like oil spills, climate changes and fluctuations, harmful algal blooms and jellyfish attacks, and 7) other man-caused factors like artificial reefs input, stocking fries and juveniles, constructing marine forests and marine ranches etc. We attempted to develop a revised version of EBFA. A number of indicators for assessing impacts of those driving forces were developed in this study. However, relevant reference points for the indicators have not been fully developed yet. Practical applications seem to be far off due to the lack of knowledge and information for assessing risks of some indicators, and thus further research, especially on the reference points, is required to assess all relevant impacts to marine ecosystems.