Recreational or sport fishing is important for three major reasons:
economic (it is a multi-billion dollar world industry);
social (it is embedded in the cultures of many nations;
ecological (it affects the environment and food webs in many ways).

"Recreational Fisheries" covers a range of methods, case studies and perspectives on the multidisciplinary evaluation of the benefits and costs of sports fisheries.

Tony Pitcher and Charles Hollingworth, the editors of this landmark publication, have drawn together chapters from more than 30 contributors from North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa, providing a truly international perspective on a global industry. Contents include detailed assessments, evaluations and survey mthods of sport fisheries in many countries.

This book is an essential reference for anyone active in the management, assessment, policy making or development of sport and recreational fisheries worldwide. All fisheries scientists and managers will require a copy of this important publication. Environmental and aquatic scientists, ecologists and oceanographers will also find this book of great value in their work. Libraries in research establishments, laboratories and universities where fisheries and biological sciences are studied and taught should have multiple copies of this book.
Covers a worldwide industry of great commercial importance.
Internationally known editors and contributors from four continents.
Uses case studies from around the globe to illustrate the subject.
A core subject essential to fisheries scientists.

The current high demand for fish and increased awareness of the role of the environment in supporting human well being has led to a situation where attitudes to inland water resources are changing rapidly.

Trends in resource use and environmental impact are very evident in inland waters which are particularly vulnerable as they act as collectors of all the activities occurring in their basins and rank as some of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. The principle changes influencing the evolution of the aquatic resource for fisheries are described in this book, which has been compiled for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Quantitative modeling methods have become a central tool in the management of harvested fish populations. This book examines how these modeling methods work, why they sometimes fail, and how they might be improved by incorporating larger ecological interactions. "Fisheries Ecology and Management" provides a broad introduction to the concepts and quantitative models needed to successfully manage fisheries.

Walters and Martell develop models that account for key ecological dynamics such as trophic interactions, food webs, multi-species dynamics, risk-avoidance behavior, habitat selection and density-dependence. They treat fisheries policy development as a two-stage process, first identifying strategies for varying harvest in relation to changes in abundance, then finding ways to implement such strategies in terms of monitoring and regulatory procedures. This book provides a general framework for developing assessment models in terms of state-observation dynamics hypotheses, and points out that most fisheries assessment failures have been due to inappropriate observation model hypotheses rather than faulty models for ecological dynamics.

Intended as a text in upper division and graduate classes on fisheries assessment and management, this useful guide will also be widely read by ecologists and fisheries scientists.

Jane Dolby fell in love with a fisherman - the most dangerous peacetime occupation that exists - leading her to find a place in a traditional British world that many have forgotten. Jane was not expecting to fall in love, but she did with Colin, a local fisherman in her hometown. Then one day she faces the loss every fisherman's wife fears: the disappearance of her husband when his boat overturns at sea. Three days later, the boat is finally dredged up, without Colin. At the same time as Jane struggles with her grief, she must fight to keep a roof over her family's heads. With the help and kindness of friends and strangers, the fishing world rallies around one of their own and in time, Jane forms a plan to give something back to the community that has helped her. Jane brings together 40 women from fishing communities up and down the country to release a charity single, founding The Fishwives Choir, and gives a voice to women previously unheard. SONG OF THE SEA is the true story of one woman's love and loss, and after years in which grief stole her ability to sing, she finds her own voice again.

Aquaculture exemplifies the ongoing global struggle to strike a sustainable balance between the conflicting needs of a rapidly increasing world population, human health, ecosystem health, the welfare of wild and domesticated animals, and the economic principles of globalized economies. On the one hand, aquaculture has great potential for providing us with a healthy and nutritious food supply whilst alleviating pressure on captive fisheries and reducing fisheries-induced habitat destruction, overfishing, genetic modification of wild populations, and wholesale waste of bycatch. On the other hand, aquaculture relies heavily on clean water, an increasingly precious (and dwindling) resource that is subject to intense pressure of being used for many competing objectives. This concise primer introduces students to the basic concepts, opportunities, and challenges of aquaculture with an emphasis on ecological considerations. It provides a critical assessment of current aquaculture practices from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective and from the standpoint of how best to align the two major (and often conflicting) goals of future aquaculture development: minimizing reliance on ecosystem services whilst maximizing productivity. A Primer of Ecological Aquaculture provides an accessible and authoritative overview for a wide range of undergraduate majors ranging from biology, engineering, and environmental policy to business and management. It will also appeal to a more general academic audience who wish to gain a current overview of the field.

The United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) represents a major international effort to improve fisheries governance, resource recovery, and sustainable development of international fisheries. Straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks are especially vulnerable to overexploitation because of ineffective management regimes and noncompliance by fishing interests. This book explains the international legal framework, summarizes the state of the fisheries, and outlines the efforts of regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs) to adopt and implement key elements of UNFSA: the precautionary approach, the ecosystem approach, decision making, and enforcement.

The fishing industry's critical dependence on the natural environment makes it very different from other economic sectors. How it can optimally exploit a common resource while ensuring its sustainability raises many economic challenges. This book, suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on fisheries economics and management, provides an introduction to the economics of the fishing industry and the role of fisheries in the world economy. The book's primary focus is on capture fisheries, although the discussion brings in wider aquaculture for comparative analysis. The key economic concepts that drive the industry, most notably sustainable yield, are explained in detail, before examining how the industry puts them into practice in a complex regulatory environment. The variability of fish stocks is considered and case studies of some spectacular stock crashes are discussed. The law of the sea is explained and how the movement of fish stocks across ocean boundaries has created regulatory bodies to manage international fisheries. At the heart of this management lies the quota system and the book outlines how it works and how, controversially, such quotas have become transferable. The book offers readers a comprehensive and rigorous guide to the economic considerations motivating the industry and highlights the environmental challenges facing the sector as global consumption of fish continues to rise.

For three hundred years, generations of Tilghman Islanders have lived by harvesting the waters of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. They are watermen, an old English term for commercial fishermen, and their lives today retain much of the spirit and simplicity that characterized their land's first Anglo-Saxon settlers. Watermen is the story of their lives told by Randy Peffer, a young writer who came to Tilghman Island to search for his ancestral roots and left a year later with the makings of this book. Watermen is a singular work, a book that will touch anyone who has ever glimpsed the peope of the Chesapeake, whether in literature or in life.

Aquaculture exemplifies the ongoing global struggle to strike a sustainable balance between the conflicting needs of a rapidly increasing world population, human health, ecosystem health, the welfare of wild and domesticated animals, and the economic principles of globalized economies. On the one hand, aquaculture has great potential for providing us with a healthy and nutritious food supply whilst alleviating pressure on captive fisheries and reducing fisheries-induced habitat destruction, overfishing, genetic modification of wild populations, and wholesale waste of bycatch. On the other hand, aquaculture relies heavily on clean water, an increasingly precious (and dwindling) resource that is subject to intense pressure of being used for many competing objectives. This concise primer introduces students to the basic concepts, opportunities, and challenges of aquaculture with an emphasis on ecological considerations. It provides a critical assessment of current aquaculture practices from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective and from the standpoint of how best to align the two major (and often conflicting) goals of future aquaculture development: minimizing reliance on ecosystem services whilst maximizing productivity. A Primer of Ecological Aquaculture provides an accessible and authoritative overview for a wide range of undergraduate majors ranging from biology, engineering, and environmental policy to business and management. It will also appeal to a more general academic audience who wish to gain a current overview of the field.

In The Fishermen's Frontier, David Arnold examines the economic, social, cultural, and political context in which salmon have been harvested in southeast Alaska over the past 250 years. He starts with the aboriginal fishery, in which Native fishers lived in close connection with salmon ecosystems and developed rituals and lifeways that reflected their intimacy. The transformation of the salmon fishery in southeastern Alaska from an aboriginal resource to an industrial commodity has been fraught with historical ironies. Tribal peoples -- usually considered egalitarian and communal in nature -- managed their fisheries with a strict notion of property rights, while Euro-Americans -- so vested in the notion of property and ownership -- established a common-property fishery when they arrived in the late nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, federal conservation officials tried to rationalize the fishery by "improving" upon nature and promoting economic efficiency, but their uncritical embrace of scientific planning and their disregard for local knowledge degraded salmon habitat and encouraged a backlash from small-boat fishermen, who clung to their "irrational" ways. Meanwhile, Indian and white commercial fishermen engaged in identical labors, but established vastly different work cultures and identities based on competing notions of work and nature. Arnold concludes with a sobering analysis of the threats to present-day fishing cultures by forces beyond their control. However, the salmon fishery in southeastern Alaska is still very much alive, entangling salmon, fishermen, industrialists, scientists, and consumers in a living web of biological and human activity that has continued for thousands of years.

Norwegian spring-spawning herring and Northeast Arctic cod are two of the largest and commercially most important fish stocks in the North Atlantic. Both these stocks have their spawning fields along the Norwegian coast and they have been the major target species for Norwegian fisheries for a millennium. They are also among the few fish stocks in the world which have been systematically investigated and monitored for more than a century. The scientific results, arrived at early in the 20th century for these two stocks, formed the basis for much of the development in international fisheries science later on. This book describes how fisheries, fisheries science, and management for Norwegian spring-spawning herring and Northeast Arctic cod developed during the 20th century. Over time, both populations developed serious decline in stock size and yield due to overfishing. The herring stock was in a state of collapse for about 20 years. Management measures that were then introduced permitted both stocks to recover in the 1990s. The contributors to the book have all been working as fisheries scientists at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen.

Ecosystem-based fishery management (EBFM) is rapidly becoming the default approach in global fisheries management. The clarity of what EBFM means is sharpening each year and there is now a real need to evaluate progress and assess the effectiveness and impacts. By examining a suite of over 90 indicators (including socioeconomic, governance, environmental forcing, major pressures, systems ecology, and fisheries criteria) for 9 major US fishery ecosystem jurisdictions, the authors systematically track the progress the country has made towards advancing EBFM and making it an operational reality. The assessment covers a wide range of data in both time (multiple decades) and space (from the tropics to the poles, representing over 10% of the world's ocean surface area). The authors view progress towards the implementation of EBFM as synonymous with improved management of living marine resources in general, and highlight the findings from a national perspective. Although US-centric, the lessons learned are directly applicable for all parts of the global ocean. Much work remains, but significant progress has already been made to better address many of the challenges facing the sustainable management of our living marine resources. This is an essential and accessible reference for all fisheries professionals who are currently practicing, or progressing towards, ecosystem-based fisheries management. It will also be of relevance and use to researchers, teachers, managers, and graduate students in marine ecology, fisheries biology, biological oceanography, global change biology, conservation biology, and marine resource management.

"Daniel Pauly is a friend whose work has inspired me for years." -Ted Danson, actor, ocean activist, and co-author of Oceana "This wonderfully personal and accessible book by the world's greatest living fisheries biologist summarizes and expands on the causes of collapse and the essential actions that will be required to rebuild fish stocks for future generations." -Dr. Jeremy Jackson, ocean scientist and author of Breakpoint The world's fisheries are in crisis. Their catches are declining, and the stocks of key species, such as cod and bluefin tuna, are but a small fraction of their previous abundance, while others have been overfished almost to extinction. The oceans are depleted and the commercial fishing industry increasingly depends on subsidies to remain afloat. In these essays, award-winning biologist Dr. Daniel Pauly offers a thought-provoking look at the state of today's global fisheries-and a radical way to turn it around. Starting with the rapid expansion that followed World War II, he traces the arc of the fishing industry's ensuing demise, offering insights into how and why it has failed. With clear, convincing prose, Dr. Pauly draws on decades of research to provide an up-to-date assessment of ocean health and an analysis of the issues that have contributed to the current crisis, including globalization, massive underreporting of catch, and the phenomenon of "shifting baselines," in which, over time, important knowledge is lost about the state of the natural world. Finally, Vanishing Fish provides practical recommendations for a way forward-a vision of a vibrant future where small-scale fisheries can supply the majority of the world's fish. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute

This open access book is an original contribution to the knowledge on fishing and research associated with one of the most enigmatic fish of our seas: bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus (L.). Based on available evidence, it reconstructs the possible methods used to catch large spawners in the Strait of Gibraltar thousands of years ago and describes the much more recent overfishing that led to a great reduction in the catches of the trap fishery on the area and the disappearance of the northern European fisheries. It is the first book to relate the overfishing of juvenile fishes in certain areas to the decline of large spawners in other very distant areas, revealing one of the main underlying causes of this decline, which has remained a mystery to the fishing sector and scientists alike for over 50 years. This finding should serve to prevent similar cases from arising in the future.

Before commercial whaling was outlawed in the 1980s, diplomats, scientists, bureaucrats, environmentalists, and sometimes even whalers themselves had attempted to create an international regulatory framework that would allow for a sustainable whaling industry. In Whales and Nations, Kurkpatrick Dorsey tells the story of the international negotiation, scientific research, and industrial development behind these efforts —and their ultimate failure. Whales and Nations begins in the early twentieth century, when new technology revived the fading whaling industry and made whale hunting possible on an unprecedented scale. By the 1920s, declining whale populations prompted efforts to develop “rational�—what today would be called sustainable—whaling practices. But even though almost everyone involved with commercial whaling knew that the industry was on an unsustainable path, Dorsey argues, powerful economic, political, and scientific forces made failure nearly inevitable. Based on a deep engagement with diplomatic history, Whales and Nations provides a unique perspective on the challenges facing international conservation projects. This history has profound implications for today’s pressing questions of global environmental cooperation and sustainability. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QsLlM5KTx0

British traditional working boats are famous - Morecambe Bay prawners, Manx luggers, Scots fifies and zulus, Lowestoft and Yarmouth drifters, Yorkshire cobles, Colchester smacks, Hastings beach boats, Brixham trawlers, and many others. Over a century ago, progressive fishermen began to install engines in their boats. Motor fishing boats have been part of our coastal scene since then. Local boatbuilders built local kinds of boat to suit each home port and its fisheries; examples include Cornish pilchard boats and long liners, Devon crabbers and beach boats, motor bawleys and cocklers, motor drifters and seiners, and the famous ring netters of the Clyde ports. These boats have gone or are fast disappearing. This book tells their story.

Fishing has played a vital role in human history and culture. But today this key resource faces a serious crisis as most species are being overfished or fished to their very limit. Governments have tried to tackle the problem with limited success. Many of their actions have been counterproductive or ineffective. What will happen to global fisheries, and the populations that depend on them, as we continue to catch more fish than the oceans can reproduce? This book explores the causes of the current crisis in the world's fisheries, and what needs to be done to address the situation. It explains the structure of the fishing industry, the incentives that persuade individuals or companies to catch fish at unsustainable levels, and illuminates the problems created by governmental efforts to use fishing policy as a tool for economic development or to win votes in domestic elections. It also looks at the role of aquaculture in either decreasing or increasing the pressure on wild fish stocks. The dire condition of fish stocks has led governments and consumer organizations to consider new approaches to protect the global supply of fish. DeSombre and Barkin conclude by showing how such methods, along with new forms of international regulation and informed decision-making by consumers, all have an important part to play in rewarding and thus encouraging sustainable fishing behaviour in the future.

Conservation and Management of Transnational Tuna Fisheries reviews and synthesizes the existing literature, focusing on rights-based management and the creation of economic incentives to manage transnational tuna fisheries. Transnational tuna fisheries are among the most important fisheries in the world, and tuna commissions are increasingly shifting toward this approach. Comprehensively covering the subject, Conservation and Management of Transnational Tuna Fisheries summarizes global experience and offers practical applications for applying rights-based management and the creation of economic incentives, addressing potential problems as well as the total level of capacity. This reference work is divided into four parts, beginning with an overview of the book, including the issues, property rights, and rights-based management. The subsequent sections address issues arising with property rights, discuss bycatch, and cover compliance, enforcement, trade measures, and politics. Written by an expert team of international authors, Conservation and Management of Transnational Tuna Fisheries will appeal to social and fisheries scientists and fishery managers in universities and research institutions, government and non-governmental organizations, fisheries management bodies, members of the fishing industry, and international institutions.

Among the environmental challenges facing us is alleviating the damage to marine ecosystems caused by pollution and overfishing. Coming to grips with contemporary problems, this book argues, depends on understanding how people have historically generated, perceived, and responded to environmental change. This work explores interactions between society and environment in China s most important marine fishery, the Zhoushan Archipelago off the coast of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, from its nineteenth-century expansion to the exhaustion of the most important fish species in the 1970s.

This history of Zhoushan s fisheries illuminates long-term environmental processes and analyzes the intersections of local, regional, and transnational ecological trends and the array of private and state interests that shaped struggles for the control of these common-pool natural resources. What institutions did private and state actors use to regulate the use of the fishery? How did relationships between social organizations and the state change over time? What types of problems could these arrangements solve and which not? What does the fate of these institutions tell us about environmental change in late imperial and modern China? Answering these questions will give us a better understanding of the relationship between past ecological changes and present environmental challenges.

A trawlerman's life was hard, often up against bad weather, rough seas and black frosts, although on calm days it was a pleasure to be at sea. In this eventful memoir, deep-sea trawlerman James Greene relates his life at sea, from his childhood when his father would take him out in some of the worst gales and hurricanes imaginable to his early career as a deckhand learner, obtaining his skipper's ticket, and the many experiences - both disastrous and otherwise - to occur throughout his time at sea. During his career he was involved in ship collisions and fires, arrested for poaching, fired upon by Icelandic gunboats, in countless storms and even swept overboard in icy conditions off the Russian coast. The British trawling industry is largely a bygone age and people are beginning to forget the adventures, hardships and joys that characterised this most dangerous of professions. This book seeks to keep the memories of a once great industry alive.

The farming of the freshwater prawn "Macrobrachium rosenbergii" has developed rapidly during recent years. Advances in techniques, and the huge expansion of world demand for this species, continue to stimulate the growth of a multi-million dollar industry.

This landmark publication is a compendium of information on every aspect of the farming of "M. rosenbergii." A comprehensive review of the status of freshwater prawn farming research, development and commercial practice, the book is intended to stimulate further advances in the knowledge and understanding of this important field.

An extremely well-known and internationally-respected team of contributing authors have written cutting edge chapters covering all major aspects of the subject. Coverage includes biology, hatchery and grow-out culture systems, feeds and feeding, up-to-date information on the status of freshwater prawn farming around the world, post-harvest handling and processing, markets, and economics and business management. Further chapters are devoted to the culture of other prawn species, prawn capture fisheries and the sustainability of freshwater prawn culture. Contributions to the book have been brought together and edited by Michael New and Wagner Valenti, themselves widely known for their work in this area.

The comprehensive information in "Freshwater Prawn Culture" will give an important commercial edge to anyone involved in the culture and trade of freshwater prawns. Readership should include prawn farm personnel, business managers and researchers, and invertebrate, freshwater and crustacean biologists. Copies of the book should be available on the shelves of all libraries in research establishments and universities where aquaculture and fisheries are studied and taught.

Michael Bernard New, OBE is a Past-President of the World Aquaculture Society and President-Elect of the European Aquaculture Society; Wagner Cotroni Valenti is a Professor at the Aquaculture Center, Sao Paulo State University, Brazil.

TRAWLERMAN is the memoir of Jimmy Buchan - skipper of the Amity II, a fishing vessel based in Peterhead, Europe's largest fishing port. Jimmy's story is one of incredible highs and lows. It's a life that has been lived on the very crest of danger and despair, a career of thirty years that has seen other skippers fall by the wayside, undone by a declining industry, or worse, lost to the unforgiving North Sea. By turns gripping, comic and nostalgic, this tale of Britain's most dangerous job, carried out by Britain's most famous skipper, is guaranteed to mesmerize.